3 yıl önce

Russia's lawmakers vote to quit European Court of Human Rights

Lower house of parliament approves two bills, which must now be signed by President Putin, seeking to end European court's jurisdiction in the country.

Reuters

Bills were passed nearly unanimously in Duma, with only one deputy from the opposition Communist Party voting against them.

Russia's parliament has passed a pair of bills ending the European Court of Human Rights' jurisdiction in the country, a rupture provoked by Russia's incursion in Ukraine.

The break removes a legal avenue that Russians, including jailed Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny, have used in the past to raise high-profile cases that had been rejected by national courts.

Parliament's lower house, the Duma, approved two bills on Tuesday — one removing the country from the court's jurisdiction and a second setting March 15 as the cut-off point, with rulings against Russia made after that date not to be implemented.

The bills were passed nearly unanimously, with only one deputy from the opposition Communist Party voting against them. They must now be signed by President Vladimir Putin before becoming law.

In 2017, the court ordered Moscow to pay compensation to survivors of a hostage crisis who alleged failings on the part of the security services when they stormed a school seized by militants in 2004.

The siege in the town of Beslan ended in a bloody gun battle in which more than 330 hostages died, including at least 180 children.

In February 2021, the ECHR ruled that Navalny, the country's leading opposition figure, should be released from prison after being jailed on charges he described as politically motivated. Russia described the ECHR's ruling as "unlawful".

EU formally adopts a ban on most oil imports from Russia over Moscow’s war on Ukraine as the Union and UK markets account for around 60 percent of all Russian oil-related purchases, making them the biggest contributors to the country’s military pic.twitter.com/L72s5MNLzj
— TRT World (@trtworld) June 3, 2022

Stripping membership

Russia was admitted to the Council of Europe, which was founded after World War Two to promote human rights and democracy in Europe, under President Boris Yeltsin in 1996. After the 2014 annexation of Crimea, Russia was stripped of its voting rights in the Council's Parliamentary Assembly, which it began to boycott in 2016.

On March 15, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe decided to expel Russia from the organisation, of which the ECHR is part, in response to Russia's deployment of troops to Ukraine in February.

Russia has said that it independently decided to leave the Council of Europe, with former president Dmitry Medvedev saying that Russia's exit from the organisation represented an opportunity to restore the death penalty, which the Council of Europe's rules prohibit.

SOURCE: Reuters