MANILA \u2014 One of the founding members of a Philippine lawyers\u2019 group at the forefront of opposing President Rodrigo Duterte\u2019s lethal war on drugs was gunned down on Tuesday, killed by three bullets as he was leaving his office for the night.<\/p>\n
The attorney, Benjamin Ramos, 56, was the 34th lawyer killed since Mr. Duterte became president two years ago. His group, the National Union of People\u2019s Lawyers, specialized in doing no-cost work for poor clients whose families have been targeted by\u00a0the police, soldiers and death squads associated with the president\u2019s drug war<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are shocked, devastated and enraged at the premeditated, coldblooded murder of our colleague and fellow people\u2019s lawyer,\u201d said Edre Olalia, a leader of the group. \u201cWe are disturbed and unbowed. These are dangerous times.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Initial police reports said that Mr. Ramos had just finished work when he was shot by motorcycle-riding men near the central town of Kabankalan on Tuesday night. He was declared dead on arrival at the hospital.<\/p>\n Colleagues described Mr. Ramos as passionately dedicated to pro-bono work for the poor, environmentalists, activists and political prisoners.<\/p>\n The National Union of People\u2019s Lawyers said his work had angered local policemen and the military. His picture was recently included by the local police in a list of people accused of having ties to the underground communist movement, a claim that the group has denied.<\/p>\n Jose Manuel Diokno, a human rights lawyer for another organization, the Free Legal Assistance Group, said he was outraged by the killing.<\/p>\n \u201cI join the calls for the police to conduct an impartial and thorough investigation, to find the motive, the gunmen and the mastermind,\u201d Mr. Diokno said in an interview, urging the Justice Department to take the lead in the inquiry.<\/p>\n \u201cI ask my fellow lawyers who fight for what is right and just to continue and not be cowed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In a speech in August 2017, Mr. Duterte told the national police not to be daunted by rights lawyers investigating the thousands of deaths of what he called drug addicts and dealers.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they are obstructing justice, you shoot them,\u201d Mr. Duterte instructed the police, referring to lawyers. (The president is himself a lawyer and began his political career as a prosecutor.)<\/p>\n He often carries a list of the names of dozens of judges, members of the armed and police forces\u00a0as well as of local politicians he claims are protecting drug suspects<\/a>.<\/p>\n He has never publicly divulged how he came up with the list, although at least three mayors whose names appeared on it have been killed. Eight other mayors were also gunned down in suspicious circumstances. One of them was killed last year\u00a0in a raid that left his wife and 10 other people dead<\/a>.\u00a0A mayor was also fatally shot<\/a>\u00a0during a flag-raising ceremony in July.<\/p>\n Mr. Olalia said that some of the National Union of People\u2019s Lawyers members had received threats, and had been labeled by the police and the military as sympathetic to the political left, in \u201copen contempt of basic principles of the role of lawyers in democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n He said a colleague investigating abuses against women and children, Katherine Panguban, had recently been criticized by the police for leading a fact-finding mission into the\u00a0killings of nine farmers<\/a>\u00a0in the central city of Sagay.<\/p>\n The military has said the farmers were recruited by a front organization for communist rebels, and attributed their deaths to infighting among the cadres.<\/p>\n Mr. Olalia said Mr. Ramos\u2019s death would not stop the group\u2019s work.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will be there in the trenches in defense of the defenseless,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is no other choice.\u201d<\/p>\n The group Human Rights Watch said Mr. Ramos\u2019s killing was proof that impunity existed under Mr. Duterte\u2019s drug war.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a blow to the human rights movement in the Philippines,\u201d the group said in a statement. \u201cWe demand an impartial investigation into Ramos\u2019s murder and the many other attacks against lawyers in the Philippines and that the authorities bring the perpetrators to justice.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MANILA \u2014 One of the founding members of a Philippine lawyers\u2019 group at the forefront of opposing President Rodrigo Duterte\u2019s lethal war on drugs was gunned down on Tuesday, killed by three bullets as he was leaving his office for the night. The attorney, Benjamin Ramos, 56, was the 34th lawyer killed since Mr. Duterte became president two years ago…. Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2542"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2553,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542\/revisions\/2553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}