There is only one city left in the Chernihiv region where there is an unconstitutional procedure for holding peaceful assemblies.

At the request of the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the executive committee of the Novgorod-Siverskyi city council, by its decision dated 04/30/2014, canceled its own decision dated 05/4/2006 “On granting permission to hold rallies, meetings by political and public organizations” as not complying with the norms of current legislation.

At the request of the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the executive committee of the Novgorod-Siverskyi city council, by its decision dated 04/30/2014, canceled its own decision dated 05/4/2006 “On granting permission to hold rallies, meetings by political and public organizations” as not complying with the norms of current legislation.

The above-mentioned, in particular, illegally established “the only place for holding political rallies – near the monument to V.I. Lenin”. By the way, Novgorod-Siversky is one of the few district centers of Chernihiv region, where the monument to Lenin still remains.

Thus, only Mena remains the only city in Chernihiv region, where the unconstitutional local government body regulating the holding of peaceful assemblies in the city still operates. In particular, the Mena City Council establishes “recommended” places for holding rallies – in the park and at the stadium.

Let us recall that Article 39 of the Constitution of Ukraine and Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights establish an exhaustive list of grounds for restricting the exercise of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly, which are established

only by a court and in accordance with the law

.

As human rights activists point out, neither the Constitution of Ukraine nor any law of Ukraine provides that a local government body may adopt decisions that restrict the right of citizens to peaceful assemblies, including those that are of a “recommended” nature.

At the same time, due to the lack of legislative regulation of the right of citizens to hold peaceful assemblies, in just three months (November 2013 – February 2014) 58 court decisions were made in Ukraine to ban Euromaidans throughout the country, in particular in Chernihiv, the basis for which in most cases was regulatory legal acts that approved provisions regulating the procedure for organizing and holding peaceful assemblies at the local level.