Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 88
July-August 2006
Association religieuse “Témoins de Jéhovah – Romania” and Others v. Romania (dec.) - 63108/00
Decision 11.7.2006 [Section III]
Article 37
Article 37-1-c
Continued examination not justified
Friendly settlement under the terms of which the Government give certain undertakings and are required to pay compensation to the applicants: struck out
The first applicant is a religious association and the other applicants are Jehovah’s Witness ministers. Following the collapse of the Communist regime, under which the Jehovah’s Witnesses had been banned, the association was duly registered in accordance with the Associations and Foundations Act. In the years that followed, it became an important Christian group in Romania and operated without hindrance until 25 March 1997. On that date the State Secretary for Religion sent the local authorities a list of the religious groups recognised by the State. The name of the applicant association was not on the list. On that basis, various local and central authorities refused to grant the association certain rights conferred on State‑recognised religious groups. The applicant association detailed a range of similar measures which prevented the Jehovah’s Witnesses from exercising their religion freely. In view of the authorities’ attitude, it decided to amend its statutes, inserting a statement in the first article to the effect that the Jehovah’s Witnesses were a “Christian religious group”. However, the State Secretary for Religion refused to recognise the amended statutes, whereupon the applicant association instituted administrative proceedings seeking to have its statutes recognised. The Supreme Court of Justice granted its request in a final judgment of 7 March 2000. Following another set of administrative proceedings, the Minister for Culture and Religion – who had replaced the State Secretary for Religion – recognised the status of the Jehovah’s Witnesses as a Christian religious group, in a ministerial decree of 22 May 2003. The applicant association submitted that, in spite of that decision, some local authorities still refused to exempt it from property tax on its places of worship and lands. It further maintained that it had encountered difficulties in providing spiritual support to a number of Jehovah’s Witness ministers in detention, and complained of the content of a brochure on sects published by a county police force which portrayed it as a dangerous sect.
Meanwhile, in a judgment of 14 June 2000, the Military Court of Appeal imposed suspended prison sentences on the other 14 applicants for refusing to perform alternative civilian service because they were ministers of religion. In decisions given in 2002 and 2003 the Supreme Court of Justice acquitted the applicants, finding that their refusal to perform alternative civilian service did not fall within the scope of the provisions of the Criminal Code governing refusal to perform military service.
The Court noted that the parties had reached a friendly settlement under the terms of which the Government acknowledged that the Jehovah’s Witnesses association was a recognised religious group and as such was subject to all the rights and obligations conferred by Romanian law on State-recognised religious groups. They also undertook to ensure that spiritual support in detention centres was provided without discrimination, particularly with regard to Jehovah’s Witness ministers. The Government further acknowledged that the initial conviction of the other applicants for refusing to perform military service or alternative civilian service could have infringed their rights under the Convention, and undertook to pay compensation to the applicant association and to pay the other applicants the damages awarded to them by the domestic courts. Lastly, the Court’s judgment endorsing the friendly settlement was to be published in the Romanian Official Gazette.
The Court considered that the friendly settlement was based on respect for human rights as defined in the Convention and its Protocols and saw no other public-policy grounds for continuing its examination of the application. It therefore decided unanimously to join the cases and strike them out of its list.
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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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