People of the Cordillera mourned the death of lawyer and human rights champion William "Billy" F. Claver, who died on December 15 at the age of 75.
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Claver, born on July 16, 1936, was founding chairman of the Cordillera People’s Alliance and was a leading figure in the struggle of the people of the northern highland for self-determination.
A Bontok, Claver was a member of the 1972 Constitutional Commission.
He was counsel of mining giant Lepanto Consolidated Mining Co. In the 1970s but left to become a human rights defender, joining the Free Legal Assistance Group to represent the victims of the worsening abuses by the Marcos dictatorship, along with former Senators Jose Diokno and Lorenzo Tanada.
He was the lawyer of the family of Kalinga pangat Macliing Dulag and helped prosecute the soldiers, led by Lieutenant Leodegario Adalem, who murdered the tribal leader on April 24, 1980 for his opposition to the Chico River dam.
In 1988, Claver was elected representative of Kalinga and served until 1992. In the House of Representatives, he chaired the committee on national cultural communities and filed various bills that were the forerunners of the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act of 1997.
He authored the book “Towards Genuine Implementation of the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Law: Selected Speeches and Statements.”
“We join all the awakened Cordillerans in expressing our grief” over Claver’s death, said lawyer Jose Mencio Molintas, who once worked as a UN expert on indigenous issues and, like Claver, once chaired the CPA. “He had been in the forefront of regional autonomy and remembered well in his advocacy whether in Congress or outside, including in international venues, said
“Claver had been in the forefront of the struggle for the right to self-determination in the Cordillera. As founding chairman of the CPA, he had been active in the popularization of this right to self-determination, including the recognition of their right to ancestral domain and genuine regional autonomy as its expression in the region,” said CPA secretary general Abigail B. Anongos.
“He was staunch advocate for the indigenous peoples at a time that it was not an ‘in’ thing, and he will be remembered with fondness and respect by the people he has served well,” Minnie Degawan, former CPA secretary general, said.
“As a genuine human rights lawyer, he is fearless. He is a man of principle as he stood his ground against the Marcos dictatorship and its enormous machinery to the point of risking his life and that of his family,” said lawyer Frank Calpito, president of the Integrated Bar of the Philipines’ Baguio-Benguet chapter.
“Claver could have embraced corporate lawyering but chose instead to take up the cudgels for indigenous people’s rights since the 1970s,” said Giovanni Reyes of Sagada, Mountain Province.
“We owe to him that we are now empowered to fight for our rights through the bills he filed that paved the way for the crafting of the Indigenous Peoples Rights Acts,” said Ifugao Representative Teddy Baguilat Jr. in a statement. - (InterAksyon / by Arthur L. Allad-iw)
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