Rallies and coronavirus: is it justified to limit protest participants to five thousand?

Kirill Koroteev, head of international practice of the human rights group "Agora"

They do this in other countries. In my opinion , they did the same thing in Paris (in France, they first limited public events to five thousand people, then to a thousand - OVD-Info ). But the question here is the powers of the Moscow mayor. These measures were approved by an amendment to the decree adopted on the basis of the law on the protection of the population from natural and man-made incidents. welfare of the population must be applied The law on sanitary and epidemiological . In accordance with it, the chief sanitary doctor of the region is involved in the quarantine procedure. I, of course, have no illusions about the political independence of the chief sanitary doctor of Moscow, but for some reason it turned out to be more convenient this way [without the doctor’s participation]. Or simply no one thought.

Alexey Agranovsky, Professor of the Department of Virology, Faculty of Biology, Moscow State University

Some measures must be taken. Perhaps society is now training for more serious infections. Coronavirus, I believe, does not require such measures, but the damage from these measures will be less than the benefit. If it stops the spread of coronavirus, it's justified. In my opinion, the coronavirus is no more dangerous than the flu, but even because of the ordinary flu, public events could be limited. Significantly more people die from the common flu every year. Why exactly five thousand people is unclear to me. If public events are limited, then they should be canceled altogether.

Konstantin Boykov, Candidate of Medical Sciences, lawyer at OVD-Info

It is not clear where the figure of five thousand people comes from: why not a thousand or ten thousand. Five thousand is a lot. If there are coronavirus patients there, there will be many infected. This is basic medical knowledge. If we really fight the virus, we need to limit any gatherings at all and take other measures against the epidemic, as in other countries.

Denis Shedov, lawyer at OVD-Info

The mayor of Moscow, as the highest official of the region, can issue his own acts regarding the holding of meetings and rallies - but only in cases provided for by the federal law on rallies. They do not provide such a reason for limiting any actions as the introduction of a high alert regime for an epidemic.

According to the federal law on protecting the population from emergency situations, the mayor of Moscow can introduce an emergency situation and a high-alert regime, but these measures should not limit human rights and freedoms. Freedom of assembly is a human right; it can only be limited by the adoption of a special federal law.

Decrees of the Moscow mayor affecting human rights must undergo an anti-corruption examination. The text of the decree must be published in advance before its adoption. Such an examination would reveal that the mayor of Moscow does not have the authority to adopt this decree. Moreover, the federal law on rallies already provides executive authorities with the opportunity to propose to organizers to change the conditions of each specific rally, including reducing the number of participants, if there are legitimate grounds for doing so. A general ban also has a “chilling effect”: the idea of ​​the dangers of mass events becomes entrenched in the mass consciousness.

It is not entirely clear when Sobyanin’s decree should legally come into force. The mayor's decrees on the protection of human rights and freedoms, such as the right to health care, come into force ten days after publication. In any case, it should not concern events announced before the decree came into force.