The connection between human rights and the independence of judges and lawyers is undeniable. As early as 1994, the Human Rights Commission (replaced by the Human Rights Council in 2006) noted with concern the growing attacks to the independence of lawyers and judges and decided to appoint a Special Rapporteur on this matter. As this problematic issue continued over the years and worsened in many countries, its mandate has been extended and continues nowadays. During the past year, Mr. Garcia-Sayan, current Special Rapporteur, has called for global attention regarding worrisome attacks against lawyers in China, Turkey and the Maldives and efforts by Governments to undermine judicial independence in Poland and the Philippines.
In order to learn more about this important topic we talked to “Lawyers for Lawyers” (L4L), an independent Dutch lawyers organization, which promotes and protects the independence of the legal profession through the support and empowerment of lawyers all over the world who face reprisals, improper interferences and restrictions because of their work, very often because they stood up for the human rights of their clients. Judith Lichtenberg and Sophie de Graaf (Executive Director and Policy &Programme Officer respectively at L4L) told us about the mission of L4L, problems faced by lawyers in the exercise of the legal profession nowadays and the work of L4L standing up for and supporting lawyers at risk.
Let us start from the beginning: where did the idea to found Lawyers 4 Lawyers come from?
Sophie de Graaf (SG): L4L is an independent non-profit organisation made up of lawyers, who promote common values of lawyers and their contribution to the justice system and the rule of law and stand up for colleagues who are hindered or threatened because of their work. The organisation has its roots in a solidarity campaign with Argentinean lawyers who disappeared or were detained without trial by the Military Junta during the years 1976 to 1983.
The campaign was initiated by a Dutch lawyer and cartoonist, Willem van Manen, in the context of an international lawyers’ congress hosted in Buenos Aires. This congress showed that international solidarity of the legal profession can play an important role in bringing human rights violations to the attention of the international community, to defend and protect colleague lawyers. Willem van Manen was also our first president and creator of the logo of the organisation: as a gifted cartoonist, he had the idea to depict lawyers as penguins.
Most people are not aware of the fact that lawyers can be in need of protection, as media attention mostly focuses on the defendants and their story. What kind of risk situations are lawyers facing in their work?
SG: Around the world lawyers are arrested or threatened for simply doing their job. Following the report of the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers in August 2016, the Human Rights Council issued a statement in June 2017 expressing their concern for the growing number of attacks against lawyers and the incidents of arbitrary or unlawful interference or restrictions against lawyers to practice their profession.
It depends on the political reality of the country and the factual circumstances what methods are used to silent lawyers or prevent them from representing certain clients –these include killings, death threats, intimidation, attacks on the physical integrity and reputation, forced disappearances, or other forms of harassment. Acts of harassment can also be used against lawyers’ family members. Lawyers also increasingly face arbitrary arrest, prosecution, and detention as well as abuse of disciplinary proceedings including disbarment, or they are subject to unreasonable restrictions of their freedom of movement, including house arrest or travel bans.
In some cases, lawyers that have been arrested are released after several weeks or months, but this is often enough to disrupt their practice and harm the clients. Unfortunately, we also know of cases where lawyers are sentenced to more than 20 years in prison. Lawyers in custody very often face poor prison conditions: their health can deteriorate or sometimes lawyers can be subject to ill-treatment, including torture or they face solitary confinement to punish them, e.g. for issuing complaints or continuing legal proceedings
What kind of support do you offer from L4L?
SG: We support lawyers in several ways: we defend individual lawyers at risk to end or prevent investigations or reprisals against them for doing their job, guided by the lawyers concerned or their (legal) representatives, For example, we write letters to the authorities of the country of the lawyer, we organize social media campaigns, issue statements and press releases, or engage with governments, international institutions and bar associations to generate international attention for individual cases of lawyers under threat. In addition, we monitor and highlight violations of lawyers’ rights, professional guarantees and immunities, including through trial observation and fact-finding missions and we conduct advocacy on targeted impunity cases. We try to offer tailor made support to each case.
Secondly, we empower lawyers and lawyers’ associations to fulfil their role in upholding human rights and freedoms, for example by sharing best practices on core values and ethics underpinning the legal profession, providing interactive training sessions and resource materials including on international human rights law and international, including regional, mechanisms for the protection of human rights.
Finally, we advocate for laws, policies and practices that provide or reinforce effective protections for the independent functioning and safety of lawyers. We do this by engaging with international bodies and their mechanism, including through participation in the Universal Periodic Review. We also submit reports to the Human Rights’ Committee, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and we engage with UN Special Rapporteurs. We also lobbying governments to adopt, implement and enforce effective legal protections or changes laws as necessary that encroach on the independence of lawyers.
There is scepticism among people regarding letters campaigns. Many believe they won’t be delivered or that the lawyers will never receive them, perhaps due to censorship or punitive measures against them, but in your experience letters are delivered safely and they have a positive effect on lawyers.
Judith Lichtenberg (JL): It is often hard to tell whether our activities have contributed to or resulted in reducing or preventing attacks and restrictions against lawyers and if so, to what extent. When it comes to supporting lawyers, we define success in terms of making a positive difference for individual lawyers. We make a positive impact, when lawyers feel morally supported, when we offer a source of strength in times of need, or when their personal situation changes positively, e.g. they are released from prison, travel bans are lifted, disciplinary or criminal proceedings are withdrawn, etc. And lawyers who we supported, tell us that we make a difference. For example, we received a letter from prosecuted lawyers in Turkey whose trials we are monitoring: “Knowing and seeing that you were there for us during the hearings strengthened our belief for law, justice and solidarity.”
Likewise, we learned from lawyers that letter writing campaigns make a difference, also for lawyers who are in prison. We discussed this for example with a lawyer from Zimbabwe who we supported through letter writing campaigns. Although he did not receive the letters and post cards himself while he was detained, he learned about it from people who visited him in prison. He said: “The basic solidarity among members of the legal profession is extremely important and that is valued by the recipients (..)it emboldens you on the ground that other members of the legal profession are watching”. From a lawyer in the Russian Federation who faced disbarment, we learned that after we and other organizations generated international attention for his case through a letter writing campaign, the complaint against him was withdrawn.
In your support actions, do you address directly the national authorities, such as local governments or national judicial council of a given country regarding the situation of the lawyer of concern?
JL: Yes, indeed. We write letters to the authorities of the home country of the lawyer concerned, and sometimes, we also address the national Bar Association, depending on the case at hand. We also reach out to governmental authorities, judicial bodies or human rights commissions during country visits as part of need assessment, fact finding or trial monitoring missions.
Before you mentioned that some lawyers are imprisoned to serve very long terms of up to 20 years. In these cases, when they face such long sentences, what can be done to continue raising awareness about the case so that the lawyer is not forgotten?
SG: We always make sure that we pay attention to lawyers on certain days, for example on the anniversaries of the day when they were arrested or convicted, but also on their birthdays. On those days, we launch actions on social media to draw the public’s attention on those lawyers once again. Recently, we organized a campaign for a lawyer in Vietnam who is convicted for a long term in prison. We sent him letters and post cards on his birthday and we called upon our international network of lawyers and lawyersorganizations, to do the same. Currently, we are also working on a submission to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention for one specific lawyer. Previously, we have also done so for other lawyers; this is another way of seeking attention at international level for the situation of imprisoned lawyers. We do what we can to keep their cases on the agenda of the international community, by continuously using these specific dates to generate international attention and awareness for the situation of detained lawyers and to call for their release from prison.
A good example can be found in a case in Turkey, back in 2013: it involved a group of lawyers that had been in pre-trial detention for more than 500 days. At the initiative of L4L an advertisement was placed in two national Turkish newspapers to draw attention on the lengthy pre-trial detention and an upcoming hearing of the case. The action was carried out together with international Bar Associations and other international civil society organizations who were all involved in monitoring trials against lawyers in Turkey – In the advertisements, over 25 international organizations were calling for the release of those Turkish lawyers. Shortly thereafter, many of the 46 lawyers were released from pre-trial detention indeed, so hopefully our action contributed to their release.
Normally, how do you become aware of serious cases of lawyers who are at risk or facing difficulties to exercise their profession in their home countries? Are you contacted by other fellow lawyers, do you come across cases by monitoring the press –independent media or broadcast companies, and so you contact them to offer support for their cases… how does it work?
SG: Established in 1986, L4L has more than 30 years of experience in providing emergency support and assistance to lawyers who are under threat for exercising their professional duties. We also have a large international network of lawyers, lawyers’ associations and human rights organizations who support lawyers and we always seek to further build collaboration and alliances with stakeholders to strengthen our impact. Our lawyer-volunteers also monitor the situation of lawyers in specific countries or regions on an on-going basis. As a result, there are different ways of how we learn about cases of lawyers at risk. Usually we are contacted by lawyers themselves, by their colleagues, or by family members, legal representatives, local organisations of lawyers, or by international organisations. We work together with many of them and we regularly update each other regarding cases, and we join their petitions, or we issue joint statements, letters or submissions. We also learn about cases from the media and through the work of other organizations. In all cases, our actions are always guided by the lawyers who are at risk or by their representatives.
Do you ever work together with journalists of a given country in order to bring more the attention to the case of the lawyer at risk you are supporting?
JL: Yes, although we do not have a formal collaboration with organizations of journalists. Regularly we invite lawyers at risk to come to the Netherlands to raise attention for the difficulties they face when exercising their professional duties, for example through meetings with the ministry of foreign affairs, members of parliament, and civil society organizations. During those visits, we also organize meetings with the press or we invite journalists to interview the lawyers concerned and inform the public about their cases. Another example concerns Turkey. In the context of the UPR for Turkey, we organized a side event at the United Nations in Geneva with both lawyers and journalists from Turkey, and it was very positive, to have journalists and lawyers helping each other. We believe that lawyers and journalists can strengthen each other, especially in a context where both of them are under attack. Journalists can be a very powerful voice, highlighting and also helping explain why it is so important that lawyers as well as journalists are protected for doing their work, because otherwise the fundamental rights of access to justice and the right to information are compromised. We feel sometimes that the general public doesn’t really understand the role of lawyers, and sometimes lawyers are not the best people to explain themselves in plain language. We are definitely looking for ways to increase cooperation with journalists.
“We feel sometimes that the general public doesn’t really understand the role of lawyers”.
During the past three or five years many international voices have shed concern about the “shrinking space” of civil society and decline of democracy in many countries around the world. Against this background, what is your view on current state of affairs regarding independence of lawyers and the protection of their rights?
JL: The independence of lawyers and the legal profession as an institute is closely related to the overall situation of the rule of law and democracy in a given country. In many countries where the space of civil society is shrinking, and press freedom is curtailed, lawyers increasingly face external pressure and improper interference in exercising their professional duties too, especially lawyers who stand up for human rights or represent clients in politically sensitive cases. It is telling that the Human Rights Council adopted another resolution concerning the independence of lawyers in 2017, but also the Council of Europe (CoE) has raised the alarm.
Generally, Europe is seen as a region with a high level of rule of law and democracy, but even the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly expressed its concern in December 2017 ‘that harassment, threats and attacks against lawyers continue to occur in many Council of Europe member States and are even increasing in some of them’, including Turkey, Azerbaijan, and the Russian Federation. As a matter of fact, the CoE has called in a recommendation to adopt a new Convention on the legal profession that will be open for signing to all states and not only the CoE member states. These developments are also reflected in the work of Lawyers for Lawyers – the volume and complexity of the requests and demands we get from lawyers at risk have increased significantly.
When you are dealing with cases of lawyers at risk in countries where we find high undemocratic regimes, such as China, what is your approach towards the case?
JL: Our approach in supporting lawyers in each case depends on the local context, the personal situation of the lawyers concerned and what they deem helpful in their case. The family of the lawyer may also play an important role. Whatever we do, we will always put lawyers under threat at the heart of our work and provide support that meets expressed needs by lawyers whose professional guarantees, immunities and privileges are violated. In doing so, we will also analyse why lawyers face reprisals, guided by local lawyers and other stakeholders, and identify the most effective ways to achieve tangible impact and lasting progress. In some cases, for example, we will write an open letter to the government and share the letter worldwide with stakeholders and on social media, while in other cases we may choose another approach, behind the scenes. In addition to support to individual lawyers, we will also look at opportunities to provide structural support, for example, by engaging in international human rights mechanisms. Recently, for example, we issued a submission for the Universal Periodic Review of China. There is always room for some form of support.
Interview by: Silvia de Benito
