Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said on Tuesday, Dec. 22, that he will arrange a dialogue with the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) to address their concerns on the safety and security of lawyers in the country.
“I will invite the leadership of the IBP in the coming days to discuss their concerns and coordinate our action to address the increasing number of killings of lawyers, judges, and prosecutors,” the secretary said.
“When lawyers, judges, prosecutors, and workers in the justice sector are murdered with impunity and alarming regularity, no one feels safe, our people lose trust and faith in our government justice system, and the unscrupulous are emboldened to take the law in their criminal hands.
The IBP told government officials that it “recognize and appreciate your commitment and efforts to improve our criminal justice system” but it lamented that “lawyers, the sentinels of the rule of law, continue to be ironically caught in the spiraling violence and flawed or slow justice.”