Training for advocates was held in Sevastopol

On 23-24 April the Kharkov group for human rights protection, jointly with the Sevastopol human rights protecting group, held the training for Sevastopol advocates «Practices of application of European standards of the protection from torture and the right for freedom in domestic juridical procedures». The training was held in the framework of the project «Campaign against torture and cruel treatment in Ukraine», which is realized with the support of the European Commission. The main purpose of the training was to give advices and recommendations to the advocates, to explain them how to surmount the corporative resistance of law-enforcers, how to institute a criminal case against the uniformed butchers and how to complete this case. First such training was conducted on 7-8 February 2004 in Kharkov.

29 persons took part in the training in Sevastopol: 20 advocates, 4 juridical assistants of advocates and 5 representatives of NGOs, all in all, 9 women and 20 men. Only 9 persons had participated before in seminars and trainings on the European Convention on human rights. According to the results of the initial poll, 22 participants of the training were acquainted with the European Convention, 4 – partially acquainted, 3 – practically not acquainted; 7 participants applied the provisions of the Convention in their speeches in court and referred to the Convention in procedural documents, 9 – did that rarely, 4 – regarded that as pointless, and only 3 participants had the practical experience of handing complaints to the European Court. In their speeches the advocates pointed out certain difficulties and misunderstandings appearing in the connection with application of the Convention in national proceeding and expressed the opinion that not only advocates, but also judges, officers of militia and prosecutor’s office, had to study the materials of the Convention. In particular, one of the practicing advocates said that even young prosecutors had the sense of justice like in Stalin’s times. All participants stressed on the urgency of the topic and on the necessity of obtaining the additional knowledge about the application of the European Convention, both on national and international levels.

According to the data of the evaluative questionnaires, the participants assessed the training after the 12-point scale in the following way: general effect – 10.8, organization – 10.36, obtained materials – 10.09, urgency of the considered topics -- from 11.36 to 11.72, presentation of the topics – from 9.9 to 10.45. Not a single action in the framework of the training got the mark less than 10.25 points. The participants were particularly pleased with the role game, organization, lecture on the criteria of acceptance of cases by the European Court, the obtained materials, actuality and simplicity of presentation of the materials. The most negative moments: small quantity of the materials in Russian and lack of time for the role game. Almost all participants expressed their wish to take part in trainings and seminars connected with study of the Convention, Articles 6 and 10 of the Convention were regarded as the most interesting by them. There were some critical remarks about the technique of the conduction of the training, and we are especially grateful for these remarks. Two Sevastopol TV companies reported about the training in their news.