A fact finding mission composed of 12 international legal experts which investigated the extrajudicial killings and other rights violations committed against lawyers, especially during the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, found that from 2016 up to 2023, the government systematically used repressive techniques to intimidate and neutralize legal professionals as part of a “broader, systematic effort to suppress those working to uphold human rights and the rule of law.”
“Their work, including representing victims of the war on drugs, religious and indigenous minorities, farmers, and workers, appears to have made them primary targets of repression,” said the 80-page report titled “Black Robes, Red Targets.”
The report combined desk research and fieldwork conducted in Metro Manila, the Cordillera region, and Iloilo and Cebu provinces in June 2024. Its aim was to contribute to a growing body of evidence on human rights violations committed during the Duterte presidency.
It found that from 2016 to 2023, a total of 59 legal professionals in the Philippines were subjected to threats, harassment, and in many cases, lethal attacks.
Drawing from in-depth interviews and roundtable discussions with 22 lawyers, 3 judges, and 13 relatives of lawyers who were killed, the study found that “repressive techniques” were “systematically” used to intimidate and neutralize legal professionals, starting with surveillance and intimidation, then Red-tagging, followed by “lawfare” or politically motivated legal harassment, and finally, extrajudicial killings.
Victims included National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers Negros secretary general Benjamin Ramos, who was Red-tagged by police in April 2018, six months before being killed in Kabankalan, Negros Occidental.
With one exception, none of the killings of legal professionals examined by the group have ended up in court. “The delegation observed a consistent pattern of incomplete and inadequate investigations following these incidents, indicating that the Philippines has repeatedly failed to fulfill its obligations… to thoroughly investigate unlawful or suspicious deaths and physical attacks,” it said.
It made some recommendations to the government and other stakeholders to address the problem, such as creating a special protection protocol for judges and prosecutors who face threats due to rulings and prosecutions in sensitive cases.
There should be lessons that can be learned from the recent dark ages when our own government somehow became the chief violator of human rights, to the point that even lawyers that were seen as critics and opponents were either targeted outright, or even denied the equal protection of the law that every citizen deserves. Learning those lessons, along with taking the necessary steps to ensure that it never happens again, now falls upon our government and the legal sector, if they are to uphold and protect the justice system from future exploitation and destruction.*
