{"id":8827,"date":"2023-10-30T01:00:58","date_gmt":"2023-10-30T00:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/?p=8827"},"modified":"2023-10-29T12:06:04","modified_gmt":"2023-10-29T11:06:04","slug":"impunity-persists-lawyer-and-activist-murdered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/impunity-persists-lawyer-and-activist-murdered\/","title":{"rendered":"Impunity persists: Lawyer and activist murdered"},"content":{"rendered":"

On September 14, 2023, lawyer Maria Saniata Liwliwa Alzate was shot<\/a> in broad daylight in her parked car in Bangued town, Abra province, by unidentified assailants on a passing motorbike. The perpetrators managed to flee<\/a>. Alzate succumbed to her gunshot wounds in hospital and died<\/a>. The lawyer was helping clients who had been illegally detained during former President Rodrigo Duterte’s so-called “war on drugs.” Alzate is the third<\/a> lawyer who was killed during the current Marcos administration.<\/p>\n

According to documentation from the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL), a total of 113 lawyers were murdered<\/a> since 1972, 61 of whom died under the administration of former President Duterte. Lawyers are a “bridge for citizens to the justice system,” explained<\/a> Kristina Konti, the NUPL General Secretary. Moreover, Konti said<\/a>, “killing lawyers tells the general public that what you cannot win by reason, you can win by violence.” In 2021, the Supreme Court issued a statement<\/a> interpreting the threat to lawyers as an attack on the judiciary and thus on the foundation of the rule of law.<\/p>\n

Two weeks after Alzate’s murder, Jude Thaddeus Fernandez, a Kilusang Mayo Uni (KMU) unionist, was shot<\/a> dead by Philippine National Police (PNP) and Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) security forces in Rizal province on September 29, 2023. The PNP-CIDG task force raided<\/a> Fernandez’s house without a search warrant. The state security forces justified the use of their firearms on the grounds of self-defence (“Nanlaban<\/a>” narrative) since Fernandez allegedly fired first at the PNP-CIDG. However, the KMU stated<\/a> that Fernandez, as a trade unionist, had not been in possession of firearms. According to KMU documentation, 72 workers and trade unionists have already been murdered<\/a> in the Philippines since 2016.<\/p>\n

Bryony Lau, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, sees the core problem in impunity<\/a> that makes murders like Fernandez’s possible. Lau calls<\/a> for stronger international pressure: “Foreign governments that value the Philippines as a trade partner should send a clear message to the Marcos administration that these abuses need to stop.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo \u00a9 Raffy Lerma<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On September 14, 2023, lawyer Maria Saniata Liwliwa Alzate was shot in broad daylight in her parked car in Bangued town, Abra province, by unidentified assailants on a passing motorbike. The perpetrators managed to flee. Alzate succumbed to her gunshot wounds in hospital and died. The lawyer was helping clients who had been illegally detained […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":5302,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[63,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-human-rights-defenders","category-human-rights-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8827"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8848,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8827\/revisions\/8848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}