LOS ANGELES, USA – The widow of slain Negrense human rights lawyer Benjamin Ramos said she has continued to receive threats from the Philippine government even while she has lived in exile in Europe for the past five years.
Clarissa Ramos was one of the panelists of the hybrid press conference on June 4 at The Hague of Caravana Filipina, a 12-member independent international delegation which investigated attacks against lawyers, prosecutors and judges in the Philippines from 2016 to 2022.
Even while in exile, she said the government has filed trumped up cases against her and her colleagues, accusing them of terrorism in what she called a “desperate hope to silence us from our unyielding fight against oppression”.
Ramos, who assumed the post until 2020 of executive director of the Paghidaet sa Kauswagan Development Group after her husband was murdered, received a subpoena in April 2024 for violation of the Terrorism Financing and Suppression Act of 2012.
Four other staff of PDG were charged and a warrant of arrest was issued against them by the Regional Trial Court Branch 31 based in Iloilo City.
“But we fought hard and the case was dismissed this year in March but they appealed and it was again dismissed because it was baseless, “ she added.
She claimed that even after her husband’s murder on November 6, 2018, she and her colleagues continue to receive threats, many of the communities they have been serving were harassed and their leaders killed or jailed on trumped up cases.
Ramos said she arrived in Belgium in 2020 to continue her campaign for justice and accountability and “I had no choice but to seek asylum after (then president Rodrigo) Duterte signed the Anti-Terror Law.”
“I have been in exile for five years and never stopped doing my work as a human rights defender as I have transformed my anguish into a relentless force, for justice, “ she said adding that “my exile, will not be a surrender. It will be a testament for resistance.”
Being away from her family, Ramos said: “Now they must endure life without me, without the comfort of my presence for them to heal because the government shattered our family, many families, stole our future and left scars time alone cannot heal.”
Ramos said “I am struggling to hold my sanity and objectivity but the deepest wound remains, the unbearable distance from my children whom I was forced to leave behind in a country that continues to inflict trauma and pain upon them.”
During the press conference, there was a moment of silence in honor of Benjamin Ramos and the 58 other lawyers killed in the Philippines during the presidency of Duterte.
The results and evidence gathered by Caravana Filipina fact-finding mission from June 4-13, 2024, will be submitted to the office of the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in connection with the charges of “crimes against humanity” against Duterte, who is linked to the killings of the lawyers.
Eleonora Scala, program lawyer of the International Bar Association Human Rights Institute, said the report is a combination of research and 10 days of intensive field work across the Philippines where 12 delegates divided into two teams talked to about 100 individuals who are victims, relatives of victims, lawyers of victims, journalists, national and local civil society groups, the academe, the justices and Commission on Human Rights.
Gonzalo Saenz Quilez of the International Observatory for Lawyers in Danger also added that the Philippine state bears responsibility for the physical attacks and the extra-judicial killings of legal professionals through direct involvement or acquiescence.
“Because when the state does nothing in the face of credible threat, when it turns a blind eye to foreseeable violence, that’s not even neutrality, that’s complicity,” he added.
Saenz-Quilez also revealed that except for one, none of the cases that they examined have proceeded to a trial as all were prematurely declared cold cases, adding that “this recurring failure constitutes a blatant and sustained breach of the Philippines to investigate violations of the right to life.”
“It sends out a signal to perpetrators that they won’t be held to account, permits a pervasive culture of impunity which has served as a push factor for further violations,” he said, concluding that “because when justice is consistently denied, impunity takes fruit and it spreads.”*