"Faces" complained to the ECHR for blocking

The complaint of the "faces" for blocking the site is aimed at the European Court of Human Rights. The interests of the publication are represented by a lawyer of the Agora Association Damir Gainutdinov. The ECHR also received complaints of Alexei Navalny and Harry Kasparov to block the sites owned by them. "Faces", Kasparov.ru, EJ.ru and the blog of Alexei Navalny in LJ were blocked by Russian Internet providers in March 2014 by order of the Prosecutor General’s Office.

The applicants claim that the blocking violates the 10th article of the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights, guaranteeing the freedom of expression. In their complaint, the “face” indicates that the blocking is not based on the law and does not pursue a legitimate goal. In addition, the full blocking of the site was not necessary in a democratic society.

The complaint noted that the “facets” are blocked without specifying specific publications and in violation of the media law, which provides for the termination of the publication only by decision of the court. At the same time, "the applicants were deliberately misleading regarding the essence of the claims, since, as it turned out in the court of first instance, the Prosecutor General’s office demanded to limit access to calls to participate in unauthorized public events, while Roskomnadzor led to a different basis - calls to extremist activity," the complaint says.

The Lugovoi Law itself (Article 15.3 of the Federal Law "On Information", which allows to block sites without a trial for "illegal" calls) is formulated so vaguely that it is unusually difficult to determine in advance whether the specific publication will be a reason for blocking and whether the authorities will demand to block a separate publication or the entire site as a whole, the applicant notes. In this situation, "the media editorial office and site owners are actually not protected from arbitrary intervention," which contradicts the ECHR position in cases of freedom of speech.

The applicant claims that the actual goal of restricting access to the Grani.ru website was to terminate the spread of independent information about important socio-political events, especially about swamp business. The complete blocking of the "faces" in Russia is used to restrict the spread of information about protest activity, the activities of the opposition and criticism of the authorities, the complaint says.

The applicant refers, in particular, to the Subtle Declaration of the UN and the OSCE on the freedom of expression on the Internet, adopted on June 1, 2011. This document says that "forced blocking entirely websites, IP addresses, ports, network protocols or individual varieties of Internet resources (for example, social networks) is an extreme measure, similar to the prohibition of newspapers or broadcasting, and can only be justified if such actions are complied with international standards, for example, in cases where it is necessary to protect children from sexual abuse."