On 23 April 2014 Amsterdam-based Lawyers for Lawyers (L4L) and Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada (LRWC) warn in an open letter to President Aquino of the Philippines for the continued labeling of lawyers as enemies of the state by the military. Since March, Atty. Maria Catherine L. Dannug-Salucon has been the subject of death threats, labeling, surveillance and verbal intimidation by military officers. Mrs Dannug-Salucon is reportedly on the Filipino military’s Watch List of so-called ‘Communist Terrorist’ supporters providing legal services. She has also been under the surveillance of the Intelligence Services of the Armed Forces. The surveillance is particularly worrisome in view of the killing – reportedly by members of the Intelligence Services – on 25 March 2014 of Mr. William Bugatti, a human rights defender who was also working as a paralegal for Atty. Dannug-Salucon. Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday I had a post “Philippines Chief Human Rights Defender, Rosales, asked to resign for ‘incompetence’”. In reaction I received from Lawyers for Lawyers (L4L) an update on the continued pressure on ‘opposition lawyers’ who are labeled as “enemies of the state”. The Dutch foundation Lawyers for Lawyers warns in an open letter to Read the rest of this entry »
New information obtained by human rights organizations has heightened concerns about the secret detention and failing health of a prominent Syrian human rights lawyer who has not been heard from since his arrest eight months ago! Read the rest of this entry »
Magamed Abubakarov, a Russian human rights lawyer specialized in terrorist cases in the North-Caucasus, will receive the Lawyers for Lawyers Award 2013. Magamed Abubakarov will accept the award on 31 May at the end of a seminar called ‘Lawyers controlled, independence at stake?’ in Amsterdam. Read the rest of this entry »
As of today one can also nominate for the Lawyers for Lawyers Award a lawyer, or a group of lawyers, who work to promote the rule of law and human rights in an exceptional way and who have been threatened, obstructed or in any other way hindered because of their work as a lawyer. An additional criterion is that this lawyer, or group of lawyers, may benefit from the publicity and recognition of the Lawyers for Lawyers Award.
The Lawyers for Lawyers Award, organised by the Netherlands-based NGO with the same name, will be presented for the second time in Amsterdam on 23 May 2013. An independent jury, consisting of Heikelien Verrijn Stuart, Theo van Boven, Egbert Myjer and Els Swaab, will decide which lawyer will receive the award. The prize consists of a donation of €10.000. Anyone can submit a nomination, but a lawyer or group of lawyers cannot nominate themselves. The closing date for submission of nominations is 15 February 2013.
Only nominations done on the website will be taken into consideration. The nomination form is available here and other information is available here.
Iranian lawyer and human rights defender Abdolfattah Soltani recevied on 5 October the 2012International Bar AssociationHuman Rights Award. The announcement came during the International Bar Association (IBA) Annual Conference taking place in Dublin, Ireland.
Mr Soltani, who co-founded the Defenders of Human Rights Centre (DHRC) with Nobel Peace Prize winner Ms Shirin Ebadi, has worked courageously and determinedly throughout his career to provide pro bono legal counsel to those in need.
As a result of his human rights defence work, Mr Soltani has endured persistent persecution from the Iranian government and has been imprisoned on several occasions. He is currently serving a 13-year prison sentence in Iran that stems from a number of charges including co-founding the DHRC, spreading anti-government propaganda and endangering national security. The imprisonment began on 4 March 2012.
Among Mr Soltani’s high profile cases are:
Nasrin Soutoudeh, a journalist and human rights lawyer; 2012 nominee of the MEA
Akbar Ghanji a human rights activist, who exposed the involvement of several government officials in the murder of intellectuals and journalists in the 1990s; MEA Laureate of 2006 and
Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian-Iranian journalist arrested for taking photographs in front of Evin prison in July 2003. Ms Kazemi died in the same prison several days later.
In addition, Mr Soltani has defended teachers, protesters, other fellow human rights lawyers, political activists, students, and several Baha’I (Iranian minority group) leaders. In many instances other lawyers refused to take on these cases because of the risks involved.
Only a few days ago, 12 December, I reported on a new database on the Independence of Lawyers launched by Lawyers for Lawyers. And here Bahrain comes with a great illustration of the need to strengthen this concept. On December 18, 2011 the Bahrain Center for Human Rights explains how the Ministry of Human Rights [SIC!] and Social development on 7 December overruled the recent election of the Board of the Bahrain Lawyers Society and reappointed the old one. This step appears to have been taken because most the elected members are seen to be from the ‘opposition’. Whatever the truth in this charge, the election seems to have been fully legal and representing the will of the majority of the members.
Fatima Al-Blooshi, minister of human rights and social development, is clearly acting as a government stooge and basing herself on a law written in 1989 for the purpose of controlling the activities of the institutions of civil society, known as the law of Societies. This law has been repeatedly criticized by local and international organizations for violating freedom of assembly. The report of the Bahrain Centre of Human Rights gives many details of how this law was abused in the past including its own dissolution in 2004.
On 1 April 2011 I reported on the award given by Lawyers for Lawyers (L4L) in the Netherlands and promised to come back to the main topic of the related expert meeting which was the question of the independence of lawyers, and in particular how to raise the status of the “Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers” by making them better known.
The organization has kept its word and created before the end of the year a database that brings together all information on the Basic Principles, which are basically soft law but are an important set of international standards. The database contains documents in which references are made to the Basic Principles, such as documents of the UN, special rapporteurs, non-governmental organisations, (regional) courts and so on. You can have a preview of this database on the L4L website http://www.advocatenvooradvocaten.nl/basic-principles/
There is also a booklet Building on Basic Principles, in which all the papers from the expert meeting, are published, which can be ordered from LAWYERS FOR LAWYERS, Adrie van de Streek, Executive Director mailto:info@lawyersforlawyers.nl.
Moreover, the International Commission of Jurists organized on 5-6 December 2011 an important seminar on the “Strengthening the Rule of Law in Times of Transition – The Role of Lawyers and Bar Associations”. One of the participants was Muhannad Al-Hassani, the 2010 MEA Laureate, who was disbarred by his less courageous colleagues in the Bar Association. For more information on this event please contact: Graham Leung at graham.leung@icj.org.
yjer and Els Swaab, will decide which lawyer will receive the award. The prize consists of a donation of €10.000. Anyone can submit a nomination, but a lawyer or group of lawyers cannot nominate themselves. The closing date for submission of nominations is 15 February 2013.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 