The European Court communicated complaints from those detained for kissing in 2013

It became known that on September 29, the European Court of Human Rights communicated the complaints of those detained on June 11, 2013 near the State Duma building in Moscow during the adoption of the law on “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations.” Lawyer of the Memorial Human Rights Center Tatyana Glushkova reported this on her Facebook page on October 17. The text of the communication was published on the official website of the court.

The applicants for the complaints were Valery Sozaev, Ivan Babitsky, Svetlana Mishina, Evgenia Samoshkina and Pavel Samburov. On June 11, 2013, about thirty opponents of the bill came to the entrance to the State Duma building in Moscow. At the same time, journalists were present, as well as a group of 100 conservative Orthodox activists who supported the adoption of the bill. Riot police officers were also present and stood between opponents of the bill and Christian activists. During the protest, opponents of the bill began kissing their, usually same-sex, partners. Christian activists reacted to this and began throwing eggs and nettles at opponents of the bill. After this, police officers surrounded the opponents of the bill and detained about thirty participants; they were taken to police stations. None of the Christian activists were detained.

The applicants were detained, found guilty of violating the procedure for holding public events (Article 20.2 of the Administrative Code) and fined 10,000 rubles each.

All applicants complain of a violation of Articles 10 (right to freedom of expression) and 11 (right to freedom of assembly) of the Convention. In addition, the applicants insist that the dispersal of the protest was an act of discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation and political views, which violates Article 14 of the Convention.

In early October, the Constitutional Court of Russia issued an explanation regarding the scandalous law banning the dissemination of information promoting non-traditional sexual relationships among minors. And at the end of September , rallies in support of LGBT rights were denied in a number of Russian cities.

On October 17, it became known that the ECHR communicated complaints from those detained at rallies in support of those accused in the Bolotnaya case on February 24, 2014. Some of the applicants were detained on Tverskaya Street in Moscow at a spontaneous protest after the verdict of eight defendants in the case of the riots on May 6, 2012; some of the arrests took place in St. Petersburg.

In recent months, news about the fate of complaints to the ECHR in cases related in one way or another to the topic of freedom of assembly in Russia has been coming more and more often. On July 7, the complaint of those detained at the Zamoskvoretsky court on February 21 was communicated . On October 4, the ECHR ordered the Russian Federation to pay one of those convicted for the events on Bolotnaya Square, Yaroslav Belousov, compensation of 12,500 euros. On September 17, a court in Strasbourg awarded compensation to three other defendants in the Bolotnaya case, Leonid Kovyazin, Artem Savelov and Ilya Gushchin, for unlawful pre-trial arrests - 2,000, 3,000 and 2,000 euros, respectively. On October 5, the Supreme Court of Russia, relying on the decision of the ECHR, overturned all decisions on pre-trial arrests and extensions of arrests in relation to all three.