MILITANT and human rights advocacy groups gathered Saturday to pay tribute to and denounce the deaths of women human rights defenders, including the two lawyers among the 57 people killed in the Nov. 23 political massacre in Maguindanao.

Gabriela Party-list Rep. Liza Maza Saturday led members of Gabriela Women’s Party, Karapatan, Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights and Tanggol Bai in commemorating Sunday’s International Day of Women Human Rights Defenders at the Chino Roces (Mendiola) Bridge.

Wearing black T-shirts, some 50 demonstrators dramatized their cause by lying down on the historic bridge while raising their clenched fists.

“Justice for women human rights defenders killed, disappeared, tortured and persecuted! Justice to all victims of human rights violations! Stop the killings! End the murderous US-Arroyo regime now,” they shouted.

“On International Women Human Rights Defenders Day, let us honor the memories of our fellow human rights defenders who have selflessly given their lives and worked hard to defend the rights of our fellow Filipinos, especially the poorest and the voiceless people of our land,” said Karapatan chair Marie Hilao-Enriquez.

Under the regime of Presidential Macapagal-Arroyo, Enriquez claimed there had been 1,115 victims of extrajudicial killings, 50 of whom were women human rights defenders.

The latest victims of human rights violations were lawyers Connie Brizuela and Cynthia Oquendo in Maguindanao.

Concepcion “Connie” Brizuela, 56, and Cynthia Oquendo, 35, were in a six-vehicle convoy with members of the Mangudadatu clan and media practitioners heading for the Commission on Elections in Shariff Aguak, Maguindanao, when they were seized and killed in Ampatuan town by a group of armed men believed to be followers of the Mangudadatus’ political rivals, the Ampatuans.

Brizuela was a member of the Union of Peoples Lawyers in Mindanao (UPLM) and the Gabriela Network of Professionals in North Cotabato. A small but feisty human rights lawyer, she took the cases of the abused and marginalized, including cases of violence against women. Her body was found among the massacred in Maguindanao, her face unrecognizable.

Oquendo, on the other hand, went for “alternative lawyering” and was active in social justice movements. She was believed to have been raped along with the other women victims of the carnage.