Press Release, 21.03.2022

Photo: Yaroslav Shcherbakov and Vasily Moskovets / Photo from social networks

Yaroslav Shcherbakov, Chairman of the Chelyabinsk regional branch of the Yabloko party, and human rights activist Vasily Moskovets filed a lawsuit with the Chelyabinsk regional court demanding that the regional government must lift the ban on holding public events in the region, it imposed during the start of the “special military operation” in Ukraine referring to the coronavirus epidemic.

According to Yaroslav Shcherbakov, the introduction of this ban was a sly thing, since it did not affect the activities and mass events carried out by the executive authorities. At the same time, its introduction coincided with a decrease in the coronavirus incidence rate and the abolition of a number of other restrictions in force in the Chelyabinsk region, for example, mandatory QR codes and ban on the mass indoor events.

“Peaceful assembly is the same inalienable constitutional right as the right to life, movement, freedom of thought and speech, which we are now losing. For those who do not care for the right to assembly as they do not use it, I will say that any other right or freedom recorded in Chapter 2 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, may be abolished in the same way as this right, without any objective reasons, to which we have already become accustomed,” Yaroslav Shcherbakov noted.

On 18 March, the government of the Chelyabinsk region, like the authorities of other Russian regions, held mass events dedicated to the annexation of Crimea to Russia despite the current ban. On this day, the threat of the spread of a new coronavirus infection in the Chelyabinsk region ceased to exist for the organisers and participants of these actions.