FOR HUMAN rights lawyers in the Philippines, Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc “never wrote 30.”
Lawyers who represent victims of human rights violations, enforced disappearance and extrajudicial killings and their families Saturday hailed the late Philippine Daily Inquirer editor in chief as a champion of the oppressed.
“We join countless others in deeply mourning the passing of a giant and omnipresent icon of press freedom,” the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers
(NUPL) said through its secretary general, Edre Olalia.
“Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc was not only fearless in her views, passionate in her work but also served as an inspiration to generations, including lawyers who are likewise human rights defenders like herself. She was uncannily unassuming for a giant in the profession,” he said.
Fight against dictatorship
The NUPL cited Magsanoc’s fight against the Marcos dictatorship, the repressive time that gave birth to the Inquirer.
“[S]he carved a niche in her inimitable way by standing up against the dictatorship and all forms of reinvented tyranny and parrying the slings and arrows from the powerful trying to undermine freedom of the press and freedom of speech and expression in particular,” Olalia said.
He recalled how Magsanoc drew attention to the human rights cause by giving prominence to human rights stories on the pages of the Inquirer. Magsanoc was behind the Inquirer’s brand of human-face journalism, which gave readers stories behind the statistics, names behind the numbers.
“Under her able stewardship, we were virtual kindred spirits in the struggle for human rights and against corruption, assiduously standing by us in issues like the ‘Morong 43’ health workers case, the campaign in the UN and elsewhere against extrajudicial killings and disappearances, and the inhumanity against the downtrodden like Andrea Rosal,” Olalia said.
Morong 43 refers to the 43 health workers arrested by the military in Morong, Rizal province, on Feb. 6, 2010, on charges that they are communist New People’s Army (NPA) supporters.
Rosal is the daughter of the late NPA spokesperson Gregorio Rosal who was arrested in Caloocan City in March 2014. She was pregnant at the time of her arrest and she lost her baby in jail. She was freed a year later, after being cleared of the criminal charges brought against her by the government.
‘Pompous butchers’
“Under her watch, we were essentially one in cutting down to size remorseless and pompous butchers like retired Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan and in saving from the gallows innocent lambs like Mary Jane Veloso,” he said.
Palparan is the former military officer accused of the disappearance of University of Philippines students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño in 2006.
Veloso is the Filipino migrant worker who is sitting on death row in Indonesia on drug charges but whose execution has been stayed while her recruiters are being tried in the Philippines.
Magsanoc hosted the Veloso family at the Inquirer office in May, leading the Inquirer staff in the interview.
There may have been points of divergence, “hiccups” as Olalia described them. But NUPL’s lawyers always knew which side Magsanoc was on.
“But in the end, LJM was the true defender of the oppressed, a compliment she personally extended to us [that] we shall immensely cherish and honor by continuing to carry the torch to fight the good fight as she did. LJM indeed never wrote 30,” Olalia said.