The ECHR found illegal the refusal to register the NGO “Zona Prava”

The European Court of Human Rights found the refusal of the Russian authorities to register the human rights organization “Zona Prava”, which monitors the observance of prisoners’ rights, illegal. The decision is published on the court’s website.

The court in Strasbourg came to the conclusion that the Russian authorities violated the article on the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and the European Convention on Human Rights.

The ECtHR decided to pay seven and a half thousand euros as compensation for moral damage and another two thousand euros as compensation for costs to the applicants in the lawsuit – members of the Pussy Riot group Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, as well as retired FSIN lieutenant colonel Vladimir Rubashny.

In August 2012, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were convicted of hooliganism after the so-called punk prayer “The Virgin, banish Putin!” in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. After being released in December 2013, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina announced that they would engage in human rights activities, in particular, to ensure that the rights of prisoners were respected. They submitted an application for registration of the non-profit organization “Zona Prava” to the Mordovian Department of the Ministry of Justice. They were refused on formal grounds.

Human rights defenders appealed to the court in Moscow. Their claim was rejected, as the court considered that the name of the organization “Zona Prava” does not contain an indication of the nature of its activity. The Ministry of Justice also pointed to violations in the statute of the NGO.

Alyokhina, Tolokonnikova and Rubashny appealed to the European Court of Human Rights back in 2015. Then they argued that the actual claims of the Ministry of Justice are grounds for banning the organization’s activities.