The General Secretary of the Independent Lawyers’ Association of Myanmar (ILAM) said they found that courts had to fear the influence of prosecuting agencies in human rights cases.
He was speaking at a signing ceremony of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Danish Embassy held on December 4 in Yangon. ILAM signed the MoU with Denmark which will provide assistance in giving training to lawyers on human rights and rule of law and also give financial assistance to ILAM.
ILAM General Secretary Thein Than Oo said, “We have never won cases in which government agencies are the prosecutors. But there are some significant cases in which farmers were fined meager sums of say, 500 kyats, and then were released after paying the fine.”
Danish ambassador in Yangon, Peter Hansen said that it would be difficult to achieve rule of law in the country without trained lawyers and strong organizations.
“You have three pillars in democracy namely executive, judicial and legislative. All of these pillars must be independent. So we need an independent judiciary in the country,” Danish ambassador to Myanmar Mr. Peter Hansen said.
ILAM was established on January 19, 2016 and it is a State-level recognized organization and has over 4,000 members.