Virginia Jasmin Pasalo
Close to home
The opening statement of Atty. Joel Ruiz Butuyan, common legal representative for families of victims of the Philippine “war on drugs” at the International Criminal Court (ICC) paints a powerful image of the long journey to achieve justice:
“This case symbolically represents the last boat that the victims can board to go on a journey in search of justice for their loved ones who were brutally killed upon the orders of Mr. Duterte. If this chamber prevents the boat from sailing by not confirming the charges, the victims will forever be moored in an island where the nights are filled with the screams and cries of their massacred loved ones. There is absolutely no other recourse for the victims.”
There were cases filed in 2017 by other parties to the ICC, but the first complaint filed directly by families of EJK victims, represented by the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL), was submitted on August 28, 2018. Three years later, the Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC authorized the investigation into crimes allegedly committed between November 1, 2011, and March 16, 2019.
During the period when the state-sponsored war on drugs was being implemented, I was horrified by the fact that, most of the victims were parents, sons and daughters, nephews and nieces, sisters and brothers of people I knew. I was witness to the pain and horror it brought to their families. Most of them became statistics, but a few survived, with intercession from higher officials and other connections, or by their ability to hide, or by sheer luck.
Those who escaped the dragnet attempted to become clean, some for good, others not as determined, fell into freefall, exacerbated by the deadly combination of drugs, alcohol and isolation. There’s a particular loneliness that eats from the inside a drug user despite being surrounded by his own family. I know of accomplished and talented people who were on this path, willingly or unwillingly, proving that addiction is a cruel companion.
Yet, the fact remains that the people we lose to addiction are people, people who are are deeply loved by their families, people who deserve better options than being killed, especially those innocent ones who were with them, gunned and considered as “collateral damage” or those randomly picked on the road and shot to fill a quota.
That is the reason I admire the courage of those who took the case to the ICC in 2017, when everyone else was terrorized, where silence became the norm to ensure survival: Atty. Jude Sabio, then Senator Antonio Trillanes IV and Representative Gary Alejano. To this list, I add Atty. Joel Ruiz Butuyan, known for his “advocacy in high-profile public interest cases, specifically those involving freedom of expression and extrajudicial killings”, the lawyer for the families of EJK victims.
Atty. Butuyan traces his roots to the Butuyan family of Asingan, Pangasinan, who are also relatives to the prominent Ramos family of the same town. Her father was a farmer who married a public school teacher in Isabela, where he spent most of his younger years.