How to get away with political imperialism: a research on the phenomenon of attacks on human rights lawyers in the Philippines and the prospect of curbing selective justice in the country.

Abstract

The killings, disappearances, false charges and detention, death threats, harassment and intimidation of Human Rights Lawyers is an issue that unfortunately has been mostly unknown and unfamiliar to the public. The lack of prominence of the issue then turns it into a ‘problem’, as the public are deemed having no sympathy on the issue and the government not strengthening the implementation of laws protecting Human Rights Defenders (HRDs). This research would want to further speculate on the chilling effect that this phenomena has given our Makabayang Abugado, and its implicit effect on the curbing of selective justice in the country. The call for the protection of our HRDs, especially Human Rights Lawyers who are at the forefront of the battle against corruption, poverty and injustice in the country, is the foremost and most important goal of this study. In order to effectively describe this phenomena, using a Neo-Marxist approach, a purposeful sampling and historical research would be done through interviews and historical tracing of the issue on the three main variables of the study: the media, government and the lawyers themselves. As provided by available data online, the number of the attacks on human rights lawyers all over the globe is rapidly growing but still unknown and unrecognized unlike the attacks on journalists or other HRDs. What is lacking is not just the information of the public but what it is that they have been provided, and the action of the government. To conclude, what must be given attention to is not just the attacks itself but what harm it does for each one of us and what it reflects of the kind of government that we have or we do not have.