European Court: Lithuania Should Have Provided Civilian Service Alternative To Jehovah's Witness

In Teliatnikov v. Lithuania, (ECHR, June 7, 2022), the European Court of Human Rights in a Chamber Judgment held that Lithuania violated Article 9 (freedom of thought, conscience and religion) of the European Convention On Human Rights when it refused to grant a Jehovah's Witness deacon alternative service under civilian control. The petitioner has religious objections to military service or any alternative service controlled, supervised or directed in any way by the military, or which supports military activity. Lithuania only provides alternative national defense service under military supervision. The court concluded:

the Court finds that the system in Lithuania failed to strike a fair balance between the interests of society and those of the applicant who has deeply and genuinely held beliefs.

The court also issued a press release summarizing the decision.

European Court Says Lithuania Should Have Recognized Pagan Group

In Ancient Baltic Religious Association of  Romuva v. Lithuania, (ECHR, June 8, 2021), the European Court of Human Rights in a Chamber Judgment held that the Lithuanian Parliament (Seimas) violated Articles 9, 13 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights when it refused to grant the status of a State‑recognized religious association to Romuva.  Romuva is a community following traditional Baltic pagan beliefs. The court noted that the Lithuanian Bishops Conference opposed recognition of Romuva.  The court concluded:

The Court has repeatedly emphasized that maintaining true religious pluralism is vital to the survival of a democratic society .... The role of the authorities is not to remove the cause of tension by eliminating pluralism, but to ensure that the competing groups tolerate each other....

... [W]hen refusing to grant State recognition to the applicant association, the State authorities did not provide a reasonable and objective justification for treating the applicant association differently from other religious associations that had been in a relevantly similar situation, and the members of the Seimas who voted against the granting of State recognition did not remain neutral and impartial in exercising their regulatory powers.

The Wild Hunt reports on the decision.

European Court Says Psychiatric Patient's Religious Rights Were Infringed

In a Chamber Judgment in Mockute v. Lithuania, (ECHR, Feb. 27, 2018), the European Court of Human Rights held that a Lithuanian woman's privacy and religious exercise rights were violated by the psychiatric hospital to which she had been admitted.  The facts were summarized by the dissenting opinion:

In 2003 the applicant, who at the time was 30 years old and had a long history of mental problems, after a mental breakdown was forcibly placed in a psychiatric hospital, where she spent 52 days. While being held there, psychiatrists disclosed information about the applicant's health and private life to a journalist as well as information about her health and treatment to her mother. In a subsequent television programme, parts of this information were released. The applicant furthermore claimed that the regime at the psychiatric hospital did not allow her to practise the religion of the Ojas Meditation Centre, the Lithuanian branch of the Osho religious movement, and that the psychiatrists had worked on her to convince her to be critical of her non-traditional religion.

The court held by a unanimous vote that her privacy rights under the European Convention on Human Rights were violated, and by a vote of 5-2 that her religious exercise rights were infringed.  The Court's press release on the case describes the holding on religious freedom:

[T]wo factors were decisive in concluding that there had been an interference with her right to freedom of religion. First, she had been held unlawfully at the hospital for more than 50 days and had for the most part been under a very strict regime, such that she had been unable either to practise meditation or to visit the Osjo Meditation Centre. Second, the doctors had tried to “correct” her to persuade her to abandon her religion, which they considered as “fictitious”, and she had felt constrained to obey them, even on pain of receiving a diagnosis which would have made her unemployable.

Law & Religion UK has more on the decision.

European Court Upholds Company's Religiously Objectionable Ads

In Case of Sekmadienis Ltd. v. Lithuania, (ECHR, Jan. 30, 2018), the European Court of Human Rights in a Chamber Judgment held that Lithuania's State Consumer Rights Protection Authority violated a clothing company's freedom of expression when it imposed a fine because of a series of the company's ads that were seen as offending Christians. The Economist, reporting on the decision, described the ads:

The case refers to a Kalinkin campaign in 2012 which featured a bare-chested young man and a woman, both with halos: the man was sporting jeans and tattoos, and the female figure wore a white dress with a string of beads. The captions consisted of lines such as: “Jesus, what trousers!”, “Dear Mary, what a dress!” and “Jesus, Mary, what are you wearing?”

The European Court concluded that Lithuanian courts "failed to strike a fair balance between, on the one hand, the protection of public morals and the rights of religious people, and, on the other hand, the applicant company’s right to freedom of expression."  The Court issued a press release summarizing the decision. Chamber judgments may be appealed to the Grand Chamber.

Lithuanian Court Invalidates Jewish Community Election

JTA reports on a  Dec. 21 decision (full text in Lithuanian) by Lithuania's Vilnius District Court invalidating an election for president of the umbrella group, Jewish Community of Lithuania ("LBZ").  The lawsuit filed by the Vilnius Jewish Community challenges a change in voting rules adopted by LBZ's board in the middle of the campaign.  The change disenfranchised 2,200 members of the Vilnius Jewish Community and resulted in the re-election of Faina Kukliansky.  LBZ had earlier attempted to invalidate an election of an opponent of Kukliansky as head of the Vilnius Jewish Community.  LBZ criticized the Vilnius election, contending that Vilnius voters were "mainly Russian speakers calling themselves Jews, with only a minority of people with Litvak blood."

European Court Reverses Genocide Conviction For Killing of Lithuanian Partisans

In Vasiliauskas v. Lithuania, (ECHR, Oct. 20, 2015), the European Court of Human Rights in a 9-8 decision by the Grand Chamber reversed a genocide conviction by the courts of Lithuania. As summarized by the Court's press release:

The case concerned the conviction in 2004 of Mr Vasiliauskas, an officer in the State security services of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic from 1952 to his retirement in 1975, for the genocide in 1953 of Lithuanian partisans who resisted Soviet rule after the Second World War....

The Court found in particular that it was clear that Mr Vasiliauskas’ conviction had been based upon legal provisions that had not been in force in 1953, and that such provisions had therefore been applied retroactively....

Although the offence of genocide had been clearly defined in the international law (notably, it had been codified in the 1948 Genocide Convention....), the Court took the view that his conviction could not have been foreseen under international law as it stood at the time of the killings of the partisans. Notably, international treaty law had not included a “political group” in the definition of genocide [it only included national, ethnic, racial or religious groups] and customary international law was not clear on the definition....

 Courthouse News Service reports on the decision.