Harassment of lawyers to deprive everyone of right to fair trial – lawyer

September 23, BPN. The continuing crackdown on lawyers in Belarus will deprive everyone of the right to fair trial regardless of political views, Dźmitryj Łajeŭski, a disbarred prominent Belarusian lawyer, has said in his YouTube video.

Authoritarianism is difficult to reconcile with an independent legal system, he stressed, noting that ten current and former lawyers are now behind bars, at least 60 have been disbarred, and over a hundred left the legal profession.

Łajeŭski added that authorities shut down over 100 law firms and blacklisted the largest community of lawyers on the Telegram messenger application as an extremist group, while about 400 lawyers who practiced independently terminated their activities.

The Belarusian bar associations have “lost their independence of the state and have become a part of the state apparatus,” Łajeŭski concluded.

Earlier, Alaksandr Łukašenka said that defense lawyers should be “under control” and should not follow “some invented norms like freedom of speech or other freedoms.”