The Moscow court allowed the Ministry of Justice not to exclude Falun Dafa materials from the List

On December 14, 2009, the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow denied the NP Falun Dafa Center for Spiritual and Physical Improvement a complaint against the refusal of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation to withdraw from the List of extremist materials publications previously recognized as extremist by the Pervomaisky District Court of Krasnodar . This decision was overturned by the Judicial Collegium for Civil Cases of the Krasnodar Regional Court.

Later, the Prosecutor's Office of the Krasnodar Territory applied to the Pervomaisky District Court with a new lawsuit to recognize the same Falun Dafa materials as extremist. This time (unlike the first trial), the Falun Dafa representatives were recognized as defendants in the lawsuit, and this trial is not yet over.

However, guided by the fact that the first decision on the basis of which the materials were included in the List was canceled, the representatives of Falun Dafa asked the Ministry of Justice to update the List accordingly. The Ministry of Justice refused, justifying it by the fact that the decision to withdraw materials from the List can only be made after the end of the last process and the entry into force of its decision.

This refusal was appealed to the Tverskoy Court, where the representative of the Ministry of Justice, referring═ to Art. 6 (equality of all before the law and the court) and 13 (obligation of judicial decisions) of the Code of Civil Procedure of the Russian Federation, argued that materials can be excluded from the List solely by a court decision received from the court itself. In addition, according to the representative of the Ministry of Justice, the mentioned ministry did not refuse to exclude materials from the List, but only gave the applicant an explanation about the procedure for exclusion.

According to Falun Dafa representatives, the defendant stated at the trial that the Ministry of Justice "has not been given the authority to make a decision on delisting us . This position was upheld by the court.

In our opinion, the arguments of the Ministry of Justice are untenable, because we are talking about different trials. If there is no effective decision to recognize these publications as extremist, then there are no grounds for them to remain included in the list.

In addition, it seems to us that the statement that the Ministry of Justice is not given the authority to make a decision on exclusion from the List seems to be crafty. Firstly, as representatives of Falun Dafa pointed out at the trial, in accordance with clause 30.28 of the Regulations on the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, it maintains and publishes the Federal List of Extremist Materials, which, in our opinion, is quite acceptable to interpret in such a way that the Ministry of Justice carries out the inclusion and exclusion of material based on court rulings.

Secondly, shortly before the meeting of the Tverskoy District Court, it turned out that one of the materials, in respect of which a decision was first made to recognize it as extremist, and then this decision was canceled, was nevertheless removed from the List.

Information message of NP "Center for Spiritual and Physical Improvement "Falun Dafa"