Giuseppina Scala
Introduction
In the case of Perovy v. Russia, the European Court of Human Rights (hereafter: the Court) decided, by four votes to three, that the State did not violate the right of the parents to educate their son according to their own religious convictions (Article 2 of Protocol n. 1), neither the State violated the freedom of religion of the three applicants (Article 9 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, hereafter: the Convention).
The facts
The applicants are three Russian nationals: Ms Galina Anatolyevna Perova, Mr Aleksey Vladimirovich Perov (the parents) and Mr David Alekseyevich Perov (the son), who belong to the Church of the Community of Christ. The case concerned a Russian Orthodox rite of blessing performed on 3rd September 2007 in the son’s classroom before class hours in a municipal school when he was seven years old. The parents complained that their right to bring up the son in accordance with their own religious beliefs had not been respected and, in particular, they had not been previously informed about the planned rite; moreover, all the applicants complained that the son had been forced to participate in the ceremony performed by an Orthodox priest who wore religious garments and used religious symbols.
The reasoning of the Court
Regarding the parents’ claim, the Court ruled that there had been no violation of art. 2 of the Protocol n.1 and no issues concerning article 9 of the Convention due to the fact that the religious ceremony of blessing did not consist in any indoctrination or coercion that could make the son stressed since the rite was an isolated one and it was limited in scope and duration. Furthermore, the Court underlined that the domestic authorities correctly acknowledged that there had been a breaching of the parents’ rights and they swiftly adopted specific decisions.
Regarding the son’s freedom of religion, the Court noted that there had been no violation of Article 9 because he had not been forced to manifest another religious belief other than his own. The son abstained from kissing the crucifix and he was not forced to accept the paper icons left on the pupils’ desks. Moreover, the ceremony was judged to have been an error of assessment made by a teacher who merely agreed to a parents’ proposal and as one-off short event that can be held in a democratic society of competing religious groups.
Conclusions
Perovy v. Russia is yet another case concerning the thorny issue of religious symbols displayed in the public sphere that highlights the ambiguity of the ECtHR. In this case, the Strasbourg Court reaffirmed the concept of passive religious symbols, i.e. symbols that lose their religious meaning (see Lautsi v. Italy). In doing so, however, the ECtHR neglected the age of the child involved in the case. In fact, one should note that the child was of an age where he could have been “significantly influenced” (see Dahlab v. Switzerland).