Breakthrough at the European Court of Human Rights:
The Anti-Corruption Initiative’s (EUACI) partner the Regional Press Development Institute (RDPI) successfully won a case against Ukraine regarding the right for journalists to protect their sources.
Allan Pagh Kristensen, Head of the EUACI:
“Congrats to RDPI! I am proud that we support RDPI in its legal work to protect journalists’ rights. The work of investigate journalists is key to expose corruption and raise awareness. Their rights must be protected”.
With legal assistance from RDPI, the Ukrainian journalist Nataliya Sedletska, journalist for Radio Liberty and editor-in-chief of the investigative program “Schemes: Corruption in Details”, won a case against Ukraine at the ECHR. On April 1st the ECHR ruled in favor of Ms Sedletska who has battled against the handover of her smartphone data to authorities in what the court agreed is an essential defense of a free press and privacy in a democratic society, see the decision using the link.
The ECHR concluded that Sedletska should be protected from the data search under Article 10 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and stressed the importance of protection of sources for a functioning free press.
In August 2018, an investigator from the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) submitted a request to the Pecherskyy District Court in Kyiv for access to Sedletska’s communication data from July 2016 to November 2017 held by the mobile service provider JSC “Kyivstar”. The requested data included dates, times, call durations, telephone numbers, sent and received text messages (SMS, MMS), and the location of the journalist at the time of each call or message. The PGO requested this data under their criminal proceedings against NABU head Artem Sytnyk. The PGO assured that the data from the journalists’ phone were necessary for the investigation into “the facts of the possible divulgence by the Artem Sytnyk of information which did constitute state secrets.”
Back in September 2018, the ECHR urgently applied Rule 39 that aims at protecting first of all freedom of speech, the rights of people who are ready to blow a whistle on corruption and protect journalists’ rights not to disclose their sources. Rule 39 means an order for the government of a certain country to immediately take action which would prevent irreparable consequences of human rights violations. It was the first time applied by the ECHR in this kind of cases (usually applied in cases of actual threat to somebody’s life, extradition, deportation, etc.), unique even in the court’s practice and both this decision and the final ruling of 1st April this year create an important precedent for Ukraine and other countries.
Since September 2018, one of Sedletska’s lawyers was Lyudmyla Pankaratova, at that time RPDI’s lawyer, now RPDI’s Executive Director and Lawyer.
