Sun will consider a complaint about the ban on mass events due to coronavirus
Members of the St. Petersburg City Committee of the Communist Party of the Communist Party appealed to the Supreme Court (Sun) with a complaint about the decisions of three lower instances, who refused to consider the claim for the removal of coronaviral restrictions introduced by Smolny back in 2020. The Communists believe that the epidemic situation in the city has been fundamentally changed since then, so the question of prohibition of mass events must be studied again.
The complaint in the Armed Forces was filed by the secretaries of the St. Petersburg branch of the Lenin Communist Union of Youth Alexander Rogozhkin and Vladislav Karlov. In May 2024, they tried to hold a rally on the Marse Field in order to “attract public attention to the problem of justification and rehabilitation of the ideology of Nazism,” but they were abandoned by the administration of the Central District. Officials referred to the Smolny resolution of March 13, 2020, to which the conduct of mass events in St. Petersburg was temporarily suspended due to the spread of Covid-19.
The city court, in which the Communists requested that this decision terminated this decision, terminated the proceedings, because he considered that this issue was previously considered twice – in 2020 and 2023 and refusals for appropriate cases entered into legal force. The second appeal and third cassation courts of general jurisdiction came to a similar conclusion. However, gentlemen Rogozhkin and Karlov insist that previous decisions were made « in a significantly different epidemiological situation. »
As Kommersant explained, Alexander Rogozhkin, the incidence has since declined at times, which confirms official statistics, and even the World Health Association recognized the pandemic completed.
The communist added that the plaintiffs who went to court earlier tried to take events of a different sense – not a political, but a religious nature. Finally, Mr. Rogozhkin called the “special basis” the consideration of the case against the background of the campaign for the election of the governor and municipal deputies in the summer of 2024. In his opinion, due to the ban, participants in the elected race were actually « deprived of the opportunity to conduct campaigning. »
Recall that in December 2024, the governor of St. Petersburg Alexander Beglov extended the action of anti-icing measures for a year until the end of 2025. They include a ban on holding public, sports and spectacular events involving more than 300 people. In March, in Smolny it was explained that the refusal of the federal operational headquarters to publish data on the incidence of the Covid-19, which was associated with the “stabilization of the epidemiological situation” and the transition of the virus to the category of “seasonal diseases”, is not the basis for the abolition of restrictions. For this, the prescription of the chief sanitary doctor in St. Petersburg is necessary, officials said.
The electoral lawyer Oleg Zakharov believes that the Communists have a chance to return the case to the city court, since « times have changed, the pandemic has passed and the refusal of the courts to evaluate the legality of the rallies is already irrelevant »: « So, it is possible to consider the issue on the merits. »
According to the expert, the authorities use anti -icing measures to reduce opposition activity, but « extraordinary rules » should be canceled with the departure of the reasons that caused them. However, we are not talking about the abolition of restrictions yet, Mr. Zakharov emphasized: “From a procedural point of view, the Armed Forces cannot consider the issue on the merits and cancel them, recognizing the right of parties to rallies in the northern capital. For this, it is still necessary to consider the case in the St. Petersburg court, taking into account local laws and realities. ”
