In Kazakhstan, lawyers declared war on deputies
Kazakh lawyers opposed the draft amendments to the law “On advocacy and legal assistance” proposed by some deputies of the lower house of the Parliament. Human rights activists expressed their vision concerning the situation at a press conference in Almaty.
In particular, lawyers are concerned about certain provisions of the draft law, among which it is proposed to abolish legal consultations that are branches of the territorial collegiums of lawyers, deprive the lawyer of a license for life without taking into account the opinions of the lawyer community, and deprive lawyers of the opportunity to take an active position in the trial proceedings.
According to the lawyer, a member of the Presidium of the Republican Bar, Gulnar Baygazina, the Kazakh Bar, which should be independent, is not really such, because there are mechanisms of pressure on lawyers.
“These mechanisms are used to prosecute. There are no guarantees of the inviolability and independence of lawyers,” Baygazina explained. “The Ministry of Justice is actively using these methods to prosecute objectionable and best-known lawyers. As for the proposal to abolish legal consultations, leaving only law firms and individual lawyers, it is fundamentally wrong. The developers of the bill justify it only from the position of membership dues. But determining membership fees is an internal decision of the advocacy community. And only lawyers themselves have the right to make decisions on matters of financial and economic activity. About 60% of lawyers choose legal consultations for work, and only 40% carry out their activities through law firms or individually. As of January 1, there were 875 lawyers in the Almaty City Bar Association: 527 carry out their activities in legal consultations, 114 – through law firms, and 234 – individually.”
The lawyer, Aiman Umarova, who is also a member of the National Council of Public Confidence (NCPC) under the President of Kazakhstan noted that “the independence of the bar is an indicator of a democratic society”. She appealed to the President of Kazakhstan with a request to review the existing system of taxation of lawyers. Today, they pay 10% of income tax, and this despite the fact that in the proceedings of almost every lawyer about 50% of cases are conducted on a free basis in the framework of state-guaranteed legal assistance.
Participants in the press conference emphasized that the authorized body, instead of further improving human rights guarantees, democratization and humanization of the legislation governing justice, is making the attempt to intervene in the activities of a non-profit, independent, self-governing organization of lawyers by individual deputies.
“Dear Mr. President, you need to disband such a staff of deputies. Why do we need sleeping deputies, who say such horrible things against the bar, who are sure that none of them will ever put away, who blurt out all the lawyer’s activities? Sometimes it seems to me that people, who pass laws, are people who absolutely do not understand what they are discussing. We do not need such deputies. If such laws are adopted, we ask you to give a list of those who will adopt this law. We will monitor how their fate develops after they cease to be deputies,” summarized Umarova.
