OVD-Info and Memorial appealed the conflicting rules for approving actions in Yakutsk

OVD-Info and the Memorial Human Rights Center appealed to the Prosecutor General's Office and the Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Sakha in connection with contradictions in the regional rules for coordinating actions in Yakutia.

According to the law of the region , organizers of actions must submit notifications not to municipal authorities, but to regional ones, when the action is planned on the territory of the “historical-architectural, administrative center” of Yakutsk or near buildings where authorities are located.

The specific regional government body that should be notified of such actions is not specified in the law - legislators transferred these powers to the head of the republic. Over the course of ten years, these departments changed five times: in 2007 , 2009 , 2012 , 2016 and 2018 .

In 2018, the authority to coordinate actions was transferred to the republican Ministry of Foreign Relations and People’s Affairs. The Ministry for the Development of Civil Society Institutions of the Republic of Yakutia, which previously performed this function, was disbanded, but the decree requiring notifications to be submitted to it remained in force. As a result, at the time of filing a complaint in Yakutia, two conflicting regulations are in force simultaneously, directing organizers to submit notifications to two different authorities.

The contradictions are complicated by the fact that the laws of Yakutia do not define where the exact boundaries of the territories lie, about actions in which it is necessary to notify regional authorities rather than municipal ones. There is no mention of the possibility of submitting a notification remotely.

“This means that to hold an action at any government authority, for example, the registry office building, the organizer may have to go to the capital of the republic. Submitting a notification to the wrong authority in practice may lead to the fact that the action will not be approved,” lawyers say.

There are other gaps and additional requirements in the law of the republic that complicate the procedure for approving the action. In consultation with municipal authorities, it is not known which level of municipal administration the notification should be submitted to. If the action is planned on the territory of several municipalities, then you will have to submit not one, but several notifications. A similar problem has been identified in 18 regions.

• In April, OVD-Info and Memorial appealed to the Prosecutor General's Office in connection with the contradiction of a number of regional laws on rallies with the federal law. Regional legislators are authorized to establish only the “procedure for filing” notification. Nevertheless, in 5 regions the law included additional requirements for the content of the notification, and in 11 regions - for its execution.
• The violations were revealed during the work on the report "The Art of Ban 2", which shows how regional notification rules make it difficult to coordinate actions. The original data has been published in the public domain.