On April 11 and
12, two Democratic Alliance activists were jailed for their part in
an entirely peaceful protest which the Vyshhorod District Court deemed
“unauthorized.”
More
precisely over two protests since Maxim Panov was sentenced on April 11
to seven
days imprisonment over the initial gathering on April 11. Vasyl Hatsko
was one of the activists who
arrived at the court on April 12 to protest against this move. Three
others were also detained. The five-day jail sentence was presumably
because Hatsko had already been fined for his part in the peaceful
protest on April 10. The court, we are supposed to
understand, showed lenience in passing sentence given that Hatsko has two
small
sons.
On April
11, four Democratic Alliance activists and a TVi film crew had gone to the village
of Novi Petrivtsi near Yanukovych’s sumptuous and highly controversial estate, Mezhyhirya.
The Democratic Alliance had announced plans to hold a protest against what
they see as the pillaging of public funding earmarked for improving roads by
the head of the relevant body. It is the president who appoints this person and
the post is in fact now vacant since Volodymyr Demishkan, a close associate of Viktor Yanukovych, became a
Party of the Regions member of parliament last year.
A ban was
swiftly sought by the Novi Petrivtsi Council and promptly provided. The reason
cited was that the protest would obstruct measures to bring a spring flood
under control.
The TV crew
and activists accordingly arrived to view and help efforts to contain damage
caused by this flood. They found
nothing to contain since there was no flood, just a considerable contingent of
police and Berkut riot police officers.
The TVi team was grilled and the activists detained. The activists were accused of infringing the
rules for holding a gathering, and of disobeying a police officer.
Ukraine’s Constitution is
clear that restrictions on peaceful assembly are possible “only in the interests of national security and
public order, with the purpose of preventing disturbances or crimes, protecting
the health of the population, or protecting the rights and freedoms of other
persons. “
Now you can’t object to bans on public meetings during
a flood – or any other natural disaster.
If they happen, that is. A
situation where peaceful protests can be banned because of a purely conceivable
disaster or terrorist threat makes a mockery of freedom of peaceful
assembly.
June 2010 was, incidentally, memorable for another
reason. In a television broadcast
Yanukovych promised journalists to show them Mezhyhirya, the former state residence, now effectively, privatized.
Aside from one orchestrated performance in 2011 where
carefully selected journalists were shown only what they were allowed to see
and didn’t ask uncomfortable questions, the promise has yet to be kept.
The head of the Novi Petrivtsi Council and courts have
been proactive in preventing journalists from reminding the President of his
assurance back in June 2010. The civic movement Stop Censorship’s planned peaceful
action outside Mezhyhirya on 6 June 2011 was banned. As well as asserting that the “principle of
timely notification had been infringed” Judge Panova also argued that
restriction of the constitutional right to freedom of peaceful assembly was
warranted in view of the “constitutional principles of defence of the human right
to a personal life and its
inviolability, the right to rest outside working hours”, with the peaceful
protest allegedly infringing President Yanukovych’s
right to privacy.
Judge Panova’s
novel position was upheld
by the Kyiv Court of Appeal which, for understandable if unconstitutional
reasons preferred to not notify the Stop Censorship plaintiffs of the scheduled
court hearing.
In June
2012, the Kyiv
District Administrative Court banned
a peaceful action. Stop Censorship journalists
were planning to present “Kyiv. Map of Corruption,” a map for tourists highlighting places
linked with high-profile corruption investigations, these including Mezhyhirya.
On that occasion no grounds for the ban were made
public, for obvious reasons, if you
think about it.
Halya Coynash is a member of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.
