Philippines’ human rights lawyer injured in attack

MANILA: A human rights lawyer who was one of the 37 petitioners to question the legality of the country’s controversial Anti-terror Law before the Supreme Court (SC) was wounded in an attack by still unidentified men in Iloilo province in the Visayas, police reported.

Police said the victim, identified as Angelo Karlo “AK” Guillen, 33, was walking towards his hotel in Iloilo City, Iloilo when two men who wore ski masks attacked him with a screw driver late on Wednesday night.

Initially, police suspected the motive was robbery, pointing out the suspects took Guillen’s backpack containing a laptop, documents and a sling bag before they fled when local residents responded to his cries for help.

The residents told police they found the screw driver still embedded in Guillen’s skull which was removed by attending physicians at the hospital where he is still confined under heavy guard.

But the non-government group National Union of People’s Lawyers ( NUPL) where Guillen serves as the group’s vice president in the Panay Region in the Visayas, denounced the attack as a “brazen and bloody assassination attempt.”

Former congressman Neri Colmenares, NUPL chairman, also disclosed that Guillen has been tagged as an alleged supporter of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed component the New People’s Army (NPA) which have launched a Maoist-style insurgency against the government for more than 50 years.

Edre Olalia, the NUPL president, said: “This is way too much, too many, too evil. Hold tight AK. Show these cowards what a fighter you are.”

Aside from being one of the petitioners against the Anti-terror Law being heard by the High Court, the NUPL said Guillen also serves as one of the lawyers of members of an indigenous tribe called Tumandok in Iloilo, who were arrested for their alleged links to the Maoists rebels last December.

In a statement, the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP), country’s biggest lawyers group, also said it “condemns the brazen and bloody assassination attempt on human rights, public interest and indigenous people’s lawyer Atty. Angelo Karlo Guillen.”