Russin gearresteerd en in uitzettingscentrum geplaatst na 35 jaar in Riga te hebben gewoond - Mensenrechtenhof veroordeelt Letland (en)

Press release issued by the Registrar

CHAMBER JUDGMENT

SHEVANOVA v. LATVIA

The European Court of Human Rights has today notified in writing its Chamber judgment¹ in the case of Shevanova v. Latvia (application no. 58822/00).

The Court held, by six votes to one, that there had been a violation of Article 8 (right to respect for private life) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Under Article 41 (just satisfaction) of the Convention, the Court awarded the applicants 5,000 euros (EUR) for non-pecuniary damage and EUR 1,000 for costs and expenses. (The judgment is available only in French.)

• 1. 

  Principal facts

Nina Shevanova is a Russian national who was born in 1948 and lives in Riga. The applicant, who has lived in Latvia for 35 years, has been subject to a deportation order since 1998.

In 1970, when she was 22, the applicant settled in Latvia for professional reasons; in 1973 she married a Latvian national, with whom she had a son. The couple divorced in 1980.

In 1981, having lost her Soviet passport, the applicant received a new passport; she found the lost passport in 1989 but failed to return it to the relevant authorities.

In 1991 the Soviet Union broke up and Mrs Shevanova found herself with no nationality. She was registered in Latvia on the list of residents as a permanent resident, and her son was granted the status of “permanent resident non-citizen” of Latvia.

In 1994 the applicant received a job offer from a Latvian bridge-building company, which offered her a crane operator’s post in Dagestan and in Ingushetia, Caucasian regions neighbouring Chechnya in the Russian Federation. Taking into consideration the difficulties arising from the increased supervision of those regions by the Russian authorities on account of the troubles in the Chechen Republic, the company advised her to obtain Russian nationality and a formal registration of residence in Russia prior to finalising her employment contract. The applicant then had a false stamp entered in her first Soviet passport (which had been found and hidden), attesting that her registration in Latvia had been cancelled. She was registered in Russia at her brother’s address, and was granted Russian nationality.

In March 1998 the applicant applied to the Directorate of Nationality and Migration Affairs at the Latvian Ministry of the Interior (Iekšlietu ministrijas Pilson?bas un migr?cijas lietu p?rvalde, “the Directorate”) for a passport as a “permanently resident non-citizen”. The Directorate then discovered the applicant’s second residence registration in Russia and learnt of the actions with regard to her previous passport, which had been lost and found. It decided on 9 April 1998 to cancel the applicant’s inclusion on the residents’ list and issued a deportation order against her, together with a five-year exclusion order.

None of the administrative and judicial appeals lodged by the applicant with a view to having the deportation order overturned was successful. In February 2001 Mrs Shevanova was arrested and placed in a detention centre for illegal immigrants pending her deportation. Following her hospitalisation arising from an attack of high blood pressure, the Directorate suspended the enforcement of the forced deportation order and the applicant, who was released, continued to reside in Latvia unlawfully.

After the European Court had declared this application admissible, the Latvian authorities offered in February 2005 to regularise the applicant’s situation by issuing her with a permanent residence permit, and invited her to file the necessary documents to that end. However, it appeared from the case file that to date the applicant had not submitted the necessary papers.

• 2. 

  Procedure and composition of the Court

The application was lodged on 28 June 2000 and declared partly admissible on 28 February 2002.

Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven judges, composed as follows:

Christos Rozakis (Greek), President,

Françoise Tulkens (Belgian),

Elisabeth Steiner (Austrian),

Khanlar Hajiyev (Azerbaijani),

Dean Spielmann (Luxemburger),

Sverre Erik Jebens (Norwegian),

Jautrite Briede (Latvian), judges,

and also Søren Nielsen, Section Registrar.

• 3. 

  Summary of the judgment²

Complaint

The applicant alleged, in particular, that the decision to deport her from Latvia amounted to a violation of her right to respect for her private and family life, guaranteed by Article 8.

Decision of the Court

The Court dismissed the preliminary objection raised by the Latvian Government to the effect that the applicant had lost her “victim status” within the meaning of the Convention as a result of the measures taken to regularise her situation.

Article 8

The Court noted that, during the period in which she lived in Latvia, Mrs Shevanova had formed and developed personal, social and economic relationships, which constitute the private life of any human being. The order to deport the applicant from Latvia thus represented an interference in her “private life” within the meaning of Article 8.

The Court noted that the deportation order served on the applicant on 11 June 1998 had never been enforced. It also noted that section 360 § 4 of the Administrative Procedure Act rendered implementation of an administrative act impossible if more than three years had passed since it became enforceable. In consequence, the applicant no longer ran any real risk of deportation from Latvia. In addition, the Latvian authorities had taken specific measures to regularise her situation, which ought to enable her to remain in Latvia lawfully and on a permanent basis and freely to exercise her right to respect for private and family life. However, the measures taken by the Latvian Government could not take away the fact that the applicant had experienced a long period of precariousness and uncertainty in Latvia.

The Court pointed out that States were free to control the entry and residence of non-nationals on their territory, which necessarily implied the possibility of applying dissuasive sanctions against those who failed to comply with the relevant provisions in that field. Among those sanctions, deportation of the person concerned seemed most logical, given the specific nature of the rights in issue. However, deportation of such persons could be disproportionate under the Convention, particularly where they had sufficiently strong personal or family links in the national territory.

In the applicant’s case, the Court noted that the allegations against the applicant did not constitute a criminal offence in the strict sense of that term, but a simple administrative summary offence carrying a relatively modest fine, which, in addition, had never been imposed on her.

Having weighed up, on the one hand, the seriousness of the conduct attributed to the applicant and, on the other, the measure imposed on her, the Court concluded that the Latvian authorities had not struck a fair balance between the legitimate aim of preventing disorder and the applicant’s interest in protection of her right to respect for her private life. It could not therefore conclude that the disputed interference was “necessary in a democratic society”. Accordingly, the Court concluded that there had been a violation of Article 8.

Judge Spielmann expressed a partly concurring opinion, and ad hoc Judge Briede expressed a dissenting opinion, both of which are annexed to the judgment.

***

These summaries by the Registry do not bind the Court. The full texts of the Court’s judgments are accessible on its Internet site (http://www.echr.coe.int).

Press Contacts 

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The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.