The burden of the Russian military strike is borne not only by Ukraine, where people are now dying. Putin and the Russian government is also waging war against the rest of the world, against a multitude of values and phenomena – against the self-determination of nations, against independence in any form, against complex democratic societies, against freedom of speech and, finally, against human rights, including the right to life and freedom.
Thus, the European Court of Human Rights decided to suspend consideration of all complaints against Russia. What does it mean?
The lawyer of Memorial and OVD-Info Tatiana Glushkova comments:
So far, we are talking about suspending the consideration of complaints, and not about the fact that complaints will not be considered at all.
It looks like a technical pause that the Court needs to figure out what to do next.
The situation is unprecedented – Russia is no longer a member of the Council of Europe, but complaints against it need to be considered, and there are currently more than 18 thousand of them in the ECHR — and, obviously, there will be more, since complaints about violations committed before March 15, 2022 inclusive, can still be filed.
t is necessary to understand who will work with these cases, because, on the one hand, most lawyers who work with complaints against Russia have Russian citizenship, that is, they are no longer citizens of a member state of the Council of Europe. On the other hand, Russia stopped paying contributions to the Council of Europe, which went, among other things, to ensure the work of these lawyers. It is also not entirely clear on what conditions a judge from Russia will participate in the consideration of cases.
Now the ECHR needs to understand how to work further, after which it will be able to return to the consideration of complaints. To put it briefly, we are not talking about stopping the consideration of complaints — after a while they will continue to be considered.