Tuesday, November 26, 2024 | Today's Newsletter | Login
Lawyer defended Marcos victims
A popular human rights lawyer Romeo Capulong, 77, who represented beleaguered communist activists and rights victims of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, died of cardiac arrest at the Manila Doctors Hospital last weekend.
Capulong had been hospitalided for various illnesses for some time before he died, Public Interest Law Center managing counsel Rachel Pastore told ABS CBN.
His law practice was inextricably intertwined with contemporary Philippine history. Capulong represented some 10,000 rights victims who filed their complaint against Marcos in a court in the United States, after the latter lived in exile in Honolulu, Hawaii, following his ouster by a people-backed military mutiny in 1986.
The case won $2.2 billion in damages for the rights victims, but its implementation in the Philippines is still being contested up to now.
Capulong represented former domestic helper Flor Contemplacion before she was executed by hanging in the state of Singapore in 1995, following charges that she strangled her compatriot Delia Maga and the latter’s ward, an epileptic five –year old child, in 1991.
Despite presenting new evidence, Capulong failed to convince the Singaporean Court that Maga’s Singaporean boss allegedly killed the latter after he learned that his son had died while taking a bath and that the Singaporean father also allegedly framed Contemplacion for Maga’s murder.
Capulong also represented in a court in Japan several ageing grandmothers who were forced into sex slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army during the Second World War.
Capulong served as the lawyer of Jose Maria Sison when he was arrested by Marcos for alleged terrorist activities in the mid-1970s. Sison was the founding chairman of the 47-year-old Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army (CPP-NPA).
Capulong also represented Crispin Beltran, founder of the militant May One Movement; and Congressman Satur Ocampo, when the latter was with the National Democratic Front (NDF), the negotiating arm of the CPP-NPA when it started holding peace talks with the Philippine government.
Capulong also served as the lawyer of former Senator Benigno Aquino Jr when the latter was arrested by Marcos in 1973.
Both Aquino and Capulong led a campaign against Marcos who declared Martial Law rule in 1972. In 1979, Capulong lived in exile in the US where he was granted political asylum and later, was allowed to practise law. He founded the Philippine Center for Immigrant Rights in the US.
Likewise, in 1980, Marcos sent Sen. Aquino to the US for an operation for the latter’s heart problem, following years of incarceration.
Capulong returned to the Philippines in 1986, after the ouster of Marcos by a people-backed military mutiny that also propped up Corazon Aquino to the presidency.
Before that, Capulong’s ally, Senator Aquino, was assassinated by paramilitary escorts at the service stairway of the China Airlines plane when he returned home in 1983, after a three-year exile in the US. Aquino’s death sparked strong anti-Marcos sentiment among the middle class and this led to the so-called “people power” in 1986, that ended Marcos’ 25-year rule.
Capulong was a member of the United Nations Criminal Tribunal.
Leave a comment
