Closed Session of the Constitutional Court and a Counter-protest

Today, 15 March 2016, on the web-site of the Constitutional Court, the notification for tomorrow’s seventh court session was supplemented. According to the notification, the Constitutional Court had decided to keep the session closed for the public. According to Article 83 from the Rules of Procedure of the Constitutional Court – the work of the Court is public. Article 85 stipulates that the public may be excluded if this is required in the interests of country’s security and defence, the protection of state, official or business secrets, for the protection of the public morality and in other justified cases defined by the Court.

We openly urge the President of the Constitutional Court to provide an explanation as to why and in what manner the decision to exclude the public from tomorrow’s session was reached? Bearing in mind that the Constitutional Court, i.e. the majority of judges decide about excluding the public, we ask whether and when a working meeting of the constitutional judges was held in order to determine the existence of justified reasons to close the session and adopt this undemocratic decision, or was it adopted arbitrarily on the part of the President, some of the other judges or Court employees?

We believe that the Constitutional Court may not further proceed with the tendency of non-transparency of the institutions and allow for any other definition of the public monitoring and informing about its work to come in place. We remind that in June 2014 the President of the Constitutional Court adopted an oral decision which banned the media from recording audio and video footage from the sessions of the Constitutional Court. With today’s decision, the Constitutional Court is completely closed to the public, which is contrary to the principles of democracy and rule of law.

At the moment the observers of the Helsinki Committee who are present in front of and in the vicinity of the building of the Constitutional Court inform us that hundreds of citizens have gathered there to sign lists and be given sandwiches and drinks. These citizens’ intention to prevent or hinder the neatly registered peaceful public gatherings in front of the Constitutional Court today and tomorrow is obvious. The Helsinki Committee points out that this kind of counter-protest on this location and at the same time as the already announced protest is impermissible, and in case it is conducted the citizens participating in it risk to commit the crime Preventing or hindering a public gathering according to Article 155 from the Criminal Code. The sanction foreseen for this crime is a fine or imprisonment of up to one year.

We urge all the citizens who have been summoned or have willingly decided to attend the counter-rally to refrain from this activity and express their dissatisfaction at a different location than the one where today’s and tomorrow’s public gatherings are to be held. We appeal to the political parties to refrain from using hate speech on grounds of politics or any other grounds and not to take advantage of the citizens for fulfillment their political interests and goals.