17th ANNIVERSARY STATEMENT

Seventeen years from its founding, the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers, continues to fulfill its mandate of bringing lawyers to the frontlines of the people’s struggles for a just and humane society. Since then, we have been told that our work is a fool’s errand in a system that is not only skewed against us but is also replete with dangers.

Still, we persist.

The assault on civil society continues to intensify. The legal system has turned into a grim theater where the law is wielded as a weapon of oppression. Terror laws, with a sinister guise of legality, are used as a pretext to eradicate dissent, even as human rights defenders, especially those advocating for environmental protection, are being disappeared increasingly.

Just yesterday, police officers removed some of our lawyers and law student members near the bar exam site at San Beda University for holding banners that read “Serve the People” and “Be the Best Lawyers Money Cannot Buy,” as well as putting up a “Junk Terror Laws” poster along Mendiola. Despite causing no disturbance, they were told they had “contaminated” the intent of welcoming bar examinees during the salubong.

Yet, it is beneath this stifling terror and chilling effect that our resolve grows stronger. We draw courage from our brave clients belonging to the poor and oppressed sectors, who stand as a testament to the enduring human spirit and a stark counterpoint to the greed and corruption of our public officials. Among them are mothers looking for their disappeared children, activists pushing back against their vilification as “terrorists,” journalists censored online, and political prisoners imprisoned for their political beliefs.

We look at the world through their eyes and imagine a world not as a dream, but as a fight worth having.

The law, as we have long understood, is not neutral. It was crafted to serve the interests of those who hold the reins of power. The so-called scales of justice are tilted toward wealth, influence, and privilege, while those on those margins are left to carry the burden of laws that were never meant to protect them.

We see this imbalance every day: in courtrooms where opponents dismiss our causes as trifles; in laws that punish the poor and the dissenter; in the slow erosion of freedoms once promised by the Constitution.

And still, we persist in subverting this system. Every time we take on a case for the dispossessed and the marginalized, we scrutinize the law, press against its edges, expose its failures, and refuse to let it stand unchallenged.

We do this knowing that change is not swift, and justice is not often found in neat victories. We do this knowing that we may fail, again and again. But even in failure, there is a kind of resistance, as the act of continuing to fight back is itself a refusal to accept the law as immutable.

If we cannot always win in the courts, we win in the fact that we are still here, standing our ground with the people. The law may serve the powerful, but it is in the cracks we create that justice, however slow, begins to take root.

We keep walking this path, knowing that to speak up for the underdog and the poor is to invite scorn and state violence. But it is also to stand on the side of justice.

For seventeen years, we have chosen this road, and for however long it takes, we will continue to tread it because we know, as our clients do, that to struggle for justice is never in vain. #

#AbogadongMakabayanPatuloyLumalaban
#LawyersAllRise

References:

Atty. Ephraim B. Cortez
NUPL President
+639172092943

Atty. Josalee S. Deinla
NUPL Secretary General
+639174316396