Filipino human rights lawyer to receive international award

Filipino human rights lawyer to receive international award

Angelo Karlo Guillen
(Photo: Rappler)

By Nestor Burgos

A United States-based human rights organization is honoring a Filipino human rights lawyer who narrowly survived an assassination attempt last year.

The Human Rights First organization announced on August 8 that lawyer Angelo Karlo Guillen is this year’s recipient of The Roger N. Baldwin Medal of Liberty Award.

“For more than 30 years, the Baldwin Medal has brought recognition and support to extraordinary activists who are advancing the protection of human rights at great personal risk,” Human Rights First president and chief executive officer Michael Breen said in a statement.

Guillen will be presented with The Baldwin Medal in the United States later this year, according to the statement.

Established in 1989, the award is named in honor of Roger N. Baldwin, principal founder of both the American Civil Liberties Union and the International League for Human Rights.

It is given yearly to human rights advocates alternating between those in the United States and outside.

Human Rights First cited Guillen’s work as a human rights defender and official of the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL) and his “focus on helping document human rights violations and educating farmers and indigenous communities on their human rights under domestic and international law.”

“Angelo Guillen is a courageous and effective advocate whose work has made a difference in the lives of his fellow Filipinos and put a spotlight on abuses and calling for accountability,” Breen said.
Guillen said he is honored to be among the recipients of the award who include “human rights defenders with considerable work in their respective countries.”

“I am grateful because this is a recognition of the human rights situation in the Philippines and the work of the NUPL, human right lawyers, paralegals and human rights defenders,” Guillen told The Philippine Reporter in a telephone interview.

He said the recognition is also in honor of the human rights defenders who were killed, attacked and detained due to their work.

On March 3, 2021, two assailants who wore ski masks repeatedly stabbed Guillen with a screwdriver including in the head while he was on his way him to his boarding house in Iloilo City in central Philippines.

His assailants fled on two motorcycles driven by two accomplices after taking his backpack with personal belongings and a shoulder bag containing his laptop, external disk for backup files and case documents.

His assailants, however, left behind his wallet and smartphone, which were inside his pockets.

Guillen, 34, NUPL vice president for Visayas regions, spent 18 days recuperating in a hospital from at least eight stab wounds.

He and his colleagues believe state agents were behind the attack especially because he was among the counsels of leaders of the indigenous Tumandok tribe who were arrested in a police and military operation in Capiz province on December 30, 2020. Nine tribe leaders were shot dead.

The Philippine National Police claimed that those killed fought back when operatives were serving search warrants for illegal firearms and ammunition on alleged leaders and members of the underground Communist Party of the Philippines and New People’s Army, a claim repeatedly denied by families of the victims and village officials.

One of the 16 arrested tribe leaders, 75-year-old Rodolfo Diaz, remains detained nearly 20 months after he was arrested, according to Guillen.

“I am especially glad this award could be announced on the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, which is also National Indigenous Peoples Day in the Philippines. Indigenous peoples, like the Tumandok community, as well as farmers, labor leaders, and activists, have borne the brunt of unjust arrests, extrajudicial killings, and other human rights violations committed by state security forces that, to this day, still take place throughout the country. Their rights must be protected, and we hope that this recognition will help bring attention to their plight,” Guillen said in Human Rights First statement.

An independent jury recommended Guillen for the 2022 Baldwin Medal.

The members include: Radhya Almutawakel, co-founder and chairperson of Mwatana for Human Rights and the winner of the 2018 Baldwin Medal; Kizito Byenkya, director of campaigns at the Open Society Foundations; Diana Daniels, independent trustee of the Goldman Sachs Mutual Funds; Alexa Koenig, co-founder and executive director of the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley’s School of Law; Paul Model, vice president and treasurer of the Leo Model Foundation; Cristina Palabay, secretary general of Karapatan Alliance Philippines, winner of the 2021 William D. Zabel Human Rights Award; and jury chair Robert Mandell, former U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg and a member of Human Rights First’s Board of Directors.