The ECHR communicated the complaint of a former school teacher about accusations of extremism

On September 26, the European Court of Human Rights communicated the complaint of former school teacher Oleksandr Byvshev, who was sentenced to compulsory labor for poetry in support of Ukraine. It is reported by the SOVA Center.

On July 13, 2015, Byvshev was sentenced by the court to 300 hours of compulsory work, he was also banned from teaching at school for two years for inciting hatred on ethnic grounds (part 1 of article 282 of the Criminal Code). The poem "Ukrainian patriots" in October 2014 was recognized as extremist, and Byvshev was included in the list of terrorists and extremists of Rosfinmonitoring, his bank accounts were blocked.

In the spring of 2014, Byvshev posted his own poem “To Ukrainian Patriots” on his VKontakte page. Its content boils down to a call addressed to the Ukrainians to meet the “Moskal gang” that came to their land with weapons in their hands.

“Sova” considers Byvshev’s sentence incorrect: “from our point of view, the hostile feelings of the author of the poem were not due to the ethnicity of a certain group, but to the nature of its activity and, thus, the actions incriminated to Byvshev could not be qualified under Art. 282 of the Criminal Code. We believe that the court should have also taken into account the acute political context: the Ukrainian crisis provokes many to make extreme statements that are not typical for them at other times.”

In April 2015, Byvshev sent a complaint to the ECtHR. In its communication, the Court raised questions before Russia: did the persecution of the poet violate Article 10 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (the right to freedom of expression). Whether the publication of the poem, given the political context, could be considered as a direct or indirect incitement to violence or justification of violence against an ethnic group, whether the publication of the poem could lead to harmful consequences, and whether the domestic courts properly justified the interference with the right to freedom of expression.