the conference about access to justice for people in custody

Human rights defenders of Mari El Republic have held in Yoshkar Ola the conference: «The issue of access to justice for vulnerable people in custody».

Representatives of Ombudsman’s Office, Ministry of Justice, the Federal Service for Execution of punishment of Mari El Republic, members of Public Monitoring Committee, representatives of human rights organizations and lawyers from different regions of Russia participated in the event.

The Chairman of «Human and Law» Irina Protasova and her deputy Sergey Poduzov opened the conference. Organizers of the event traversed pressing problem of access to justice in their speech and wished good work to participants.

Chairmen of Public Monitoring Committee of the Krasnoyarsk and the Rostov regions: Aleksandr Kosov and Leonid Petrashis delivered their speeches about current problem.

Lawyer, independent expert under Ministry of Justice of Russia, Irina Biryukova told participants about legal problems of people in special institutions for temporary accommodation of foreign citizens.

The Chairman of Public Monitoring Committee in the Tomsk region; Gennadiy Postnikov spoke about juveniles, and Chairman deputy of the Nizhegorodskaya region: Andrey Bulanov told about problems of access to justice for have-nots and disabled.

Head of Association «Legal Basis» Aleksey Sokolov and Chairman of «Transregional center for human rights» Roman Kachanov shared their experience in human rights field in particular at courts.

the Ural defenders mentioned in speech team work of defenders of Mari El Republic with representatives of Ministry of Justice, the Federal Service for Execution of punishment in Republic who actively took part in discussion. In particular, Aleksey Sokolov and Roman Kachanov couldn’t help pointing out serious difficulties existing in relations between defenders and the Sverdlovsk regional Service.

Everybody was surprised that General of the Sverdlovsk region S. Khudorozhkov took away legal literature from convicts and forbade defenders to conduct free legal consultations for inmates.

President of lawyers’ chamber in Mari El, member of Public Chamber Olga Poletilo spoke about charity by lawyers’ chamber in the correctional facilities. According to her, once a month lawyers conduct legal consultations for inmates. There is a schedule for this purpose.

the next day workshop was held where lawyer of Registry of European Court of Human Rights Anna Mikhedenko explained criteria for eligibility of individual complaints, standards of rights guaranteed by European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

The conference and workshop were interesting enough. Participants shared contacts and tried and tested practice for human rights activity.

Human rights defenders of the Urals