The Lex cartoon is created by Oleh Smal for the Netherlands Helsinki Committee. All rights reserved. Public prosecutors in many countries are deeply involved in human rights abuse, in violation of their professional standards. Patterns of abusive practices by prosecutors are a stain on the profession. The global body of prosecutors, the International Association of Prosecutors, will be holding their Annual Conference in Beijing from 10 to 15 September. Their hosts are the Chinese prosecution service, who have taken on human rights lawyers particularly harshly and arbitrarily over recent years.
When Margaret Sekaggya ended her term as UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders at the end of 2013, she noted she had “seen the space for civil society and defenders visibly shrink in certain regions of the world”, accompanied by “the consolidation of more sophisticated forms of silencing of their voices and impeding their work, including the application of legal and administrative provisions or the misuse of the judicial system to criminalise and stigmatise their activities.”
The trend towards the limiting of space for civil society and the defense of human rights has since then only become more intense. Think of developments in Russia and neighbouring countries such as Azerbaijan, think of Turkey, think of Egypt and the Gulf countries, think of China.
