Press Release, 29.11.2019

A picket was held by the entrance to the Kaliningrad Regional Duma, which in 2012 imposed restrictions on the holding of peaceful meetings. Its organiser was the regional branch of the Yabloko party and Yabloko managed to get a permission from the authorities for this picket. Earlier Yabloko had submitted relevant appeals to the regional parliament and the Public Prosecutor’s Office in the Kaliningrad region.

The protesters demanded that United Russia deputies cancel the extensive list restricting the venues for pickets and rallies, and bring the regional law on rallies in line with the decision of the Constitutional Court.

The picket passed without any incidents. Moreover, Tatyana Tumankina, the deputy of the City Council, and Mikhail Chesalin, deputy of the Regional Duma, joined the picket. The latter undertook to submit to the Duma Council a draft new bill prepared by the Kaliningrad branch of Yabloko.

During the picket, deputies from United Russia invited Viktor Gorbunov, the organiser of the picket and member of the Yabloko party’s Regional Council, to clarify the position of the protesters.

At the end of the event, the picketers decided to continue public pressure on United Russia until it makes the regional legislation in the field of protection of freedom of assembly in line with the Russian Constitution.

It should be noted that Yabloko has been campaigning for liberalisation of regional laws on rallies. Yabloko’s regional branches in the Nizhny Novgorod, Orenburg, Chelyabinsk, Kaliningrad and Tula regions, and the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic sent appeals to the parliaments of their regions with a request to expand the list of places allowed for public mass events. Thus, Yabloko calls the regional parliaments to eliminated contradictions of regional laws on rallies with the Russian Constitution.

In addition, Lev Shlosberg and Arthur Gaiduk, deputies of the Pskov Regional Assembly from the Yabloko party, submitted to the regional parliament a draft law “On Amending Article 5 of the Law of the Pskov Region “On the Regulation of Certain Issues of Holding Public Events in the Pskov Region”. They indicated in the explanatory note to the bill that the bell had been prepared in order to bring the regional legislation in line with the Constitution of the Russian Federation.

The basis for the appeals of the regional branches of Yabloko to the parliaments of their regions was the adoption of a decision of the Constitutional Court, which actually prohibits the regional authorities from refusing citizens to hold public rallies on the grounds of proximity of rallies to public buildings, obstruction of transport or the difficulty of access to social institutions. The Kaliningrad region was also among 44 constituent entities of the Russian Federation that violated the norms of direct effect of the basic law of Russia.