Russia loses pair of religious freedom cases at European rights court

STRASBOURG, France (CN) — Two fringe religious groups won cases against Russia before Europe’s top rights court on Tuesday. 

In two separate cases, the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights found that Moscow unlawfully detained, harassed and deported members of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, colloquially referred to as Hare Krishnas, and the Unification Church. 

Both organizations are registered with the Russian government as religious groups and have permission to hold services, engage in social welfare work and recruit new members. In the Hare Krishna case, member Mikhail Frolov brought a complaint after a local government described the Krishna movement as a “totalitarian cult” and claimed it was engaged in the “zombification of the youth.” The police broke up several of the group’s meetings. 

The International Society for Krishna Consciousness is a religious organization based on Hindu scriptures that dates back to the 15th century. Formed in India, it saw rapid growth in the early 2000s and now has about 1 million members worldwide. Believers practice a type of yoga and believe that their thoughts and actions should please the Hindu god Krishna. 

The other case centers on the Corley family – John Corley, his wife Renée and their son Nikolai, American nationals who had been sent to Russia as missionaries for the Unification Church – and the Igarashi family – Shuji Igarashi, his wife Toshiko and their daughter Hanae, missionaries of Japanese nationality. Both family patriarchs were arrested and deported for alleged administrative offenses. Corley was charged with not living at his registered address and Igarashi was accused of failing to register with the local authorities during a trip.

The Unification Church was founded in South Korea by Sun Myung Moon in 1954 and is loosely based on Christian theology, though it has its own holy book, Moon's "Divine Principle." The church is known for performing mass marriage ceremonies, with thousands of couples marrying at the same time. The church also has around 1 million members around the world. 

The human rights court found in both cases that the Russian authorities had violated the members’ right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion under the European Convention of Human Rights, which created the court in 1953. In the case of Corley and Igarashi, the court also found that the Russian government violated their right to family life and to a fair trial for their arrest and deportation. 

“The court finds that, by using derogatory language and unsubstantiated allegations for describing the applicant centre’s religious beliefs and the ways in which they are expressed, the Russian authorities have overstepped,” the seven-judge panel wrote in the Hare Krishna case. 

Russia argued that it had deported Corley and Igarashi on national security grounds, but the judges weren’t swayed.

“The interests of national security cannot serve as a justification for any measures interfering with the right to freedom of religion,” the court wrote.

The dispute is similar to a 2009 case involving another Unification Church missionary who was denied reentry into Russia despite having left his 11-month-old son in the country with a nanny. The two were eventually reunited. 

Frolov and the Hare Krishnas were awarded 9,500 euros ($10,600) in damages and expenses while the Corley and Igarashi families were awarded a total of 34,270 euros ($39,000). 

Russia is no stranger to facing complaints before the European Court of Human Rights. There are currently 14,000 pending cases against the country, more than any other nation. The Kremlin has defied the court's orders in the past, including by refusing to pay damages over the death of former spy and defector Alexander Litvinenko.

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