Catan and 27 Others v Moldova and Russia, Caldare and 42 Others v Moldova and Russia and Cercavschi and 98 Others v Moldova and Russia

Forum: European Court of Human Rights
INTERIGHTS' role: Advisers to counsel
Keywords: Extra-territorial jurisdiction, right to education, family life, privacy, discrimination, remedies

Case Information

The applicants in this case are a group of Moldovan nationals - children of school-going age, their parents and teachers - who suffered serious human rights violations in Transdniestria, a part of the territory of the Moldovan state and under the de facto control of the Russian supported local administration known as the Moldovan Republic of Transdniestria (MRT). The applicants were subjected to detention, harassment, threats, the storming and forced closure of their schools, and discrimination, all because they failed to comply with the MRT administration’s efforts to ban and criminalise the use of Latin script in schools in Transdniestria and to impose a requirement that the Moldovan language be written in the Cyrillic script, a linguistic anomaly of no practical use.

The majority of the events occurred between 2002 and 2004 and during this time the MRT administration ordered military and police forces to storm the schools and close them down. A number of parents and teachers were arrested and sentenced to imprisonment. Parents were threatened with loss of their jobs and even removal of their parental rights if they failed to send their children to schools registered with the MRT. As a result of on-going violations of the applicants’ rights they filed a number of unsuccessful petitions and complaints with the authorities of the Russian Federation as well as with the Moldovan authorities. They then filed a complaint with the ECHR, which found the case to be admissible in a decision delivered on 15 June 2010. On 25 January 2012, the Grand Chamber conducted a hearing on the merits of this case. INTERIGHTS lawyers Helen Duffy and Pádraig Hughes, acting as advisors to counsel, appeared on behalf of the applicants along with lawyers from Moldovan NGO Promo-LEX. To read a press release on the hearing from INTERIGHTS and Promo-LEX, click here. To view a webcast of the hearing, click here.

For more background see the Court's admissibility decision of 2010 (for the webcast of this hearing, click here). INTERIGHTS lawyers Doina Ioana Straisteanu and Iain Byrne attended the admissibility hearing (held on 9 June 2009) as advisers to lawyers from Promo-LEX.

For further information contact: Pádraig Hughes at phughes@interights.org