The Weekly Round-Up: Navalny dies, a Right to Encryption, Rwanda Safety Bill questioned by Human Rights Committee
19 February 2024
In the News
Russia’s state prison service released a public statement on Friday reporting that opposition leader and vocal Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has died in prison. Russian authorities are reportedly refusing to release the body, raising questions about the manner of his death. Navalny was sentenced in 2023 to 19 years imprisonment on a plethora of extremism charges, which he was serving in the Polar Wolf penal colony in the Arctic Circle. Lord Cameron, Foreign Secretary, said to broadcasters at the Munich Security Conference that ‘we should hold Putin accountable for this. And no one should be in any doubt about the dreadful nature of Putin’s regime in Russia after what has just happened’, while UK Security Minister Tom Tugendhat, in a post on X (formerly Twitter), has directly accused Vladimir Putin of murdering Navalny in order to silence him. Multiple judgments have been previously issued by the European Court of Human Rights finding that Navalny’s rights to fair trial, liberty and security, and freedoms of expression and association had been violated by Russian authorities.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) published a report on Monday analysing the proposed Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill, originally drafted to circumvent the Supreme Court’s finding that Rwanda was not a safe third country for refugees. The Parliamentary committee have declared that ‘the Bill does not comply with the UK’s human rights obligations’, since by preventing legal challenge as to the safety of Rwanda, the Bill denies access to the court and effective remedy in breach of Article 13 ECHR. The Chair of the JCHR, Joanna Cherry MP, stated that ‘hostility to human rights is at the heart [of the Bill] and no amendments can salvage it. […] If a policy is sound, it should be able to withstand judicial scrutiny, not run away from it’. The Constitutional Committee of the House of Lords also published a report on the Bill on Monday, inviting the House to consider the possibility that the Bill risks ‘undermining the universal application of human rights’ and stating that it creates ‘considerable constitutional concern’. The Home Office have announced a pause on processing asylum claims for a large group of refugees ‘in scope’ for removal to Rwanda until the Safety Bill receives royal assent.
On Friday, lawmakers in Greece passed a bill recognising same-sex marriage and allowing same-sex couples to adopt children. Taking effect upon being published in the Government Gazette, the new law means Greece has now become both the first majority-Orthodox Christian country and first country in south-eastern Europe to achieve marriage equality. 176 out of 254 of the MPs voting were in favour of the bill following intense debate both within Parliament and wider society. Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Prime Minister, announced that this new law would ‘boldly abolish a serious inequality’.
In UK Courts
The High Court have set dates next week for Julian Assange’s final application for appeal against extradition back to the US after five years at HMP Belmarsh. The case is due to commence on Tuesday at the Royal Courts of Justice and will determine whether he has reached the end of his prolonged campaign in the British courts to resist extradition; should the application for appeal be successful, the case will be heard in full at a later date. Former Home Secretary Priti Patel issued an order in June 2022 for the immediate commencement of Assange’s extradition once all legal avenues had been exhausted, which will be challenged before the court this coming week. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture published a statement last week imploring the UK Government to halt the imminent extradition on the grounds of ‘substantial fear’ that Assange could be subjected to ‘treatment amounting to torture’ if extradited. Assange’s legal team have also lodged an application for interim measures with the ECtHR. A group of 38 law professors in the US wrote a letter to the Department of Justice last Wednesday urging the US to end its efforts to extradite Assange, and to drop the charges against him on the basis that they violate his First Amendment right and would endanger the freedom of the press.
A teenage asylum seeker from Iran, who risks deportation after arriving as an unaccompanied minor on a small boat, has been granted permission from the High Court in Belfast to challenge the legality of the Illegal Migration Act. Humphreys J held there was an arguable case that parts of the Act may be incompatible with Article 2 of the Windsor Framework, a post-Brexit measure ensuring that the UK does not erode the human rights protected within the Good Friday Agreement. The judge also accepted that the bar was met to argue breach of his rights under the ECHR. The judicial review is due to be heard next month. This challenge comes in addition to the announcement last October that the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission are also launching a claim similarly contesting that the Act is in violation of the Windsor Framework.
At the European Court of Human Rights
Laws requiring the creation of backdoors to bypass end-to-end encryption violate the right to privacy, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in a judgment published last Tuesday. The case was originally launched in 2017 challenging a statutory obligation in Russia for ‘internet communication providers’ to provide the Federal Security Service with the tools to decrypt their users’ messages. The blanket obligation, in the absence of any qualifications or safeguards, was found to be a disproportionate measure. The Court stated in judgment that ‘in so far as this legislation permits the public authorities to have access, on a generalised basis and without sufficient safeguards, to the content of electronic communications, it impairs the very essence of the right to respect for private life under Article 8 of the Convention.’ Since Russia ceased to be party to the ECHR following the invasion of Ukraine, the decision is unlikely to have much local impact. However, it may have vital implications elsewhere, including the UK. The Online Safety Act, which entered into law last October, permits Ofcom to compel communication providers to scan their users’ messages for illegal material – raising concerns that this provision functionally bans end-to-end encryption.
On Tuesday, Belgian bans on halal and kosher slaughter were found not to breach the ECHR. It was contended that regional rules in Flanders and Wallonia which, in effect, required stunning before the slaughter of animals and therefore prohibited the production of halal and kosher meat, violated the applicants’ freedom of religion. The European Court of Human Rights disagreed, holding that the rules were proportionate to the aim of protecting animal welfare as an aspect of public morals. The President of the Belgian Federation of Jewish Organisations told POLITICO that the ECHR had essentially decided that protecting animal welfare ‘trumped the rights of minorities’. The judgment is consistent with a decision of the EU’s highest court in 2020 that the bans struck a ‘fair balance’ between animal welfare concerns and the rights of Belgian Muslim and Jewish groups. Rosalind English covered the judgment in more detail earlier this week here on the blog.
