As it follows from the Judgment of the European Court of Human Rights “Borovinskikh and Others v. Russia” of June 12, which was just published, Strasbourg once again recognized the violation of Article 10 of the European Convention of repression in the form of “fines” and “detentions” for “discrediting the Russian army”.
Among the 26 persons repressed in 2022, whose cases the European Court considered in this judgment, 7.5 thousand euros in compensation for application 28789/22 was awarded to Georgiy Semenov, a resident of occupied Simferopol, who on March 6, 2022, went out in the central part of the city for a solitary picket with a poster “No to war”.
The European Court also found violations of his rights to a fair trial and freedom in Semenov’s case, since he was detained by aggressor’s punitive forces for several hours after the picket and “fined” by an illegal court for 35 thousand rubles, and according to a deliberately “formalized” procedure.
With regard to Semenov, the European Court referred to its 2024 judgment in the interstate case “Ukraine v. Russia (on Crimea)”, which recognized “Russian courts” on the occupied peninsula as deliberately illegal.
Let us recall that similar facts were previously established by the European Court in the case of “Novaya Gazeta and Others v. Russia” from February 11, where the ECHR united more than 160 applicants, most of whom are Russians.
But it also included cases of repression of two Crimean women, Susana Bezaziyeva and Anzhelika Kosareva, as well as Kyiv journalist Dmitry Gordon.
As follows from that Court’s decision, Kosareva was “arrested” and “fined” on March 24, 2022 in Simferopol for 30 thousand rubles for the poster “I am for peace”. Bezaziyeva’s case was mentioned in the media, this Dzhankoy teacher was “fined” for the words spoken to pupils on April 13, 2022, that there are no fascists in Ukraine and that the Ukrainian people and children are brutally attacked by Russian soldiers who kill and rape them.
