17 Jul Multiple violations of the European Convention owing to Pussy Riot punk band convictions

The European Court of Human Rights found multiple violations of the European Convention on human rights in the case Mariya Alekhina and Others v. Russia (application no. 38004/12. 17/07/2018). The case concerned the conviction and imprisonment of three members of the Pussy Riot punk band for attempting to perform one of their protest songs in a Moscow cathedral in 2012.

On 21 February 2012, following a series of performances in the Russian capital, they attempted to perform one of their songs, “Punk Prayer – Virgin Mary, Drive Putin Away”, from the altar of Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral. The performance was meant to express disapproval of the political situation in Russia at the time and of Patriarch Kirill, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church. No service was taking place, but some people were inside the Cathedral, including journalists and the media invited by the band for publicity. The performance only lasted slightly over a minute because cathedral guards quickly forced the band out. The band uploaded video footage of their attempted performance to their website and to YouTube.

The applicants were arrested shortly after the performance for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” and the courts ruled that their performance had been offensive and insulting.

The European Court of Human Rights found multiple violations of the European Convention:

The Court held that there had been:

• a violation of Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights because of the overcrowded conditions of the band members’ transportation to and from the courtroom to attend hearings on their cases and because they had had to suffer the humiliation of being permanently exposed in a glass dock during their hearings, surrounded by armed police officers and a guard dog.
• a violation of Article 5 § 3 (right to liberty and security) of the European Convention because the domestic courts had only given stereotyped reasons for keeping them in detention pending trial for five months;
• a violation of Article 6 § 1 (c) (right to a fair trial / right to legal assistance of own choosing) because the courtroom security arrangements, namely the glass dock and heavy security, had prevented the band members from communicating with their lawyers without being overheard during their one-month trial;
• a violation of Article 10 (freedom of expression) because of the three band members’ conviction and prison sentences. The Court accepted that a reaction to breaching the rules of conduct in a place of religious worship might have been warranted. However, the domestic courts had failed to justify why it had been necessary to convict and sentence the applicants to terms of imprisonment. The courts had not examined whether the applicants’ conduct could be interpreted as a call for violence hatred or intolerance, which would have been the only acceptable reason, according to international standards, for restricting the applicants’ right to freedom of expression in the form of a criminal sanction. Court found that sentencing them to imprisonment for simply having worn brightly coloured clothes, moving their bodies and using a strong language, without analysing the lyrics of their song or the context of their performance and not giving the possibility applicants to participate in the proceedings, had not been in accordance with the Article 10. The Court found that there had been a further violation of Article 10 because of the ban on access to their video recordings on the Internet.

References from the Official web site of the European Court of Human Rights