In defense of Rene

In these sad times, the residents of urban Cebu have had to adjust to daily reports of senseless killings, day-to-day injustice, examples of man’s inhumanity to man. The struggle to alleviate this human failing is a job shared by all good men, and fortunately there are still many good men in Cebu today.

These last weeks have brought the horror closer to us, the fabric of our closely-knit medical community torn by the violent death of our friend. Rene Rafols was far from perfect: we make no claims about this, but he was a good man. His many advocacies, the magnanimity of his family asking not for vengeance but for “something good” to come out of his death, the testimony of patients and the grief of us, his friends and colleagues, are testimony to this.

But in the past few days, we have felt Rene being killed again. The reports that Mr. Pope may have been “misjudged”, that “there was merit to him”, the suggestions that he was the victim rather than the wrongdoer: this has added to our grief. That he took the trouble to send packets of documents attesting to his “goodness” to various individuals and news agencies and then proceeded to shoot three unarmed people IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD is not the action of a good man.

We want this to be acknowledged. Rene and the two lawyers are victims. And Pope was the perpetrator of a horrendous crime.