ILOILO CITY –– Mayor Jerry Treñas has decried the stabbing on Wednesday of a red-tagged human rights lawyer near the city police office headquarters.
“I am very much alarmed by the incident involving one of the lawyers along General Luna Street. Lawyers only do their function to protect their clients. As a lawyer myself, this is doubly important for me to be solved,” Treñas said in a statement on Thursday, hours after lawyer Angelo Karlo Guillen was mauled before being stabbed with a screwdriver.
Guillen, 33, and Assistant Vice President for the Visayas of the National Union of People’s Lawyers was in stable condition in a hospital here Thursday morning. He has stab wounds in the temple and neck.
The two masked assailants took Guillen’s bag containing a laptop and case files before fleeing on two motorcycles driven by two accomplices.
“I call on our (Philippine National Police) to do everything possible to resolve this at the earliest possible time.
The Integrated Bar of the Philippines Iloilo chapter and the University of the Philippines Visayas and the University of San Agustin College of Law also issued separate statements denouncing the attack.
“The University of San Agustin College of Law strongly condemns the brazen attempt on the life of its alumnus, Angelo Karlo “AK” Guillen.
“Atty. AK is a public interest lawyer, whose legal practice is characterized by competence, compassion, and faithful compliance with the ethics of our profession,” according to the statement of the law school.
IBP national president Domingo Egon Cayosa said Guillen handles “pro bono cases for the poor and the marginalized” and “has been red-tagged and threatened many times.”
“Inflicting violence on those who seek justice is criminality in the highest degree,” Cayosa said in a statement of the IBP.
Guillen is serving as legal counsel of members of the indigenous people’s groups Tumandok, who were arrested in Capiz and Iloilo on Dec. 30.
He is also a counsel of one of the 37 petitions questioning the constitutionality of the Anti-Terror Law.