On the 17th of March 2023, the Lawyers’ Syndicate board in Beirut shocked us with a strange decision!
While people are struggling with the repercussions of the massive economic collapse in Lebanon, and while almost all state apparatuses are out of service, and while strikes and unrest are everywhere and people’s money is being stolen from their banks and pockets, while we are in dire need of every enlightened voice to defend people and their livelihoods, the lawyers’ syndicate board decided to amend some of the profession’s ethics and regulations! The esteemed board decided to restrict lawyers’ freedom regarding participation in public legal discussions without prior permission from the head of the syndicate while retaining the right to discuss political, cultural, and sporting issues! The syndicate board made this decision without consultation with the lawyers and without referring to their general assembly.

The board did not stop at this, the restricting decisions went as far as banning the lawyers from criticizing the head of the syndicate and its members, especially during the syndicate’s internal elections.
The board started restricting lawyers’ freedoms in 2011 banning them completely from discussing issues related to cases in front of the courts in the media with the exception of major issues, requiring any lawyer doing so to obtain prior permission from the head of the syndicate. The recent decision is an expansion of the 2011 decision, but granting the head of the syndicate the authority of “censorship”, as if the state’s censorship over people is not enough! In plain words, we cannot but call the syndicate’s board decision for what it is; a tool for defending the interests of the ruling alliance, that of political leaders and the bankers.
Lawyers have always risen to defend people’s causes in Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and other Arab countries. Their role became more prominent in Lebanon in the 2015 popular movement, and the October uprising in 2019 defending the depositors’ rights against the banks, all the way to the Beirut port explosion, and other political, economic, social, and judiciary issues.

Union and labor movements’ struggles in Lebanon have always played a major role in defending society and workers in service of justice and equality for people, from the French colonial period through to the independence all the way to the years-long legal and labor movements after that. The unions have always stood against the corrupt authorities before said authorities launched their war against the labor movement fragmenting it year after year since the end of the civil war until today. The authorities shattered the General Workers Union and scattered its member syndicates, while creating new ones that answer solely to it, using for this purpose several labor ministers who took turns in destroying the Workers Union into smithereens.

At a time we are in need of rebuilding the union movement in Lebanon, and in need of a lawyers’ syndicate that sides with people’s rights, we condemn the syndicate board’s decision and consider it in step with the ruling authorities’ interests, executing its policies of oppression, censorship, and ignorance. We restress what lawyer Nizar Saghiyeh declared following his subpoena in front of the syndicate’s board for his refusal to abide by its decisions:
“I was made to choose my profession or being free, I chose to be a free lawyer”.

We stand with the free lawyers and call for the widest possible solidarity with them, may we help protect what freedoms we have left. We stand with the free voices, those born free by their mothers wherever they are, workers, farmers, and producers of literature, thought, and arts.