Communicated on 8 September 2017
THIRD SECTION
Application no 59663/17
Grigoriy Nikolayevich KABLIS
against Russia
lodged on 30 July 2017
SUBJECT MATTER OF the CASE
The application concerns the blocking of the applicant’s VKontakte account and of three entries of his blog criticising the authorities’ refusal to approve the location of a public event planned by him on 25 September 2015 in the centre of Syktyvkar[1] and calling for participation in that public event the lack of official approval notwithstanding. The authorities found that the information published by the applicant violated the Public Events Act and moreover amounted to calls for mass disorder and extremist activities.
QUESTION to the parties
1. Did the blocking of the applicant’s VKontacte account and of the three entries of his blog amount to an interference with the applicant’s freedom of expression within the meaning of Article 10 § 1 of the Convention? If so, was that interference compatible with the requirements of Article 10 § 2? In particular
– Was the interference prescribed by law? Do the relevant laws and regulations meet the “quality of law” requirements and are they sufficiently precise and foreseeable in their application? Do they afford a sufficient degree of protection against arbitrariness? As regards the blocking of access to the applicant’s VKontakte account, do the relevant laws make a provision for a wholesale blocking of access to the entire social services account or webpage on the ground that it contained some offending material?
– Did the interference pursue a legitimate aim and was necessary in a democratic society?
– Was the decision-making process leading to the interference fair and such as to afford due respect to the interests safeguarded to the individual by the Convention (see, as a recent authority, Karácsony and Others v. Hungary [GC], nos. 42461/13 and 44357/13, § 133, ECHR 2016)? In particular, did the domestic authorities – and in particular the courts that performed the judicial review of the blocking measures – recognise that the cases involved a conflict between the right to freedom of expression and other legitimate interests and perform a balancing exercise, that is did they apply the “necessity in a democratic society” and “proportionality” tests, as required by the Plenary Supreme Court of Russia in its ruling no. 21 of 27 June 2013 (in particular, paragraphs 5 and 8)? As regards the blocking of access to the applicant’s VKontakte account, did the executive authorities and the courts consider the collateral effect that a blocking decision may have on the material which has not been found to be illegal?
[1]. The refusal to approve the location of that public event is the subject-matter of application no. 48310/16 Kablis v. Russia, communicated on 27 March 2017
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