CASE OF CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY OF ST PETERSBURG AND OTHERS v. RUSSIA
Violation of Article 9 - Freedom of thought conscience and religion (Article 9-1 - Freedom of religion) read in the light of Article 11 - (Art. 11) Freedom of assembly and association (Article 11-1 - Freedom of association)
Dmitry Dedov;Erik Møse;Isabelle Berro-Lefèvre;Julia Laffranque;Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos;Paulo Pinto De Albuquerque;Ksenija Turković
5. The applicants are: The Church of Scientology of St Petersburg, an unincorporated group of Russian citizens formed for the collective study of Scientology (“the applicant group”); Ms Galina Petrovna Shurinova, born in 1954, the president of the applicant group and a member since 1989; Ms Nadezhda Ivanovna Shchemeleva, born in 1955, a member of the applicant group since 1993; Ms Anastasiya Gennadyevna Terentyeva, born in 1979, a member of the applicant group since 1998; Mr Ivan Vladimirovich Matsitskiy, born in 1975, a member of the applicant group since 1994; Ms Yuliya Anatolyevna Bryntseva, born in 1977, a member of the applicant group since 1995; Ms Galina Georgiyevna Frolova, born in 1955, a member of the applicant group since 1999. 6. In 1984, a first group of Scientologists appeared in St Petersburg under the leadership of Mr M. Goldberg. By the end of the 1980s it had split into two smaller groups, one of which was led by the second applicant. 7. On 23 March 1995 the second applicant, together with nine other founder members of the “Church of the Scientology Mission in St Petersburg”, applied for registration of their group. Having received no response for more than two years, the second applicant pressed the authorities for an explanation. The St Petersburg Justice Department replied that their application had been sent to the State Duma’s Expert Consultative Council for an opinion by an expert in legal and religious studies but had received no response, and it had been decided to “leave the application unconsidered”. 8. On 7 February 2002 the individual applicants, together with other fellow believers, submitted a new application for registration of the applicant group as a local religious organisation. The municipal council of municipal circuit no. 20 of St Petersburg provided the applicants with a letter which stated: “In accordance with section 11 (5) of the Religions Act and on the basis of the application and documents provided, the municipal council ... confirms that the religious group of Scientologists has existed in St Petersburg since 1984.” 9. On 6 March 2002 the St Petersburg Justice Department refused the application, citing three technical grounds relating to the application documentation. On 7 March 2002 the applicants corrected these defects and resubmitted the application. 10. On 3 April 2002 the Justice Department notified the applicants that it had extended the period for consideration of the application because of the “necessity of conducting a State expert religious study”. 11. On 11 September 2002 the Justice Department issued a formal refusal of the resubmitted application. The refusal made no reference to any religious study but instead cited eight different technical grounds and asserted that the confirmation of the applicant group’s existence in St Petersburg for at least fifteen years was “unreliable”, without giving further details. 12. On 24 October 2002 the applicants resubmitted a corrected application which was refused on 22 November 2002, referring to the eight new technical grounds and the “unreliability” of the group’s existence for fifteen years. It also stated that an unspecified expert religious study had concluded that the applicant group was non-religious in nature. 13. On 19 December 2002 the second applicant asked the Justice Department to explain the basis for its claim regarding the “unreliability” of the group’s existence and to provide her with a copy of the religious study. In a letter of 8 January 2003, the Justice Department declined to give any clarification, referring to its discretionary power to refuse applications. 14. The third applicant complained to the Ombudsman about the Justice Department’s actions. In response to a subsequent enquiry from the Ombudsman’s office, the Justice Department supplied a copy of the religious study, dated 19 November 2002 and authored by Mr I., an academic secretary at the State Museum of the History of Religion in St Petersburg. 15. On 11 February 2003 the Ombudsman notified the head of the Justice Department that the religious study had breached the established procedure for conducting religious studies, as approved by Government Regulation no. 565. The study had not been approved by majority vote of the panel of experts duly appointed under the terms of the Regulation and therefore reflected nothing more than Mr I.’s personal opinion. 16. On 17 April and 14 August 2003 the applicants submitted a fifth and a sixth registration application, which were refused on 14 May and 8 September 2003 respectively. On each occasion, the Justice Department cited a number of new technical grounds that it had not relied upon in the previous refusal: it also referred to the expert religious study and the assertion that the confirmation of the applicant group’s existence for at least fifteen years had been “unreliable”. 17. Responding to a further request for clarification by the applicant Ms Shurinova, on 31 July 2003 the Justice Department stated that she did not have a right of access to the documents supporting the conclusion that the information purportedly confirming the existence of the religious group for fifteen years was unreliable, and that the law did not require it to provide any explanation as to the reasons for refusing State registration. 18. On 11 October 2003 the applicants challenged the Justice Department’s refusals in court. The first hearing on the merits was held on 21 September 2005, and further hearings were held on 1 November and 20 December 2005. 19. On the latter date the Oktyabrskiy District Court of St Petersburg gave judgment, holding that the refusal had been lawful. In respect of the Justice Department’s rejection of the confirmation letter, it stated: “Having examined the letter of 16 February 2002 and the reply from the municipal council to the enquiry from the [Justice Department] concerning the documents that served as the basis for the letter, the court concludes that the applicants have not supplied evidence that there was only one religious group of Scientologists in St Petersburg that included the applicants and that the letter was given to their particular group. One cannot exclude the possibility that there were many groups practising this creed in St Petersburg and that the letter confirms the existence of one of the [other] groups of Scientologists, and not the religious group of Scientologists that decided to create the local religious organisation ‘Church of Scientology of St Petersburg’... Even if any of the participants in the religious group that currently includes the applicants had studied Scientology in St Petersburg since 1984 and had participated in Scientologist rituals and ceremonies and in auditing, that does not prove that he or she did so within one and the same continuously operating, stable religious group that currently includes the applicants, as opposed to some other group that currently does or does not exist, and [later] ended up forming part of the applicants’ group. In addition, the court takes into consideration the following. The St Petersburg Law no. 111-35 of 23 June 1997 on Local Authorities, which establishes an exhaustive list of matters that come within the competence of municipal councils in St Petersburg (section 8), did not place the registration of religious organisation or the issuing of letters confirming the existence of a religious group in St Petersburg within the competence of municipal bodies. There is no St Petersburg law that confers such powers upon municipal bodies. On the basis of the above, it follows that the [municipal council] was not competent to issue such letters. Furthermore, as can be seen from the municipal council’s reply ... to the court’s enquiry, the [municipal council] was formed on 8 February 1998 and registered by order no. 111 of 27 May 1998 of the Legislative Assembly of St Petersburg, so it cannot reliably confirm the existence of any religious group before its formation in 1998...” 20. As to the Justice Department’s reliance on Mr I.’s religious study, the court noted that at the time of the study’s preparation no expert panel had been appointed in St Petersburg under the terms of the Regulation, even though the Justice Department had “undertaken all possible measures” to comply with the Regulation. The court did not make any assessment of the legal significance of Mr I.’s religious study. 21. The applicants appealed. 22. On 24 May 2006 the St Petersburg City Court rejected their appeal, endorsing the first-instance court’s findings that the municipal council was not authorised by law to provide confirmation of the religious group’s existence or the claim that it had been one and the same group of Scientologists who had existed for fifteen years.