Manila, Philippines — The jailing of human rights lawyer Remigio Saladero by the Philippine government last week has caused an uproar among members of the legal profession and the human rights community.
Saladero was arrested on Oct. 23 at his law office in Antipolo City, in Rizal province. The arresting officers used a 2006 warrant, charging the lawyer with multiple murders and attempted murders in Oriental Mindoro province. They confiscated Saladero’s personal belongings, including his laptop and mobile phone, and refused his request to contact his family and colleagues to inform them of his arrest until very late that evening, according to a fact sheet sent to members of the Philippine media last week.
Saladero’s supporters and colleagues, as well as his clients, most of whom are laborers and urban poor, have protested his arrest.
Some Manila-based political opinion makers and legal experts, led by human rights lawyer Romeo Capulong of the Public Interest Law Center, have also decried the arrest as an attempt to silence and punish critics of the government. Saladero has handled some 700 labor cases and other controversial cases involving the president and top government and military officials.
The human rights lawyer was charged along with 71 others over an incident involving a police ambush in March 2006 in Oriental Mindoro province. The charges include arson, destruction of property and conspiracy to commit rebellion, multiple murders and multiple attempted murders.
Twenty-six of the accused are leaders and members of organizations in the southern Tagalog region, who have filed an appeal for impeachment against Arroyo over new cases of corruption and scores of political killings and enforced disappearances of activists and critics of the president.
According to Renato Reyes Jr., secretary general of the leftwing umbrella group Bayan, the Arroyo government is concentrating on filing trumped-up charges to silence and punish critics and activists, although this is not a departure from the national policy of political assassination and enforced disappearance under the counter-insurgency programs known as Oplan Bantay Laya 1 and Oplan Bantay Laya II.
In a briefing with representatives of the lawyers and activist groups, the Bayan secretary general said the filing of fabricated charges against human rights lawyers and leaders of people’s organizations critical of the Arroyo government was undertaken by the Inter Agency Legal Action Group.
Reyes further argued that after killing 901 activists and critics and forcibly abducting 200 of their colleagues over the last seven years, the Arroyo-led National Security Council now wants to see thousands of activists and critics languish in jails for fabricated crimes like rebellion, murder and other non-bailable crimes. He said Arroyo sees this as an effective tool for her political survival beyond 2010.
Reyes said the IALAG, which is tasked by the executive and the military establishment to undertake political persecution in the form of filing bogus criminal charges against activists and critics, had a tall order from the president to make sure that anti-Arroyo critics would land in different jails across the country.
Groups like the highly vocal activist peasant group Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas and the fisherfolk alliance Pamalakaya, whose regional and provincial leaders are falsely charged along with Saladero, appealled to the influential Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines to intervene in the case by expressing full support for the cause of Saladero and his 71 co-accused.
The case of Saladero is expected to be tackled as the Dutch Lawyers for Lawyers Foundation start their eight-day fact-finding mission in the Philippines from Nov. 4-12, according to the progressive lawyers’ group National Union of People’s Lawyers.
Neri Javier Colmenares, the NUPL secretary general, said the case of Saladero is part of a major disturbing trend in the legal profession, and in the general advocacy and practice of human rights all over the country.
The NUPL noted that since 2001, many human rights lawyers and judges have fallen victim to serious harassment, intimidation and even extrajudicial killing for the practice of their profession. These attacks have exposed the brutal orientation of the Arroyo administration when it comes to human rights. Those who defend human rights and stand up against those who violate them become victims themselves. This is an alarming development that has struck a chord even in the international community of law practitioners.
The NUPL asserted that Saladero has done nothing but ably perform his duties as a progressive people’s lawyer and a legal defender of the poor and exploited, yet the government has seen fit to persecute him and jail him on false charges.
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(Gerry Albert Corpuz is a correspondent of Bulatlat.com, an alternative Philippine online news site. He is also head of the information department of Pamalakaya, a national federation of small fisherfolk organizations in the Philippines. His website is http://www.gerryalbertcorpuz.motime.com, and he can be contacted at themanager98@yahoo.com. ©Copyright Gerry Albert Corpuz.)
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