6/17/21
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has welcomed a decision by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to accept, on a priority basis, the legal case that the Moscow bureau of the broadcaster brought to it last month against the Russian government. RFE/RL said in a statement on June 17 that the decision, taken by the Strasbourg-based court a day earlier, has now also been formally communicated to the government of Russia. The ECHR’s decision to grant “priority” status -- which it reserves for the most important, serious, and urgent cases -- within a month of its filing means that the case will likely proceed more quickly than ordinary cases. The Russian government has until October 5 to submit its response in the case to the ECHR, the international court of the Council of Europe, Europe’s main human rights forum. In their legal filing, RFE/RL and Andrey Shary, the general director of RFE/RL's Russian operations, are challenging Russia’s “foreign agent” laws, which have resulted in fines worth millions of dollars being imposed on them since January. The law mandates that RFE/RL label itself a “foreign agent,” a term that in Russian, RFE/RL says, connotes that it is an enemy of the state. The label must be placed on all of its media content in the country or severe financial, and potentially criminal, punishment could be levied.
In addition, it says that left unchecked, Russia’s campaign of imposing severe punishments on RFE/RL over its stand on labeling its content will have a "profound chilling effect" on what is left of the country’s independent media. In recent weeks, Russia has already added independent media outlets such as the Latvian-based Meduza, Moscow-based First Anti-Corruption Media (PASMI), and Netherlands-based VTimes.io to its list of “foreign agents.” VTimes closed its operations on June 12 due to the designation, saying it made the venture economically unviable. “The clear intent of the Kremlin’s campaign against RFE/RL and other independent media in Russia is to force these outlets to either abandon freedom of speech and journalistic integrity, or to abandon the profession," RFE/RL President Jamie Fly said in the statement. "Given the imminent risk of irreparable harm to RFE/RL’s operations in Russia and the importance of the issue of information choice for the Russian people, we welcome the fact that the European Court of Human Rights has given the case priority,” he added.
