the Council under the Russian President for human rights believe that the Ministry of justice and the judiciary needs to clarify in which cases the pickets in turn are events, and what – not. But the explanation in General has already been given, he said, just the authorities do not always adhere to them.
the report of the Council for development of civil society and human rights under the title “Lessons of the epidemic from the point of view of observance of the rights and freedoms of man and citizen,” among other things they say and how protivomoroznyh in terms of constraints interpreted the constitutional right of citizens to freedom of Assembly. The authors draw attention to the “broad interpretation” of the Moscow authorities and the Moscow police, the law on mass events. To illustrate, the pickets near the building of the Moscow state Ministry of interior in late may 2020, the participants of which protested against the administrative arrest of the journalist and municipal Deputy Ilya Azar. Then the police, calling these picketing events, which in the period of high alert is prohibited (a ban not lifted until now), detained the protesters. “It is obvious that the presence of citizens filled the van within a few hours created higher risks of infection Covid19 than their standing in solitary pickets in the open air. In this regard, the Council calls on competent state authorities (the Ministry of justice and judicial bodies) to clarify the legal status of “mass pickets”, as well as the status of citizens in the “queue on a single picket,” the report States.
in fact, the law “On meetings, rallies, demonstrations, processions and picketing”… says: there is no notification of the authorities about the intention to hold a picket if you are not going to build a “collapsible design” is not required. The conditions that the output of the citizen with the poster in hands on the street absolutely legal and constitutionally guaranteed, lists the following: minimum distance between the participants of the pickets cannot be more than 50 meters, how much – set the authorities of the regions (two thirds of subjects of the Russian Federation prescribed maximum distance, i.e. 50 meters). And – disclaimer: “the totality of acts of picketing” with one participant, that is, single “can be recognized by the court’s decision… one public event”.
If the court finds picket mass that require notification of the authorities, his party can be fined up to 20 thousand rubles, or sent under arrest for a period up to 15 days. Any “repeated” violation at a public event the punishment more severe, and if such punishment withUD was discharged more than three months, is not excluded and very poor scenario: the criminal case (the so-called “Dudinsky” article of the Criminal code number 212.1. promises even up to 5 years in prison, now in prison for her serving time for human rights activist Konstantin Kotov).
to Say that the judicial authorities in Russia are not engaged in the clarification of the question, in which case the pickets become a mass, i.e. to be reconciled, it is impossible. In the constitutional court ruling from 2013 said that a few pickets should be considered one action, if the pickets “with sufficient evidence of common objectives and a common organization, be conducted simultaneously and geographically gravitate to each other, and their participants using associative recognizable (or — more — identical) visual means of agitation and put forward General requirements and appeals”. And in 2018, the Plenum of the Supreme court, explaining in which case, the judges on whose discretion given to the decision of the question, advised to consider mass action pickets, if they had one organizer, a single alert of possible participants and the manufacture of billboards.
“MK” asked the lawyer, “Apology of protest” (this legal service dedicated to protecting the rights of citizens to peaceful protest) Alexander Peredruk you need any additional clarification on this issue, according to the HRC.
“In my personal opinion, no additional clarification is not required, everything is more than understandable. Another question is whether we want to accept those explanations that have, as they are, not as it is convenient. Experience shows that the public authorities react differently in different cases, and their reaction is very much dependent on the political conjuncture, which should not occur in principle. The implementation of constitutional rights should not depend on someone’s wishes, and the discretion of the authorities in such matters must be clearly limited,” said the lawyer. According to him, if you go back to the so-called replaceable pickets, COP in the same decision from 2013 indicated “most important” criterion for the transformation of pickets in a mass event – “these pickets should be carried out simultaneously, and when the protesters succeed each other, they do not stand with posters at a time.” And picket the place could be considered a meeting of the citizens, but also meeting of citizens do not require approval, reminds g-n Peredruk.
is there a Noticeable trend of a hardening of attitudes of the authorities picket lines? Last summer when in Moscow a few days there were peaceful pickets demanding to release those arrested during the mass street protests, long hours of queues of people wishing to take part in them no clocked. And this year, if the rememberingit is an example with the same pickets in support of Mr. hazard (the only case which mentions the report of the HRC), the picture was quite different…
“I think, Yes, we can say that in some sense we see this year more stringent attitude to such events. But it’s not just a Moscow story. In Petersburg, for example, this also happened more than once”,- considers g-n Peredruk. According to him, the “Northern capital” queue rights “differently organized – on the basis of judicial practice on the video recording shows that this is a clear line of people really standing in line, and in St. Petersburg, as a rule, people stand in groups”. The stories of the past months, he remembered the picket in February in the Lithuanian prospect, near the Moskovsky railway station – “just recently, six months after the events, the court sent under arrest to 5 days one of the activists, apparently considering this rally as a socially dangerous act that it deserves the restriction of liberty”…
Despite the negative trends, “there are positive and particular,” says the lawyer: once upon a time, and it is sometimes possible in the courts to prove something…”
