Response of the Chamber of Advocates of RA to the Statement of the Civic Solidarity Platform

On August 11 of 2017, the RA Chamber of Advocates responded to the announcement made by the Civil Solidarity Platform on the high-level cases in Armenia directed towards the RA state agencies and RA Chamber of Advocates, particularly on the criminal persecution instituted against the advocates involved in the cases of “Sasna Tsrer” group activities and other related events,

In response to the announcement, the Chamber of Advocates expressed its disagreement on the presented assessments.

The Chamber of Advocates urged the authors of the announcement to preserve objectivity and adaptability in their assessment by expressing concerns over the unilateral, ungrounded positioning on the artificial identification of the Chamber of Advocates with other state agencies.

The Chamber of Advocates also touched upon the

• Legislative regulations, which regulate the mentioned processes,
• Judicial sanctions, on the application of which, disciplinary proceedings are instituted
• The decisions made by the Chamber of Advocates, the practice, the statistics, according to which not in all cases, institution of disciplinary proceeding leads to subjecting the advocate to disciplinary sanctions.

It should be mentioned, that in the announcement made by the Civil Solidarity Platform on August 9 of 2017, the RA Chamber of Advocates was urged to refrain from instituting disciplinary sanctions or any other disciplinary measures towards the advocates, using disciplinary measure only in such cases, when there are obvious violations of code of conduct of the advocate, as prescribed by the Law on “Advocacy”.

The full response of the Chamber of Advocates is available with the following link.

Respond to International Partnership for Human Rights