Kazakhstan: MP demands to abolish online courts
Member of the Parliament of Kazakhstan Berik Dusembinov accused the country’s Supreme Court of failure to ensure the normal operation of court sessions online and demanded to resume consideration of cases in the traditional offline format.
According to the deputy, today’s trials, taking place online via WhatsApp or ZOOM, resemble a conversation between a blind man and a deaf person: the participants in the proceedings either don’t see each other, or don’t hear, or both.
“In order to ensure information security, the Supreme Court suggested using the True Conf program,” Dusembinov said at a parliamentary meeting. “However, this program caused a lot of criticism from the participants in the trials. Therefore, the judges were allowed to use other platforms and messengers. As a result, court sessions conducted via WhatsApp or Zoom, and even from mobile devices, often resemble a conversation between a blind and a deaf person. Frequent interruptions in communication, whistles and noises, poor audibility of what was said, problems with communication behind the thick walls of the pre-trial detention center, the frequent inability of the parties to see or hear each other’s arguments – these are the realities of today’s court sessions,” the deputy noted.
At the same time, he recalled that the practice of using video conferencing in court hearings in Kazakhstan began to be introduced in 2014 and was used in cases where the participants in the process couldn’t attend the court sessions in person.
“That is, six years before the pandemic, the judicial system gained experience in telecommuting. And now it turned out that the efforts and half a billion of budgetary funds were in vain: the videoconferencing system in practice was unable to ensure the holding of court sessions on a regular basis,” Dusembinov was indignant.
He also drew attention to the fact that during online trials, the participants have no opportunity either to familiarize themselves with the documents submitted by their opponents, or to verify these documents for authenticity. In this regard, the deputy proposed to resume the courts in the traditional offline format in compliance with all sanitary and epidemiological requirements, and to conduct online meetings only on those cases where confirmation of the reliability of the testimony of the parties and witnesses in the case is not required. In addition, according to the deputy, it’s also necessary to provide free public access to open meetings held online.
