In Syktyvkar, the court fined two participants in the picket against amendments to the Constitution

On September 29, the Syktyvkar City Court imposed fines of 10,000 rubles on civil activist Grigory Kablis and lawyer of the Public Verdict Foundation Ernest Mezak, who held a mass picket against amendments to the Constitution. This is reported by the "Public verdict" in its telegram channel.

Thus, the court found the activists guilty under the article on participation in an unauthorized public event (part 5 of article 20.2 of the Code of Administrative Offenses). The action took place on June 30 at Stefanovskaya Square, the central square of the city, where the building of the republican administration is located. A few days before, Mezak had filed a notice with the city administration about the upcoming picket.

The mayor's office did not react to the notification in any way, and the activists decided to hold the action, considering it agreed. The day before the event, an announcement appeared on the website of the city administration urging residents not to come to the action, as quarantine measures were introduced in the city due to the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

As a result, three people came to the picket: Ernest Mezak, Grigory Kablis and Vera Tereshonkova. Subsequently, protocols were drawn up for all three of them under Part 5 of Art. 20.2 of the Code of Administrative Offenses. The police, according to the protocols, considered that the activists held not one mass action, but separate single pickets.

At the trial, the lawyer of the Public Verdict, Ernest Mezak, referred to the position of the Constitutional Court of February 14, 2013, according to which the action should be considered approved in the event that “the indicated bodies did not bring to the organizer of the public event a proposal to change the place and (or ) the time of its holding.

The trial in the case of Vera Tereshonkova will take place on October 21.

• In 2019, the ECtHR, in the case Kablis v. Russia, found the law of the Republic of Komi, which established a general ban on rallies on Stefanovskaya Square in Syktyvkar, to be a violation of the right to freedom of assembly, without taking into account the real danger to public safety of each individual event.
• On November 1, 2019, the Constitutional Court of Russia, in its decision in the case of Sedova and Tereshonkova, declared the law of the Republic of Komi on public events unconstitutional. The Republic and a number of other regions received recommendations on changes in legislation, the deadline for implementation is May 1, 2020. For more details, see the report . OVD-info
• Although in the Republic of Komi the amendments to the legislation were introduced late, the current version of the law does not contain information about the possibility of a ban on public events near administrative buildings.