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Zhdanov and Others v. Russia (application nos. 12200/08, 35949/11 and 58282/12)
The European Court of Human Rights has found in Zhdanov and Others v. Russia (application nos. 12200/08, 35949/11 and 58282/12) to register the applicant organisations – and thereby obtain legal-entity status – because they promoted LGBT rights had been in violation of Articles 11 (freedom of assembly and association) and 14 (prohibition of discrimination) of the European Convention on Human Rights. In the Court’s view this decisive ground for the refusals could not be reasonably or objectively justified and had, moreover, amounted to discrimination on the grounds of sexualorientation.
In reaching this conclusion, the Court took account of the third party intervention prepared by Jeremy McBride on behalf of the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre (EHRAC), the European Region of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA-Europe) and the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ).
The judgment is also interesting for the ruling decided, by a majority of the Court, to declare inadmissible the complaints lodged by one of the applicants, namely the well-known LGBT activist Nikolay Alekseyev, as an abuse of the right of application because of his offensive and threatening statements about the Court and its judges on social networking accounts
To view the judgment, please click here.