Lawyer for Red-tagged tribal folk stabbed; laptop, documents taken. Inquirer Newsletter. March 5, 2021.

No images? Click here   BICOL SHOT   A Philippine Airlines plane carrying a shipment of vaccines for health workers in the Bicol region arrives at Legazpi City airport on Thursday morning. The 12,000 doses of CoronaVac, the COVID-19 vaccine developed by the Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech, will be shared by four government hospitals in the provinces of Albay and Camarines Sur as the vaccination of medical front-liners starts on Friday.  —MARK ALVIC ESPLANA     News LTO deal for screws draws scrutiny Sen. Richard Gordon says he will recommend filing graft charges against officials from the Land Transportation  Office (LTO) involved in the bidding to supply P500 million worth of screws for motor vehicle license plates. He said the cost of the screws was eventually passed on to vehicle owners. “Anyone would have just bought any kind of ordinary screws, but in this case, [vehicle owners] were obliged,” Gordon said. —Story by Melvin Gascon Read more: newsinfo.inquirer.net   World Session called off due to Capitol ‘plot’ WASHINGTON—The US House of Representatives canceled its Thursday session after Capitol police warned that a militia group could be plotting to breach the building in another attack similar to the Jan. 6 riots. Some right-wing conspiracy theorists falsely claimed that former president Donald Trump would be sworn in for a second time. The House was supposed to debate and vote on a police reform bill. —Story by Reuters Read more: newsinfo.inquirer.net/World   Newsletter / Join us Has this been forwarded by a friend? Subscribe now to the Philippine Daily Inquirer Newsletter and get your latest news and important updates on COVID-19. Subscribe     Subscribe   Banner Story Lawyer for Red-tagged tribal folk stabbed; laptop, documents taken By Nestor P. Burgos Jr. A blue and yellow screwdriver was still embedded in the left temple of human rights lawyer Angelo Karlo “AK” Guillen when paramedics took him to a hospital in Iloilo City following what the largest lawyers’ group in the country on Thursday denounced as a “brazen and bloody assassination attempt.” The police said the near-fatal stabbing on Wednesday night could have been a botched robbery, but they were looking into other possible motives. But Guillen’s colleagues and the human rights community believe the assailants had intended to kill the 33-year-old lawyer who has been Red-tagged and represents 16 members of the indigenous Tumandok who were arrested in Capiz and Iloilo provinces on Dec. 30, 2020, for illegal possession of firearms and explosives, and for alleged links to communist rebels. Terror law petitioners At least nine Tumandok were killed in last year’s Rizal Day raids by the military and police on the indigenous group, which opposes a government dam project that they said would inundate their ancestral lands. The brutal attack follows the Feb. 28 assassination of Barangay Roosevelt Chair Julie Catamin, a key defense witness for the Tumandok represented by Guillen. Guillen is also a legal counsel in one of the 37 petitions questioning the constitutionality of the Anti-Terrorism Act in the Supreme Court. The young lawyer, whom colleagues describe as soft-spoken and unassuming, also took part in a fact-finding investigation and reported on the  coordinated police operations in Negros Oriental in 2019 that led to the deaths of 14 people, mostly farmers. Rene Estocapio, National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) vice president for Visayas, said Guillen was attacked at 9:15 p.m. on Wednesday by two men in ski masks who stabbed him in the head and neck as he walked from his car toward his boarding house in Barangay Villa Anita in Iloilo City. Two other men on two motorcycles arrived moments later and fled with the assailants who took his bag that contained his laptop and some documents, Estocapio said. Doctors on Thursday said Guillen was in stable condition after they removed a 25-centimeter screwdriver from his left temple, a few centimeters of which had been jammed into his skull by one of the assailants. At the hospital, Guillen told a friend on Thursday that he ran when he saw two men going after him. He said the men stabbed him repeatedly after he tripped, according to his friend who spoke with the Inquirer. Guillen heard one of the assailants shout, “Get the bag!” before they fled, his friend said. The attackers did not get his wallet, cell phone and other valuables. Pro bono cases In a statement, the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) said it “condemns the brazen and bloody assassination attempt on human rights, public interest, and indigenous people’s lawyer Atty. Angelo Karlo Guillen.” IBP national president Domingo Egon Cayosa said Guillen handled “pro bono cases for the poor and the marginalized” and had been “Red-tagged and threatened many times.” “Inflicting violence on those who seek justice is criminality in the highest degree,” Cayosa said. He pointed to “the primary role of government to secure its citizens and its international obligation to ensure that lawyers can do their job without fear, harassment, or retribution.” Police Maj. Mark Evan Salvo, chief of the Iloilo City Police Station 1, said that based on an initial investigation, robbery could have been the motive for the attack. But he said they were also looking at the possibility that it was work-related because the lawyer’s laptop and files were taken. “We still need to talk with [Guillen] to determine what was taken and the cases that he is handling,” Salvo told the Inquirer. Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas said he was “very much alarmed” about the attack and decried that it took place just half a kilometer from the Iloilo City Police Office. “Lawyers only do their function to protect their clients. As a lawyer myself, this is doubly important for me to be solved,” Treñas said in a statement. He called on the Philippine National Police “to do everything possible to resolve this at the earliest possible time.” Among boldest, youngest In Manila, Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra told reporters in a Viber message that he would refer the attack to a justice department task force “for appropriate action” if it was found to be related to Guillen’s advocacies. “We’ll wait for attorney Guillen to make a statement about the incident,” he said. The task force, created through Administrative Order No. 35 in 2012, is a special unit of the Department of Justice that investigates politically motivated or extrajudicial killings of members of civil society groups, political movements, people’s and nongovernment organizations, among others. The NUPL, where Guillen serves as assistant vice president and also as secretary general of the group’s Panay chapter, condemned the attack. “This is way too much, too many, too brazen, too evil,” said NUPL president Edre Olalia. “Hold tight, AK. Show these cowards what a fighter you are.” He said Guillen is “one of the best and the brightest, among the boldest and youngest” NUPL lawyers. 54 killed since 2016 The NUPL said 54 lawyers and judges have been killed in attacks since President Duterte took office in 2016. Estocapio said the assailants wanted to show they were plain robbers, but really intended to kill Guillen and get “important files and records.” Olalia said they would file a manifestation in the Supreme Court next week concerning the attack and to press for their previous motions for a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the antiterror law. In a joint statement, nine lawyers representing some of the groups that oppose the antiterror law said a TRO on the law “could help address the worsening situation.” One of them, Howard Calleja, told reporters in a virtual press briefing that a TRO may bring a “ceasefire.” “We see that pending the [resolution of petitions against the antiterror law], the attacks continue and all of us 37 petitioners have been Red-tagged already,” he said. —WITH REPORTS FROM KRIXIA SUBINGSUBING AND TINA G. SANTOS Read more: newsinfo.inquirer.net   Editorial Case closed  'Today, the rule of law prevailed.' Former senator Antonio Trillanes IV’s reaction to the Court of Appeals ruling that junked a lower court’s decision to reinstate the rebellion charges against him is an apt verdict, and might well be a collective sigh of relief for those who had watched this Kafkaesque case unfold, stretch the limits of law, and eventually implode. The CA decision is the latest in a series of rulings that showed how some courts are firmly standing by the rule of law against the stranglehold of politics on the country’s judicial system. The increasingly independent stance that the courts have manifested of late is a welcome development—and may there be more of it. The pushback is a necessary workout, a crucial flexing of judicial muscle in this year immediately preceding an election year when, no doubt, the rigors of just governance and the rule of law would be most sorely tested. Read full story: opinion.inquirer.net   Copyright © 2020 PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: P.O. Box 2353, Makati Central Post Office, 1263 Makati City, Philippines.   Share    Tweet    Share    Forward  Preferences  |  Unsubscribe