De Lima wants guns for judges

MANILA, Philippines - Justice Secretary Leila de Lima yesterday supported a proposal to allow judges and lawyers to carry firearms to defend themselves amid rising cases of attacks targeting them.

This developed as the Supreme Court (SC) continues with its program to prepare and train judges nationwide to defend themselves from possible attacks that could be related to their work.

In an interview with Agence France Presse, De Lima also called on judges and lawyers to undergo training on practical shooting and driving as precautionary measure against possible ambush attacks.

“Their line of work makes them natural targets of harassment and violence, especially because of weak enforcement of laws and a prevailing culture of impunity,” she said.

De Lima, however, believes that only judges and lawyers who have established threats against them should be allowed to carry firearms.

She said such a measure should only apply to “a reasonable showing of security threats, and purely for self-defense purposes only.”

The National Union of People’s Lawyers, an association of human rights defenders, has listed at least 15 lawyers and judges who were killed last year in attacks police believe were linked to their work.

Two lawyers were among 57 people killed in the gruesome Maguindanao massacre, the group added.

The SC, for its part, announced that more first- and second-level trial court judges from the first, second and third judicial regions underwent security training recently.

Selected judges were oriented on threats assessment, crime prevention, facts regarding firearms and personal security measures during a three-day training seminar last Nov. 23 to 25 held at the Ilocos Norte Hotel and Convention Center in Laoag City.

The training-seminar is a joint project of the SC’s Committee on Security, the Philippine Judicial Academy, and the Office of the Court Administrator, in coordination with the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).

This project, the ninth of its kind since the signing of the Memorandum of Agreement on Judicial Security between the SC and the NBI in January 2008, aims to instill in the members of the bench a deeper awareness of the critical role they play in the administration of justice.