Stop the attacks on lawyers

 Woke up this morning, at past 3 to be more exact, to be hit by a grim news that an esteemed colleague in the legal profession, Angelo Karlo Guillen, is battling for his life at a hospital.

He was assaulted by two masked men who stabbed the side of his head and his back with a screw driver, around 9 pm past, March 3, 2021, at Luna Street, Iloilo City.

The attackers fled with his bag containing his lap top.

We are made to believe the incident was plain robbery. No, the plot has been hatched in the air conditioned offices of the very institution that is supposedly bankrolled by taxpayers to protect us. 

I am referring to government particularly its security forces - the police and armed forces.

Atty. Guillen, "AK", as he's fondly called, is a human rights lawyer. He stands for the rights of the marginalized and downtrodden. He's an activist lawyer, if you may, and one of the 42 arrested in Iloilo City on Labor Day, May 1, 2020, after he responded to the incident at Jaro Plaza, Iloilo City, as cops, were arresting  protesters gathering to denounced the murder of Bayan Muna coordinator of Iloilo, Jory Porquia who was shot dead by suspected law enforcers the previous day in Villa, Iloilo City.

Atty. AK is general secretary of the Panay Chapter of the National Union of People's Lawyers (NUPL). He's young and committed to defend victims of state-sponsored terror, the latest being the 16 Tumandok indigenous people, who were picked up from their mountain homes in Tapaz, Capiz and Calinog, Iloilo by joint PNP-AFP operatives. The state forces planted bombs and firearms on the detainees on top of the spurious search warrants issued by two regional trial courts (RTCs) in Metro  Manila that earns them the moniker as "warrants factories,"

The December 30 incident was a bloodbath: nine Tumandok people were murdered with their assailants proferring the lame "nanlaban" (resisting arrest) narrative -- which was so ridiculous if not incredible that forced government to ban the media from visiting Tapaz refugees at the evacuation center.

AK committed no crime to warrant such assault. He also represented political detainees in hearings in Bacolod City -- which is no crime - all of them arrested en masse by joint AFP-PNP operatives in 2019, also, on the basis of orders from the RTCs in Metro-Manila weaponized to fabricate search warrants.

The assault on Atty. Guillen poses the grim question: who'll protect people now that even the PNP and AFP have turned their guns against the people and the lawyers defending them?

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