RFE/RL: Boris Vishnevsky is a known figure in St. Petersburg. An opposition politician who heads the liberal Yabloko party’s committee in the local legislature, he is also a man known locally as a defender of the city’s cultural heritage and as a columnist in the independent newspaper Novaya gazeta. But ahead of elections in September, the number of public figures named Boris Vishnevsky appeared to suspiciously multiply.
International Commission of Jurists: On 29 July 2016, the ICJ and other groups submitted a third-party intervention in the joint cases of Nikolay Alekseyev and Movement for Marriage Equality v. Russia and Nikolay Alekseyev and Others v. Russia before the European Court of Human Rights. The cases concern the Russian authorities’ refusals to register associations defending the rights of homosexuals. In their written submissions to the European Court of Human Rights, the ICJ, the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre (EHRAC) and the European Region of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA-Europe) focused on the extent of legitimate restrictions on the right to freedom of association for the protection of morals having regard, in particular, to the right to respect for private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
