Losing Ben

I WRITE this as tears well up in my eyes. It’s been two days since they gunned down human rights lawyer and peasant advocate Ben Ramos.

I learned of his death as I was on my way to the airport to fly to Manila for a conference on, of all things, the safety of journalists in this country. I cried all the way to the airport, composed myself long enough to head to the pre-departure area where I again wept as I wrote about his murder, dead from four shots from an assassin who opened fire from near point blank range as he smoked in front of a store near the plaza in Kabankalan City.

It is always hard to write about the death of people you know, especially if violent, not a rare occurrence in Negros, riven by civil strife fueled by unjust social structures.

It becomes positively painful when it happens to friends.

And even more, if they are defenseless, as was Ben on Tuesday night, another supreme irony in this land of our joys and sorrows, that a man who made it his life’s mission to defend the defenseless was unable to defend himself when they came for him.

Ben was a good friend.

Not in the way we normally think of being good friends.

We never hung out together, in fact rarely saw or spoke to each other.

I think a decade or so had passed before we saw each other again for what would be the last time at the press conference of the fact-finding mission on the Sagay 9 massacre.

After a tight hug and “how do you do’s” it was as if we were picking up where we left off, exchanging ideas for possible stories, projects and collaborations as he pointed out that the human rights in southern Negros was in a tailspin but was badly underreported.

Serious talk but delivered with Ben’s trademark impish grin, as if he was sharing an insider joke instead of the tales of our people’s lives, suffering and deaths.

But that was Ben. He could lighten the darkest subjects with a generous dash of humor. Not because he was insensitive - he was easily driven to tears by the injustices he sought to right - but because he was accurately aware of the need to fend off the crushing despair that can drive the dispossessed to give up all hope of redress.

His smile punctuated our discussions on fact-finding missions or during visits to the compound of the Paghidaet Development Group, the peasant advocacy organization he founded, where we would sit on bamboo benches quaffing beers while discussing the agrarian reform cases he handled, the political prisoners he defended and other subjects that invariably turned other faces, mine included, grim and which are the most likely motive for his murder.

For this is nothing more abhorrent to democracy’s enemies than defending and fighting for human rights.

But perhaps these words from another human rights lawyer, former Supreme Court spokesman Theodore Te, best sum up what needs to happen in the wake of Ben’s murder:

“When they start killing lawyers simply because of who they defend, that’s when you know they’ve run out of arguments and when you know the rule of law has lost.

“Inter armas silent leges, in the clash of arms, the laws are silent. We should all work, as Ka Pepe (Diokno) once said, to reverse the equation: inter leges, silent armas, In the clash of laws, the arms are silent.”

I submit that Governor Freddie Marañon, the military and the police seriously look to investigating and ensuring justice for Ben’s death and not make a mockery of it the way they did with the Sagay 9, which I also strongly urge them to exploit for their nefarious ends.

And heaven forbid any of them are remotely responsible for Ben’s death.

I need not remind them of the lengths a people deprived of the justice they deserve will go to set things right.

And believe me, this is not just one man’s opinion.*