NUPL ready for attacks from ‘forces of darkness’ this 2019

MANILA, Philippines —As the new year starts, a group of lawyers for marginalized and oppressed sectors said they are ready for more vicious attacks from what it called “forces of darkness.”

In a statement on New Year’s Day, National Union of People’s Lawyer (NUPL) President Edre Olalia said “despite being battle scarred,” the group “will not look the other way and be silent in the face of injustice, insanity and tyranny.”

“We will be ready for even more vicious attacks by the forces of darkness in the coming year. Yet, we draw strength and steam that ultimately the people shall overcome and that truth, justice, even just decency, common sense and reason will be with us,” Olalia said.

“We shall stand our ground and the people will prevail in the end. For darkness shall succumb to the light of simply making things right and fighting for it whatever it takes. And that is what will make the new year happy despite and inspite of all,” he added.

Olalia noted that 2018 produced “smoggy images of despair and distress for human rights advocacy and lawyering for the people.”

“It was obvious that the high and mighty have not only brazenly broken but schemingly reinvented, nay debased and distorted, some basic meanings of law and justice to suit political agenda or as vendetta against those they see as pesky fishbones in their insatiable throats,” he said.

He also mentioned attacks against some of his colleagues that took away several members, “including one of our best and brightest, even funniest lawyers.”

Last November, NUPL’s Benjamin Ramos was killed by unidentified gunmen in Kabankalan, Negros Occidental.

READ: Lawyer for 9 slain farmers shot dead

Ramos has provided free legal assistance to the families of the victims in the killing of nine sugarcane workers in Sagay, as part of a Quick Reaction Team.

He was also the lawyer for the “Mabinay 6” activists accused of being communist rebels and who have been charged with illegal possession of firearms and explosives.

Despite the brazen attacks against lawyers like Ramos, Olalia said “all is not lost.”

Olalia noted that in 2018, the group “challenged the State’s orchestrated legal assaults, freed many a deserving and won key battles here and there, including the unprecedented victory over one of the dark horsemen of the apocalypse.”

“And we raised the legal counter-offensive to a higher level by bringing it to international platforms,” he added. /ee