Short after the summer holidays 2024 Strasbourg Observers published our blog summarising, analysing and commenting the Strasbourg Court’s judgment in Sokolovskiy v. Russia. In its judgment of the 4^th June 2024 the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) dealt with the issue of religious hate speech as a criminal offence interfering with the right to freedom of expression and information under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The ECtHR found that the sanctions imposed on a Russian blogger for offending the feelings of religious believers and inciting hatred toward a social group in a series of video messages had breached the blogger’s right to freedom of expression. The ECtHR ruled unanimously that the criminal prosecution and conviction of the blogger constituted a disproportionate interference that was not necessary in a democratic society, as the interferences with the blogger’s right were not pertinently justified by the domestic judicial authorities. The ECtHR confirmed, but not without some ambiguity, that prohibitions on ‘religious insult’ to protect the ‘feelings’ of religious believers through the criminal law, are incompatible with Article 10 ECHR where there is no incitement to hatred, discrimination, hostility or violence.

Blog on Strasbourg Observers and  the third-party intervention by Article 19 and the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University