The other day two men shot and killed another lawyer.
Rex Fernandez, known for championing human rights, was gunned down as his car passed by R. Duterte Street in Barangay Banawa, Cebu City.
Fernandez joins a list of lawyers brazenly gunned down in public.
This incident doesn’t only raise questions about how safe --or rather unsafe-- our security situation is now. It also calls to attention what has been done to secure the officers of the court or to solve the crimes committed against them.
Fernandez isn’t the only lawyer shot dead recently. There was Joey Luis Wee, Baby Maria Concepcion Landero Ole, and Mary Ann Castro, just to name a few.
While Wee’s murder looks like it’s headed for a resolution there is no word yet in the cases of Ole and Castro, and the many others whose murders have yet to be solved.
Details have yet to be released regarding the investigation into this latest killing, but it isn’t difficult to imagine Fernandez’s killing may have had to do with his line of work.
The killing of a lawyer is a human tragedy in itself, but there is also the tragedy of the unfinished business left behind. And for lawyers that usually means cases they handle or are involved in, or the advocacies they pursue on a personal level.
Killings like these make the wheels of justice grind even slower in a country already notorious for a slow judicial system. At least slow for those who cannot afford to grease its wheels with money.
Then there is also that chilling effect that killing a lawyer will have on the profession. Since we are humans we cannot help but feel fear when someone of the same profession is taken out. This fear may affect some lawyers, especially those handling sensitive cases or those who chose advocacies not exactly popular with the powerful.
A task force may soon be formed to go after Fernandez’s killers, but authorities should not stop there and go look into the past killings of lawyers also.
If some criminals expect that they can get away with killing lawyers, just imagine what they will think of silencing those who aren’t as prominent.