Court in Strasbourg: chanting slogans is not torture

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• The European Court of Human Rights ruled in the case regarding the counterprotest of a rightist Romanian organisation against screening a film promoting the LGBT ideology.

• The Court stated that the government had failed to properly secure the event and to thoroughly investigate the case but it found the allegation that Article 3 of the Convention (Prohibition of torture) was breached unfounded.

• In terms of the allegation regarding Article 3, the position of the ETPC is consistent with the opinion presented in the proceedings by the Ordo Iuris Institute.

The incident took place in 2013. It was then that ACCEPT (a Romanian LGBT organisation) organised a screening of a film dedicated to the “right of same-sex families” in the National Museum of Agriculture in Bucharest, which was to be followed by a discussion on the topic. Several dozen people took part in the event. Some of them came to protest against promoting the LGBT ideology in a national museum. During the screening, a group of activists from the rightist political party “Everything for the Country” took out flags and started to sing national and religious songs and to chant slogans against organising such events in government buildings. The police and the military police secured the place to make sure the event was peaceful. The officers took the details of some participants and the screening was rescheduled. At the second attempt, it proceeded without any disruptions.

Despite that, LGBT activists considered the actions of the police insufficient and they complained to the Prosecution Office, claiming that the rightist activists yelled aggressive slogans during the event. Some of them allegedly included death threats, however this was not confirmed in any testimonies of the officers present on the location. According to the reports prepared by the police and the military police, the protesters only sang and discussed their views with the LGBT activists. The reports fail to mention any violence or threats of violence, and the officers stood by that in their subsequent testimonies, so the prosecution dropped the case because of lack of evidence.

In 2016, ACCEPT and several LGBT activists complained to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, accusing Romania of breaching Article 3 (Prohibition of torture), Article 8 (Right to respect for private and family life), Article 11 (Freedom of assembly and association) and Article 14 (Prohibition of discrimination) of the Convention. According to the claimants, the government did not provide adequate security for the event and it failed to thoroughly investigate it afterwards.

With permission from the Fourth Section of the ECHR, where the complaint was filed, Ordo Iuris filed an amicus curiae, reminding that Article 11 of the Convention also entailed the right to counterprotest, provided that it was done peacefully. The Institute also emphasised that only serious harm can be recognised as torture, inhuman or degrading treatment within the meaning of Article 3 of the ECHR. It is obvious that the authorities are obligated to thoroughly investigate any suspicions of criminal threats but this does not mean that the investigation must always end with an indictment. After all, the suspicions can turn out unfounded due to absence of hard evidence.  If this happens, there is no breach of Article 3 of the Convention.

The case ended once the Court in Strasbourg entered judgment, partially agreeing with the Institute’s opinion. The ECHR did not believe the testimonies of the police and the military police officers, seeing more credibility in the statements of the LGBT activists, who claimed that the singing during the film was accompanied by aggressive slogans. This is why it found Articles 8 and 14 to have been breached. Nonetheless, the Court decided that Article 3 of the Convention had not been breached because it was hard to state that the claimants were traumatised because the film had been disrupted by hostile protesters, who had not committed any violence but only yelled various slogans.

“The ruling of the Court is essentially favourable because it definitively rejected the radical and bizarre allegation of the LGBT activists that the counterprotest against the promotion of their beliefs in a national museum is the torture prohibited under Article 3 of the Convention. The Court ruled in favour of the remainder of the claim but in this case we are unable to determine which side was right without analysing the files. It is hard to say if the rightist activists limited themselves to signing songs and waving flags or if they actually resorted to criminal threats; if the latter happened, this of course deserves condemnation. Nevertheless, it is strange that the Court recognised the version of events presented by the LGBT activists as credible and true beyond doubt and it ignored the version of the police and military police officers present on the site,” Anna Kubacka from the Ordo Iuris Center of International Law concluded.

Case Association ACCEPT and Others v. Romania, ETPC judgment of 01 June 2021