Holy order

A collective reading of the Bible in a cafe is a mass event that needs to be coordinated with the authorities under the rallies' law. This follows from the response of the authorized Russia under the European Court of Human Rights, Deputy Minister of Justice Mikhail Halperin to questions of the court, Vedomosti reports .

The representative of Russia answered questions on the complaint of the pastor of the Sochi community of Christians "New World" by Alexei Kolyasnikov, who in 2014 was fined 30 thousand rubles for reading the Bible in a cafe specially rented for this.

Halperin insists that reading a holy book is precisely a "public event", since audio equipment was used during its implementation.

The official believes that the holding of a religious event in a cafe must be coordinated with the authorities in order to “ensure the safety of citizens”: both participants in the meeting and other visitors to the institution. According to officials, the preaching of the evangelists violates the interests of other people who are in a cafe, "who become involuntary participants in the" meeting.

The document also states that Kolyasnikov himself recognized the need to notify the authorities of the meeting, but did not do this because he did not register a religious group.

Halperin notes that believers have the right to freely gather, but it "is not absolute and can be limited if it is necessary to protect the foundations of the constitutional system."

The answer states that the authorities learned about the conduct of the Bible readings in a cafe from the regional department of the FSB. Halperin writes that in Sochi, the Ukrainian pastor-nuclear pastor Vladimir Muntean came to Kolyasnikov, who "under the guise of propaganda of Christianity organizes and holds public services, festive events in large cities and regional centers of Ukraine and conducts ideological processing", attracting people in "occult structures", including "Satanists".

The court was interested in the Russian representative whether the persecution of Kolyasnikov was unlawful, based on the decision of the ECHR of 2014 on a similar complaint of the Jehovah's Witnesses group and others against Russia. Then the court recognized the breakdown of the Jehovist event in 2006 for the same reasons unlawful.

Halperin replies to this that in Krupko the actions of the authorities were recognized as unlawful only for the formal reason - the police actually detained preachers, but did not draw up detention protocols on them. The official assures that no one detained Kolyasnikov, he only drew up an administrative protocol on violation of the procedure for holding rallies.

In December 2015, the ECHR registered Kolyasnikov’s complaint . According to the preacher, Russia violated Article 6 (the right to a fair trial), 9 (freedom of thought, conscience and religion), 10 (freedom of expression) and 11 (freedom of assembly and associations) of the European Convention.

On September 28, 2014, Kolyasnikov in a specially rented room of the cafe Bel Canto organized a meeting of the New World . 25 members of the community read aloud the Bible and discussed the meaning of the fragments read. At the end of the meeting, people in civilian people who introduced themselves as employees of the FSB, police and prosecutors entered the premises. An administrative protocol was fabricated on the pastor.

On October 10, the magistrate of the 99th section of the Khostinsky district, Nikolai Volkov, fined Kolyasnikov for 30 thousand rubles under part 2 of Article 20.2 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (holding a public event without submitting a notification). Reporting this, the Kuban prosecutor's office stated that the pastor "carried out unauthorized public events in the cafe premises when using audio equipment", and "the meeting participants were random visitors to the cafe that were not participants in the religious group."

Judge of the Khostinsky District Court Grigory Leoshik on December 2 of the same year canceled Volkov’s decision , indicating that cases under Article 20.2 are the competence of district courts, and not the peace. In his complaint, lawyer Popkov also insisted on terminating the proceedings in the case, indicating the absence of an offense in Kolyasnikov’s actions, but the complaint was not satisfied in this part.

10 days later, on December 12, the same judge Leoshik re -fined the pastor for 30 thousand rubles. As Popkov said, the first of the witnesses surveyed in court admitted that it was not by chance that she came to just eat a cafe, as she said earlier, she had previously been here at a similar event of Kolyasnikov and knew that the pastor would read the Bible. " “The second witness who said that he allegedly accidentally got into this cafe turned out to be a former law enforcement officer,” the lawyer noted. “The classic of the genre.” Another witness - an FSB officer named Matsko - ignored the trial.

"The court sided with the prosecutor's office and the FSB that initiated this case," Popkov according to the results reported.

The decision of Leoshik was appealed, but on January 28, 2015, the judge of the Krasnodar Kraisud Vadim Zenin left a decision on a fine.

Meanwhile, on December 5, 2012, the Constitutional Court recognized the provisions of a number of regulations that prohibit believers of various faiths to hold public religious events without notifying local authorities that are not relevant to the Basic Law .