Three Hyde parks were returned to residents of the Chelyabinsk region

The Seventh Court of Cassation of General Jurisdiction in Chelyabinsk rejected the complaints of the government and the prosecutor, who asked for the liquidation of three Hyde Parks. This was announced by the chairman of the local branch of the party "Yabloko" Yaroslav Shcherbakov in his telegram channel.

Earlier, the authorities removed from the list of places where it is allowed to hold rallies without approval, three sites - the square on Aloe Pole, the summer stage in Gagarin Park and the square near the Kolyushchenko Palace of Culture. However, the Second Court of Appeal in St. Petersburg overturned the decision to expel them. Now this decision was approved in cassation.

“It can already be said that we have created an important judicial precedent: Hyde parks cannot be canceled without justification. In Chelyabinsk, this was done simply on the basis of unmotivated requests from the mayor of the city and the head of the regional police. According to the court, this violates the constitutional principle of trust in the law and the actions of public authorities, which consists in the inadmissibility of making arbitrary changes,” Shcherbakov wrote.

• OVD-Info lawyer Maria Chashchilova noted that after the mass protests in June 2012, the rally legislation was subject to changes, which were most often of a prohibitive nature. However, there was one exception: the authorities decided that platforms should appear in all settlements for “collective discussion of socially significant issues and expression of mass sentiments.” In the media, they began to call them “Hyde Parks”.