The Constitutional Court allowed to place propaganda on the faces of protesters

The Constitutional Court (CC) clarified a number of provisions of the law on rallies, prohibiting the police from prosecuting participants in public rallies for concealing their faces, if this "did not entail significant obstacles to identifying the person," Kommersant . writes

Demonstrators have the right to “place elements of visual campaigning on their faces,” says the decision of the Constitutional Court on the complaint of Samara LGBT activists fined for taping their mouths during the Day of Silence international action.

The complaint also referred to the vagueness of the rules allowing arbitrary restrictions on the freedom of peaceful assembly. Thus, in one of the decisions, the Supreme Court confirmed that any public events can be held in a specially designated place without notification, while in others it recognized that it is required for collective picketing. The Constitutional Court agreed that the rules on Hyde Parks do not contain restrictions for different types of public events.

Concealment by participants in a public event of part of their face "may not necessarily be due to intentions to make identification difficult." The ban on the use of devices specifically designed to hinder identification (masks, balaclavas, stockings, etc.) does not in itself prevent the use of scarves, scarves and hoods, if the weather requires it, and bandages, gauze bandages and respirators, if There is a reason for this, the COP explained. In addition, the law “does not deprive” participants of public events “of the opportunity to place elements of visual campaigning on their faces, in particular, to apply drawings, inscriptions, stick stickers and use other campaign accessories,” the decision says.

When qualifying violations of the ban on concealing one's face, the police must "pay attention to the motives and goals of such actions, the methods and means used", as well as "the consequences, their impact on security and public order, including responding to the comments of the organizer of a public event and law enforcement agencies" . At the same time, “administrative liability for concealing one’s face is impossible without establishing guilt and clarifying all the circumstances with which the concealment of a person was associated, “especially if it did not entail significant obstacles to identifying a person,” the Constitutional Court clarified, without doubting, however, in the constitutionality of the challenged norms.