Communicated on 16 November 2017
THIRD SECTION
Application no. 4161/13
Dmitriy Sergeyevich KARUYEV
against Russia
lodged on 30 November 2012
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The applicant is a Russian national who was born in 1992 and lives in Cheboksary.
The application concerns the administrative offence proceedings against the applicant. On 6 May 2012 the applicant together with other persons organised an event which they considered a “political performance”: they installed a portrait of the newly re-elected President Putin in the hall of the Public Reception Office of the Prime Minister in Cheboksary, the Republic of Chuvashiya, and put two carnations next to it, parodying the Russian tradition of leaving an even number of flowers next to a deceased person’s image, to symbolise their expectations of the end of Putin’s rule. Some thirty minutes after the beginning of the performance the applicant intentionally spat at the portrait. Four hours later he was arrested and brought to a police station where an administrative offence report under the charges of petty disorderly conduct (Article 20.1 § 1 of the CAO) was drawn up. The domestic courts found the applicant guilty as charged for the reason that his actions “had demonstrated blatant disrespect to the society the citizens of which ... had elected the head of their State - President Putin” and sentenced him to fifteen days’ imprisonment.
QUESTIONS tO THE PARTIES
Has there been a violation of the applicant’s right to freedom of expression guaranteed by Article 10 of the Convention? In particular, was there a “pressing social need” to institute the administrative proceedings against the applicant? Did an administrative sanction in the form of fifteen days’ imprisonment imposed on the applicant have an undesirable chilling effect on public expression (see Tatár and Fáber v. Hungary, nos. 26005/08 and 26160/08, § 41, 12 June 2012)? Did the domestic courts give relevant and sufficient reasons to justify the alleged interference with the applicant’s right to freedom of expression? Did they apply standards which were in conformity with the principles embodied in Article 10 of the Convention? Did they base themselves on an acceptable assessment of the relevant facts (see OOO Izdatelskiy Tsentr Kvartirnyy Ryad v. Russia, no. 39748/05, § 46, 25 April 2017, and Terentyev v. Russia, no. 25147/09, § 24, 26 January 2017)?
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