Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 93
January 2007
Kuznetsov and Others v. Russia - 184/02
Judgment 11.1.2007 [Section I]
Article 9
Article 9-1
Freedom of religion
Unlawful termination of meeting organised by Jehovah's Witnesses: violation
Article 6
Civil proceedings
Article 6-1
Fair hearing
Failure by domestic courts to examine an alleged Convention violation: violation
Facts: The applicants are 103 Russian nationals in Chelyabinsk who are all Jehovah's Witnesses. In 1999 a lease agreement was signed which allowed the community of Jehovah's Witnesses to which the applicants belonged to rent the auditorium of a vocational training college for religious meetings. One Sunday in 2000, in accordance with the lease agreement, Jehovah's Witnesses were using the college facilities to hold a meeting for predominantly hearing-impaired to study the Bible and join in public worship. Many of the participants were elderly and also had impaired vision. The meeting was open to the public. The was disrupted by the chairwoman of the Regional Human Rights Commission (“the Commissioner”), accompanied by two senior police officers, who called for the meeting to be stopped. Mr Kuznetsov submitted that, given the intimidating behaviour of the Commissioner and the police, he thought it best to comply. The following day the Jehovah's Witnesses group was given notice of the termination of its lease agreement with the college “because of certain irregularities committed by the college administration at the time of its signing”. The applicants unsuccessfully requested a criminal investigation into the actions of the Commissioner and the police officers. They also filed a civil complaint with the district court, but this was dismissed on the ground that the applicants had failed to show a causal link between the Commissioner's arrival and the premature termination of their meeting.
Law: Article 9 – The Court found it established that the order to terminate the meeting had emanated from the Commissioner, whereas Mr Kuznetsov merely had relayed it to the hearing-impaired audience, with whom the police officer could not communicate directly. That order amounted to an interference with the applicants' right to freedom of religion. The acts by the Commissioner and the police had not been in accordance with the law. The Court rejected the Government's claim that the applicants had lacked the appropriate documents for the religious meeting, noting that domestic law did not require any such documents. Neither did the Court accept the Government's claim that the Commissioner had come to the meeting to investigate a complaint about the unauthorised presence of children at a religious event: that claim had not been supported by any evidence. The Government had failed to submit any documents relating to the official powers of the Commissioner and no such documents had been produced in the domestic proceedings. There were, however, strong and concordant indications that she had acted without any legal basis and in a personal capacity. The involvement of two senior police officers gave her intervention a spurious authority. However, the police officers were not formally subordinated to her and she had had no authority to give them orders, such as to have the meeting dispersed. No inquiry had been ongoing, nor had there been any complaint about disturbance of public order or any other indication of an offence warranting police involvement. Therefore the legal basis for breaking up a religious event conducted on premises lawfully rented for that purpose had been lacking. The interference had not been “prescribed by law” and the Commissioner had not acted in good faith and had breached a State official's duty of neutrality and impartiality vis-à-vis the applicants' religious congregation.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 6 – The Court was struck by the inconsistent approach of the Russian courts, on the one hand finding it established that the Commissioner and her aides had come to the applicants' religious meeting and that it had been terminated ahead of time, and on the other hand refusing to see a link between those two elements without furnishing an alternative explanation for the early termination of the meeting. Their findings of fact appeared to suggest that the Commissioner's arrival and the applicants' decision to interrupt their religious service simply had happened to coincide. That approach had permitted the domestic courts to avoid addressing the applicants' main complaint, namely that neither the Commissioner nor the police officers had had any legal basis for interfering with the conduct of the applicants' religious event. The crux of the applicants' grievances – the alleged violation of their right to freedom of religion – had been left outside the scope of review by the domestic courts which had declined to undertake an examination of the merits of the complaint. In sum, the domestic courts had failed in their duty to state the reasons on which their decisions had been based and to demonstrate that the parties had been heard in a fair and equitable manner.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 41 – The Court awarded Mr Kuznetsov, on behalf of all the applicants, EUR 30,000 for non‑pecuniary damage.
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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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