Euroopa Inimõiguste Kohus
07.06.2022
Facts
The case concerned various actions taken by the State against Jehovah’s Witnesses religious organisations in Russia over 10 years, including a requirement to re-register, amendments to anti-extremist legislation leading to the banning of their religious literature and international website and the revocation of their permit to distribute religious magazines, and eventually to a nation-wide ban on Jehovah’s Witnesses religious organisations in Russia, the criminal prosecution of hundreds of individual Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the confiscation of their property.
Complaint
The applicants, among other things, complained that the decision to declare the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ international website “extremist” had no basis in Russian law and was not necessary in a democratic society. They relied on Articles 9 and 10 of the Convention.
Court’s ruling
The declaration of an extremist nature of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ international website interfered with the applicant’s right to impart information to individual Jehovah’s Witnesses and other interested persons in Russia. Since the affected material was of a religious nature, the interference must also be examined considering the requirements of Article 9 of the Convention.
The Court reiterated that the answer to the question of whether an applicant can claim to be a victim of a measure blocking access to a website depends on an assessment of all circumstances of each case, in particular the way in which the person concerned uses the website and the potential impact of the measure. For the applicants having various types of perceptive limitations, such as a visual or hearing impairment, the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ website was the only accessible source of downloadable religious materials addressing their specific needs.
Russian law contained no procedural safeguards capable of protecting website owners from arbitrary interference. It did not provide for any form of their participation in the blocking proceedings and did not allow them to remove the offending content before the blocking decision takes effect. Nor did it require the authorities to assess the impact of the blocking measure, to justify the necessity and proportionality of the interference with the freedom of expression online, and to ascertain that the blocking measure strictly targets the unlawful content and has no arbitrary or excessive effects, including those arising from blocking access to the entire website. Moreover, the authorities failed to distinguish between lawful and unlawful information that a website may contain.
The Court ruled that the interference was not “prescribed by law” and was not “necessary in a democratic society”, there has been a violation of Article 10 of the Convention, read in the light of Article 9, on account of the declaration of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ international website “extremist”.