ILOILO City – Ilonggo lawyer Angelo Karlo Guillen was attacked by unidentified men on General Luna Street. The men struck him with a 12-inch screwdriver on the head and shoulder before running off with his bag.
Guillen is one of the counsels in the petitions questioning the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 before the Supreme Court and the assistant vice president for Visayas of the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL).
The attack happened around 9:15 p.m. on Wednesday night. A pair of masked men appeared from nowhere and attacked Guillen, 32, on a dimly lit street in Barangay Villa Anita.
“The motive might be robbery,” said Police Major Mark Evan Salvo, investigator of Police Station 1.
The two men took Guillen’s bag and were given a lift by two waiting motorcycles.
“We will do everything to solve this case,” Salvo said.
Guillen was taken by concerned citizens to St. Paul’s Hospital Iloilo and had since been in stable condition.
“We simply cannot dismiss this incident as a petty street crime or robbery. Guillen’s attackers obviously had the intent to kill him, targeting him in the head and upper body,” said Reylan Vergara, the Ilonggo vice chairperson of human rights alliance Karapatan.
Not leaving the case just for the Iloilo City Police Office to handle, Vergara urged the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) and the Supreme Court “to conduct an immediate and impartial investigation.”
Closed circuit television footages showed Guillen initially struggled with the two masked men but was stabbed when he fell to the ground.
The men, as if as an after-thought, took Guillen’s bag and immediately left by back-riding on two motorcycles, which Vergara said were clearly on standby as escape vehicles.
“Atty. Guillen is a young, intelligent, diligent and selfless lawyer who participated in fact-finding missions and provided much needed legal assistance to underprivileged clients, farmworkers, peasants and rights defenders in Panay and Negros islands,” said Vergara.
Guillen had been a victim of red-tagging. In December 2018, his photo was included in posters circulated around Iloilo City, tagging him along with leaders and members of various organizations, as members of the New People’s Army. Slain activist Jory Porquia and Atty. Cris Heredia, who survived a shooting attack in September 2019, along with Vergara himself and another Karapatan human rights worker Leeboy Garachico, were among those in the said posters.
Guillen then said in a statement, “authors of these materials, therefore, are terribly mistaken if they think — even for a second — that the members of NUPL would quiver in fear or reticence because of this incident. We will not.”
“This is the kind of spirit that the attackers of Atty. Guillen are afraid of. This is a cowardly and desperate act, a cheap antic which can only be done by those who have the motive to silence Guillen, and all other human rights lawyers and rights defenders,” said Vergara.
Guillen also represents activists and human rights defenders facing trumped up charges in court including the activists arrested during the police raids in Bacolod City, Negros Occidental in October 2019 and the Tumandoks arrested in Tapaz, Capiz and Calinog, Iloilo in December 2020.
On Labor Day last year, Guillen was arrested after responding to the illegal arrest of 42 activists who were protesting the extrajudicial killing of Bayan Muna Iloilo coordinator Jory Porquia.
“The attempt on Guillen’s life becomes another reason for alarm. We are called to defend the defenders, stand by them, because despite fear and threats, they stand with us,” Vergara said./PN
