Human rights lawyer Karen Tse is Founder and CEO of International Bridges to Justice, an organization that provides prisoners in 48 countries with access to justice and prevents torture as a tool for confession. Every day in countries throughout the world, hundreds of thousands of citizens are arbitrarily detained, tortured, and denied access to counsel. International Bridges to Justice defends those citizens with early access to properly trained counsel–justice defenders. Journalist Ray Suarez sat down with Tse to find out how International Bridges To Justice fights to preserve the rule of law, end investigative torture, and implement the judicial infrastructure that protects the rights of prisoners.
Karen Tse: In the world that I work in, the world is moving forward. And that’s because the people that I work with have traditionally been the most voiceless people that the world traditionally did not care about. And more and more access to justice has suddenly become a thing that the world cares about. And that’s exciting.
Suarez: So if you’re arrested somewhere in the world, your rights are more likely to be protected.
Tse: No, not necessarily. Unfortunately, if you’re arrested in most parts of the world, if you have money and you can afford a lawyer your rights will be protected. And you will most likely be able to connect with a lawyer and the laws will protect you. Because they say you have a right to a lawyer, you have a right not to be tortured. But in most places in the world, if you are without any resources whatsoever, then your rights are not likely to be protected.
Suarez: So money plays a big role?
Tse: Money plays a huge role.
Suarez: How does IBJ interpose itself in these countries? To give people a better shot at getting justice?
Tse: We look at it as the overall system, meaning that a lot of times there are organizations or NGOs that might work with a specific family member comes to them or there’s a case that’s popular or it’s a political case. And then people who can’t afford a lawyer will be connected with an NGO. But what we’re looking at is we’re really looking at systematic early access to a lawyer, meaning every person who comes in, every man, woman, child, every single person will receive early access to a lawyer. And this happens when we set up it systematically by working together with the whole ecosystem, including the government’s judges, prosecutors, police prison systems.
Suarez: In legal systems that, let’s say aren’t working in an ideal way, if they know that somebody is worried about you on the outside, you’re much less likely to be abused?
Tse: Much, much less likely to be abused. They know someone’s worried about you. And also if a lawyer just shows up.
Suarez: You have done, and the organization has done a tremendous number of cases for such a small outfit, with a small budget and so on. How did you do that? How do you get to get so many people named known and protected in so many places in the world?
Karen Tse: It was a problem that was just waiting to be solved, meaning International Bridges of Justice first started in one country and then two. And then very quickly, we started receiving requests throughout almost every corner of the world, from both lawyers as and civil society and governments bar associations. And they said, “Hey, we have the exact same problem. We have laws on the books, people are tortured, and the loss of your right not to be tortured, a right to a lawyer. How can we work together with you?”
Like I said, in part it’s us, but in part, it’s because it was just a problem that was wide open, ready to be solved. And as soon as people from countries throughout the world heard about us, they started contacting us and saying, How can we work together?
Suarez: A lot of the countries where this was going on are signatories to international compacts where they promise they’re not going to torture defendants. Are these not really, in practice worth very much? These brave, noble, decent declarations that they sign?
Tse: I think that brave, noble, decent declarations are worth something. And what they’re worth is they’re worth a show of a commitment, like an open political willingness to engage into work. But the reality of it is that like most things, it’s about implementation. And implementation is like the plumbing, it’s actually the hard everyday boring work that actually makes the protection of these rights possible. And that’s where International Bridges of Justice works. We work to actually implement the promises that have been made. And this is a huge, huge problem for many, many countries.
Suarez: As you mentioned, celebrity defendants get attention, and that attention means they’re more likely to be protected. Let’s talk about a more typical case, about the mechanics. How does IBJ first find out about somebody?
Tse: Even going before how IBJ finds out about somebody, I’d say that in many countries, just the typical mechanics are that somebody can be picked up. And whether or not they’re guilty or not, may or may not have anything to do with it. A lot of times, it’s just they’re either in the wrong place in the wrong time. Or it’s an economic issue. Someone’s looking for a bribe, someone’s looking for something, and they can pick someone up.
If you have no money, at that point, the police might say, give us some money, and we won’t pick the man because they’re probably innocent. Anyway, give us some money and we won’t torture them. At every step, give us some money and we won’t. We’ll actually get you a defender, give us some money and you’ll get a court date. And if you don’t, then number one, you’re very, very likely to be tortured. Because torture unfortunately, is the cheapest form of investigation not effective, but it’s cheap.
Number two, many people languish in jail for very long periods of time. From days to months to years to decades for some people, because they don’t have a lawyer. What we do is, we do advisories, the campaigns so that the general public knows what their rights are. We also work with the judges, prosecutors and police, so that there’s an ecosystem. And then we set up defender Resource Centers so that both families can come. But in the best case scenario, we’re also systematically contacted by the police and the judges. And that’s the overall and end goal is the system change where it’s every single person has early access to a lawyer.
Suarez: The act of watching puts police and judges and prosecutors on their best behavior? Knowing that somebody is watching means that they’re less likely to be corrupt?
Tse: It’s the act of watching and it’s an overall shift of consciousness in terms of how things are done. I don’t think it’s just like a one time. It’s an overall culture shift about, how things are done and, and the watching. Just as a quick example, recently I was in Cambodia. And it was really funny because we’ve been in Cambodia for some years now.
One of the judges was there with the prosecutor, the police and one of the International British justice defenders. And he said to me, “Oh, sometimes your defender is really lazy and he just sleeps and doesn’t even come on time.” And the defender was like, “Oh my gosh, that’s my boss, you can’t say that in front, my boss.” And then the police officer and the judge, they started laughing they said, “Okay, we’re actually just joking. We just want to let you know that, even if he doesn’t show up, even if you were not to show up, we don’t torture anymore, because we know he’s coming.”
And I think they actually meant it as a compliment. Although it sounded like, when they were starting like, it’s not a compliment. That’s about a consciousness. When you have a system in place, and the defender’s always there, and the police as well as the judges have been trained, and it’s a different system that evolves.
Suarez: But it sounds from that story, like in some places in the world, torture is pretty routine?
Tse: In many places in the world, torture is routine. It’s a terrible, horrible fact. And it’s one of the things that we don’t really look at because we think about torture in some of the most political cases or whatnot. But I think for everyday poor people in most countries it’s the norm. You’re picked up by the police and you’re tortured as the cheapest form of investigation.
Suarez: When did you realize this was going on? You went to law school in California?
Tse: Yes I did.
Suarez: You passed, you got your JD and did the things that people being trained as lawyers do? How’d you get onto this work?
Tse: I was initially a public defender in the early 90s in San Francisco. And in 1994, I moved to Cambodia with a team of three lawyers. And because the Khmer Rouge had killed all the lawyers. Even when I came 20 years later in 1994, there were less than 10 attorneys in the country.
As I walked through the prisons, and I met children and women who said, “I am here because my husband committed a crime 10 years ago.” I started realizing something is … this is really a broke down legal system. But more ironically, and I usually … I will talk about this one 12 year old boy. But it’s not the 12 year old boy, it’s boys like him and girls like him and people like him everywhere in every corner of the world, where he was picked up because he was 12 and he stole a bicycle. Tortured, denied access to counsel. And ironically, what I realized is the Cambodian government, like many governments of the world, said, “Hey, don’t talk to our political prisoners, but you want to help the 12 year old? Go ahead.”
And that’s when I realized that the system was broken and there was something that we could do.
Suarez: At that early stage, there was no framework, there was no IBJ, there was no money, there was no network. How do you go from the realization that there was a problem to now a multinational effort to get people accused of crimes to be treated with due process, fairness, and without physical abuse?
Tse: Well, actually for me, it was sort of an ironic turn of events. Which is that I started as a public defender. And then I moved to Cambodia. I worked for human rights organization, and then I worked with the UN. And in 1997, I decided to go back to school. I went to Harvard Divinity School. And I actually in my mind, I thought, okay, I worked on this as a lawyer and I always wanted to go to Divinity school. Now I get to go to Divinity School and not work in this area anymore because I want to do something else. I want to work in a shift in consciousness spiritually.
The irony of it is that I went to Divinity School and yet it was something that just kept bothering me, it kept bothering me. And what bothered me is that I felt that this was a huge problem. But it wasn’t the problem that bothered me it was the fact that it was a solvable problem. That torture was really largely an economic issue for many countries.
During my time at Divinity School, I went to Vietnam, I kept doing these different legal needs assessments, giving it to other groups to do. And finally, I realized when I was in Divinity School, and this is that’s the ironic twist of it, is that I realized more and more that we co create history, and that history doesn’t just come on top of us and happen, but that we’re really active agents and that each of us does something that changes that and I felt at that point, that although I went to Divinity school I was responding to a call that my calling was actually to found International Bridges to Justice.
Suarez: Is it fair to say that your ministry became helping the accused?
Tse: My ministry became helping the accused and in some ironic way, my ministry became supporting defenders to do what they could do best, but also to find ways that we could all support each other as a worldwide mission to make this happen.
Suarez: From some of the stories you tell, it sounds like people are almost captive in a system that they didn’t create, that some of these judges and some of these prosecutors don’t want people tortured either and they’re almost freed from the obligation to do it by somebody’s wagging a finger at them.
Tse: I think that it’s true that in some places, it’s really ironic. Because we have now project, some are bigger and some are very small in about 48 countries. And in some countries, their projects are super, super small. And even with the small money that we have some, the defender will say, “Okay, I’m now going to print caps that say, Bridges to Justice, International Bridges to Justice and give them all to the judge and press.” We’re like, “Why? You don’t have that much money.” And they said, “Because it gives us protection. It gives us protection to say we’re part of this larger movement, this larger organization, and it’s not us in the country saying this is wrong, this is wrong. They’re looking it as a positive way like, “Oh, we are together globally with the rest of the world as we move forward, to create justice for every person.”
Suarez: Is there a sense among legal professionals in other places where these abuses have gone on? That it would be better not to really go by the rules and protect the accused and play the game the right way. Is it just a question of calling them out?
Tse: I think it’s really not. I think it’s really not a question of calling people out, because we’ve been calling people out for a long time. If you look at it in 1948, we have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And it says you have a right to a lawyer, right not to be tortured. These norms globally have been there. We’ve been calling people out.
I work a lot with ministers of justice, who say, “Hey, everybody’s yelling at us. Everyone talks about these torture things.” Also, we’re based in Geneva, that helps, so after they get yelled at, they come talk to me and say, “Hey, everyone keeps yelling at us.” But we’re trying to do something concretely about the abuses that occur. We’re trying to actually give people the support of a lawyer. You can’t just declare it, you actually have to put the mechanisms in place, right? The protection of lawyer, the training of police, you have to put in places … And so without that kind of support, it’s virtually impossible to do.
I think calling people out, in and of itself begins the process. But it doesn’t actually support the mechanism that’s needed to implement justice.
Suarez: Have you run into countries where abuse of prisoners is just not only accepted practice, but policy. And they say, “We don’t care about IBJ. And we don’t care about Karen Tse. We are going to do what we’re going to do.”
Tse: Actually our job is to make sure that they say we care. And what we found is that, even in places that people think are not good positive places, that if the laws are in the books, and we have conversations. We will always, always, always find someone. It’s really interesting. It’s amazing to me too. We always find somebody who brings us to the right person with the right power. Who says, “Yeah, actually, this has been bothering me for a long time. And I can do something about it.”
I can see it like a movie in my head, I can see the different countries. I can see being in a conversation in one country, and it could be an African country, and it’s actually the person on the side, who comes to me later and says, “Okay, I’ll get you into prison. Even though the person in front of me says no. It’s different. It’s different. I can see an agency in Africa, but they’re always people within the system who are tired of it.
Most people are tired of seeing people being tortured. Most people are tired of broken down legal systems. And governments know that at the end of the day, the bedrock of a stable society has to do with the rule of law. And that if it’s not there, people are at some point are going to revolt and it’s a big problem.
Suarez: Has there been trial and error? Are there things that over time, or even quite early on, you realized were not useful parts of the toolbox? Not as effective as you had anticipated. And that you’ve abandoned his practices?
Tse: When we first started out, we thought it was a lot about money. I still think about it’s about money. So that’s why I’m hoping I’m not shooting myself in the foot. But what we realized sort of through the ebb and flow, we went through a time where we went through a massive financial crisis where all of a sudden, for all different reasons, everyone was like, “Oh, we don’t like that country anymore. We’re not going to support it. Burundi is in a state of crisis, we can’t trust it, we’re not going to support.” Lots of places that went through crisis points. One of the mistakes that I cried to make which I was very lucky because no one let me make it, is that I thought when there was no money, that after trying again and again and again, that we had to close down programs.
And I remember this, like very specifically in Burundi, I went to Alin who works with us and she was really courageously just literally protecting and saving lives when people were being tortured. And I remember at a certain point, I was like, “Okay, look, your salary has gone from 1000 to 800 to 500. And we’ve been trying everything for last two years, there’s been no money and now I have to tell you, there’s really no money. And I’m really sorry, but you guys have to find another job.” I was heartbroken myself when I was talking to her. And I remember she took my hand and she looked at me and she said, “Karen, you don’t understand. But our commitment with this is greater than the budget. And we will keep on, keep on.” Actually what ended up happening is that in every single country where we tried to close, none of them have ever closed.
And I think the mistake that I had in the beginning, was the thing that we were just that great and that powerful, and that our money was that powerful. And money is powerful. But it’s something greater than money. Actually it’s about the legal skills, it’s about the training, it’s about the laws, it’s about having lawyers. But there’s something else, and it’s like an unseen something that that builds a movement. And so, I think that what I realized is that it’s not just the technical.
Suarez: Will the next country be easier because of the reputation of IBJ and the growing confidence with which you operate already?
Tse: I think that that kind of thing helps in terms of funders. I don’t think it makes necessarily that much of a difference country by country. I think country by country, it’s about the relationship. It’s about the trust. And it’s about the understanding that we want to work together.
Suarez: But it sounds like you have to start from scratch in every new place then? That there’s no way that you sort of sweep in and everybody already knows IBJ is working, that kind of thing.
Tse: You start from scratch in terms of the relationships. But we definitely don’t start from scratch in terms of the methodology or the training or the training materials or what happens. Okay, you’re right, actually, probably it does help that International Bridges to Justice has a relationship and we have now brought a coalitions.
For instance, we have an MOU with African Caribbean Pacific, ACP group. And they’re 79 African countries, the Caribbean, the Pacific Islands, and they’ve all come together. And they’ve all said, “Together as a block, we would like to work on this issue with you.” That helps too when they’re all leaning against each other, and finding ways that they can attack this issue and find proactive ways to work together.
Suarez: When, as a reporter, I’ve talked to people in justice systems about the abuse of prisoners. One of the most frequent go to moves is to just deny that it happens. I’m wondering what the difference is, when a lawyer does that. Because I’m sitting in a Ministry of Justice, the cameras rolling, talking to somebody and I say, “Well, this person says they were abused while in custody. This person says they were abused while in custody.” And the person just looks me right in the face and says, “No, that’s not true. That didn’t happen.”
Tse: It’s interesting. I think partly, my gift is that I don’t have a camera rolling. When I come in there, there’s no camera rolling. Actually, ironically, I probably don’t talk about it in terms of like, this is a problem, and it’s this person. It’s, the problem is there and when I sit down in conversations, we’re not actually saying, Is there a problem? Are people tortured? I think we’re starting from the basis that there’s a big problem here. There’s people being tortured all the time.
Your pre trial detention is like 80%, 75%. They know they have the statistics. And we’re starting from a place of possibility. And I usually start with, okay, this is great. I find the five great laws that go. I love these five laws. These are perfect. How can we help support you in that? The conversation isn’t about the fact that they have specific problems with specific individuals. It’s that there’s an overall issue that we would like to support them in working together.
Suarez: Because there are people who are convicted on the basis of testimony with evidence that’s achieved through coercion, through physical abuse and so on. And then that’s used as the basis for conviction.
Tse: Yes, there’s the two big issues for us are, number one, there are many people who are convicted based on a tortured confession. That’s the first problem. But the second problem is that there are people who are completely lost in the system. Meaning they go in and … I always talk about one of my … the strange realization when we’re in India, where they’re like, “Oh, this is great. This guy got out. He’s 40 years old, we’re so happy.” And you look at the underlying case, he went in when he was 14, he was found innocent at 17. Then they found his case again when he was 40, and released him. This unfortunately, it may not be as dramatic in terms of decades. But this happens across the world. There are people who are completely lost in the justice system. And people don’t know about them.
Or the other possibility is that they know about them, but they don’t have a lawyer. And because they don’t have a lawyer, we had one woman in Sri Lanka, who was convicted of something very small, small amount of drugs. And they said, “If you don’t confess, you’re going to find yourself in jail for six or seven years.” Actually, she was worse. She was there for nine years. And she went to court 53 times. And every time she went to court, they said, “Where’s your lawyer?” And she said, “I don’t have one.” And they said, “Okay, go back.” And as soon as she had a lawyer she was out.
Suarez: And if you’re indigent, you can die in prison, you starve in prison. Can you protect those kind of people?
Tse: Well, we want to protect those kind of people. And part of the way we want to protect them is by actually giving them a lawyer, so that if they’re supposed to be there, they are there, but if they’re not and a lot of people, just even if you look at it in terms of food, if there’s not enough food, I was in one prison and they told me, “Well, we’re only able to feed them once every three days.” So we pick the people that we feed and people are just dying in that prison. But they also said that there’s a lot of people who shouldn’t be here. So you could also reduce the prison population if you actually get the people who aren’t supposed to be there in pre trial detention out and then look at how you can protect the people who are in prison.
I would say that in some places, it’s even much worse than that. It’s not just that the families have to feed and maybe cloth people. But there are some prisons that I’ve been to where it’s really horrible. There are prison guards who asked for a quote unquote candle tax. And that means that there’s like one candle with 300 people and they’re like, “Well, you have to pay because you’re using the candle too.” And if the family doesn’t pay, they torture them, they beat them up. It’s horrible.
Suarez: I think it’s a good illustration of the sort of irregularity, the ad hoc nature of being in detention in a lot of places in the world. There isn’t a set system, there isn’t one set of rules for everybody and that kind of thing.
Tse: It’s the irregularity and that is just in this one small aspect what International Bridges to Justice is trying to do. We’re trying to standardize early access to a lawyer for every person by working with the government, by working with the bar associations, by working with civil society and in creating defender Resource Centers. Just so it’s just standard. You get picked up, you get a lawyer within the amount of time that you’re legally allowed to get one. And that’s protection and that’s some standard that protects. And it’s a huge standard, ultimately that protects.
Suarez: Are there things that don’t work? That you figured out don’t work. And when lawyers start to work with your network, you tell them don’t do that?
Tse: Well, one of the tricky things is that, we work absolutely against corruption. Because for us, and this is not grand corruption, but it’s petty corruption. Petty corruption results in torture, because police ask me for a bribe not to torture. And it can result in death and prolonged detention. Corruption is a really bad thing from our perspective. We also have an anti corruption policy, like our lawyers cannot be part of this process. They can’t give bribes to judges. Even if it’s from a family member or whatnot, they just cannot partake in that. I’m not sure I should go on camera to say this, but that is a very tricky thing, ultimately, even for me. Because as a policy, we can’t accept corruption.
At the same time, we’ve had cases where we had a lawyer, we had to let him go, because he transferred a bribe to the judge. But when I’m really thinking about this, if I was a lawyer, and this person is being tortured, and my responsibility is to my failure, I can tell you for sure, if I’m a family member, and something’s happening to my son, I am going to give a bribe immediately to stop that. I feel like there’s rules and there’s things that we have to uphold. And sometimes it’s difficult as you move through.
Suarez: The principle transcends the real lived experience of someone who’s being abused.
Tse: Yes, and what do you do in that interim period until you get to the perfect state? I also think it’s really interesting too, because we just had a training in Rwanda. And we brought lawyers, we brought women lawyers from a dozen other African countries together. And in the training, it was very interesting even to watch the reaction of different women lawyers from different countries. One woman lawyer was talking about, her need to sometimes give tea money or whatnot. And another lawyer from a different country that had already started really very strong anti corruption policy was like, “How can you do that? That is wrong.” But you see that they’re in different environments, right? One is an environment where the anti corruption can work. And another is an environment where, their client’s going to get tortured. So what do they do about that?
Suarez: You’ve mentioned Burma you’ve mentioned Burundi. Those places, people say, “Oh, yeah, I guess there’s corruption there.” But are there countries where the assumption in the West might be otherwise, where you still have to be on the lookout?
Tse: That’s probably true in a lot of places. I guess I just assume in most countries that we work in that there’ll be an issue.
Suarez: Are you prevented from scaling up simply by the rigid laws of economics or there’s still places you want to get to work that you just have limitations on funding and can do yet?
Tse: For us it really is mostly funding. We find pretty much an open door with every government and it’s a tricky open door. So it takes time to build the trust, but there’s also the knock on effect, right? That’s what you referred to earlier, that a couple of countries are doing it and they’re like, well, does that country let you in? Well, that case we can do it too.
I find that most countries, even though we’re a funny human rights area, because sometimes people are like, “Oh, we don’t want to get involved with the politics of human rights, so we can’t fund this.” And yet, I would say that we are probably the safest human rights organization to fund. Because you absolutely cannot sneak into a prison, you can’t sneak into police stations. And so everything that we do has to be really transparent. And from that perspective, the government has to trust us.
And I think they can trust us because we have to protect the safety of our defenders on the ground. And it already can be really dangerous for them. And one of our roles is to protect and we can protect by saying this will be transparent, and we’ll do everything sort of like hands On the table by the rules. So that we can create the rule of law and justice and protection together.
Suarez: After the Berlin Wall fell, after the Soviet Union dissolved, after the Cold War ended, there was this burst of optimism that a lot of countries where justice wasn’t played by the rules, would sort of join the world community. Have we stalled? Is progress not so quick anymore?
Tse: I think that progress is not quick when we don’t commit to things. And this is an area where it really does take a lot of money and resources to actually rebuild. Its infrastructure work, right? It’s may be legal infrastructure, but to rebuild a system, it’s resource intensive, and the possibilities are definitely there. I feel like we’re at a critical time in history too, where we either have to go for it, or maybe the window will close.
Suarez: Are you seeing, for instance, in countries where the legal profession was not well stocked with professionals, where the living you could make was not very good. Are you seeing progress in people wanting to be lawyers? In being well educated and well trained? So that the rules of evidence, the rules of the chain of evidence, the rules of protection of the rights of the accused and so on, are becoming a habit, are becoming second nature, are becoming something that people can rely on and trust?
Tse: Definitely. We see that country by country, and part of that is bringing people together in a community to say, “How do we do this? And how do we support each other as we move forward as a community of lawyers who will do this.” We see it country by country, but we also see that lawyers are able to support each other across boundaries and across countries.
I still remember we had a Skype call, and one of our lawyers from Burundi was like, “Oh, my gosh, this is impossible. I can’t do this.” We started with 100 lawyers in the country, it’s just impossible. And our lawyer from Cambodia was like, “We had 10 lawyers and look where we are. We did it, we can do it, you can do it too.” Even with language barriers, even with all the barriers that you have, there is something about, not only a shared sense of purpose, but a shared understanding of what other people who face similar challenges have done. That can move things forward.
Suarez: If you stop mistreatment, you don’t necessarily repair the problems of the legal system overnight. Are there people who continue to languish in confinement? Even if they aren’t being mistreated anymore? Who because of backlog, because of other shortages in judges and so on?
Tse: Yes, absolutely. Yes. Pretrial detention is huge throughout the world. We have found that in the countries that we work, there’s more than 250 million people who have no other recourse except for International Bridges to Justice. And we’re, as she mentioned earlier. We’re not a huge organization, so we can’t take care of all these people. But country after country there’s no access to a lawyer, and this is hugely problematic.
Ray Suarez: Do your affiliates take a risk by standing up for the rights of the accused? Do they expose themselves to professional jeopardy, career jeopardy. And while we might find that a risk worth taking to help powerless people, is it a brave act on their part to cross that pool?
Tse: It is absolutely a brave act. My sense is that these criminal defense lawyers are some of the most unsung heroes in the world. And traditionally, these criminal defense lawyers, they’re not the ones who are have the best human rights dialogue and talk and talking about standards or whatnot. They’re the ones who just care, they see people tortured, they’re going to do what they can do. And they’re they’re scrappy.
They’re sending SMSs, they’re saying, “Okay, there’s 78 children in there, they have no food. What can we do? We can organize.” But we’ve had not only the lawyers, but also paralegals. We’ve had people who are threatened, jailed, even one person was killed. They’re tremendously courageous. They’re really unsung and tenacious and persistent and they believe in something much bigger.
Suarez: It sounds like it’s pretty satisfying. When you’re in a country that people even want to step forward to do this.
Tse: I’m absolutely blown away every single time by these lawyers who are so courageous and just sometimes they get their butts kicked and they’re in so much danger. I just came back from the Syrian border have described even their own torture. And yet, they so believe in the rule of law and love. Because they say, “Hey, even though all these terrible things have happened if we don’t do something.”
This is the something that they can do, to assure that in future generations and such as completely lawless, reckless, people are in jail, no one’s defended, this is what we can do. We do it not just for ourselves, but for the future generations. It’s tremendously moving to be with people who believe that they’ll do that one thing, and they’ll just keep going, even when we all fall down.
Suarez: Do you have a thumbnail figure that you use for how many people you’ve served over the years?
Tse: I think there’s hundreds of thousands. I think our last figure was 400,000 cases that either we have directly taken, or lawyers that we have trained and have come on doing pro bono work have taken. It’s partly that, but it’s also sort of like a spread ripple effect. Physically, we’ve trained more than 30,000 lawyers, but we also know that we have a defense wiki page in over 100 cases, and it’s all run by volunteers. And over 50 million times–they’re hits on it for people all over the world, and the defenders. Who are like okay, where are the basic standards, and how can I learn more about it? It’s really, it’s big. Even just last year alone, through our advisement of rights campaigns, it reached over 10 million people.
There’s things that we can measure like cases, like trainings and physically people in front of us. And we also can see that there’s been huge shifts in culture throughout the world on this one issue of ending investigative torture of by putting a lawyer early on and that’s, that’s really wonderful, that there’s progress. Lots more needs to be made, but there’s there’s sort of a wave of belief that we can do this together.
