TrustHLT/LaCour huggingface dataset:
GR1 (Government): Secondly, the Russian government expressed a utter disappointment with the court's interpretation of the alleged discounts for gas and humanitarian aid provided to the Russian citizens living in Transnistria as criteria of the effective control.
GR1 (Government): It should be taken into account that Russian natural resources, such as gas and oil, are actively consumed around the world.
GR1 (Government): And the large number of countries are more or less depends on their Russian supplies and are indebted to the Russian Federation.
GR1 (Government): Their continuing supplies of resources to our debtors do not automatically testify to the existence of our control over these countries.
GR1 (Government): Moreover, it should be noted that the gas is supplied to Moldova as a whole, including Transnistria, under the contract between Russian company Gazprom and the Moldova gas company.
GR1 (Government): There is no legal basis for any privileges or discriminate prices for any regions of Moldova.
GR1 (Government): And the debt for the gas consumed by Transnistria and other regions of Moldova is attributed to Moldova in full amount by the contract.
GR1 (Government): We emphasize that there is no some secret pipe through which the gas is delivered directly to Transnistria by passing Moldova.
GR1 (Government): Furthermore, we believe that neither does the so-called humanitarian aid, which in fact consists of pensions and social allowances to the local residents, speaks of the existence of any control over Transnistria.
GR1 (Government): It is obvious that such pensions and allowances are provided to the residents of Transnistria for their survival because their well-being by no means must depend on their political situation in the region or debatable decisions of the international judicial bodies.
GR1 (Government): We owe to and we will provide social support to our citizens regardless of the country they stay, and it will not constitute interference in the internal affairs of the foreign state.
GR1 (Government): Moreover, it does not speak of the establishment of effective control over the foreign territory.
GR1 (Government): It is authority selected by the resident population who exercise the effective control over its territory and the inhabitants irrespective of their provisions or provision by Russian of humanitarian aid.
GR1 (Government): Besides, provided by the Russian Federation, economic support is in no way sufficient to ensure the survival of local authorities as it was claimed by the court in its previous judgment in Transnistria case.
GR1 (Government): For example, we provide for this social support about one billion ruble per year.
GR1 (Government): If we will divide this sum for population of Transnistria, which now is a little bit more than half a million people, it will mean that one person get annually about 2,000 rubles, which by modern rate is something like 30 euros per year.
GR1 (Government): Only 30 euros per year for each person annually.
GR1 (Government): That's the sum.
GR1 (Government): As regards the alleged political support, it should be noted that the Russian government consequently adhere to the principle of the territorial integrity of the state and consider Transnistria as an integral part of Moldova.
GR1 (Government): In its contacts with the Republic of Moldova and the authorities of Transnistria, the Russian Federation follow the basic documents related to the Transnistrian conflict.
GR1 (Government): In particular, the memorandum on the basis for the settlement and the normalization of relations between the Republic of Moldova and Transnistria of 1997.
GR1 (Government): According to this memo, the government of Moldova practically delegated a certain amount of powers, namely to establish and maintain foreign contacts in the economic, scientific, technical, and cultural areas to the Transnistrian authorities.
GR1 (Government): And it is precisely in these areas that the Russian Federation cooperates with the region now.
GR1 (Government): In any way, the political aspect is quite an elusive indicator to attribute any significance to it in the context of the exterritorial jurisdiction.
GR1 (Government): We strongly object to the arbitrary assessment of the Russian politics by the court as an additional marker of the effective control of the Russian Federation over Transnistria, especially taking into account the absence of any examples of deviation of the Russian government from the general line of its relations with the Republic of Moldova as a sovereign and indivisible state.
GR1 (Government): We believe that the political matters should be left to the political powers, and the court should distance itself from any active involvement in the political process, and definitely it should not substitute the existing European bodies, in particular, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
GR1 (Government): The court's task is to deal with the certain violations of the Convention, but not to interfere with the international relations by the arbitrary extension of the effect of the Convention beyond their limits, which could not have been predicted by the contracting parties upon its certification.
GR1 (Government): It is beyond dispute that the resolution of the Transnistrian issue itself does not fall within the competence of the court, and it would be groundless, gross misinterpretation of our role of a mediator in the complicated relations between Chisinau and Tiraspol as the one hindering the settlement of the conflict.
GR1 (Government): Moving further to the legal aspect of the case, the Russian government once again emphasized that the concept of the effective control elaborated by the court, through which the notion of jurisdiction is interpreted and applied, serves with boundaries of the Convention operation and should be put aside in favor of more clear and consistent approaches corresponding to the bulk of the international law on the issue.
GR1 (Government): The concept of jurisdiction itself implies that the state could adopt mandatory regulation, adjudicate emerging disputes, and willfully inform their regulations adopted.
GR1 (Government): In the aspect of human rights law, that means that the violation could be regarded imputable to the state only when it has a real opportunity to commit and to obtain from committing a violation of one's rights, to prevent such violations, to investigate them, to hold the actual perpetrators responsible, and to compensate to the victims.
GR1 (Government): It is quite obvious that the Russian government exercise no of these functions in Transnistria.
GR1 (Government): Having regarded the exercise of effective control over the territory as one of the exceptional circumstances that is capable of giving rise to the jurisdiction of a contracting state outside its own territorial borders, the court has failed firstly to determine the exact meaning of the term effective control, and secondly, to clarify the scope of its components and their significance.
GR1 (Government): In some cases, the court applies the collocation and effective control or an effective authority.
GR1 (Government): In others, an overall control, and sometimes using the mixture of both calling it an effective overall control.
GR1 (Government): The components of the effective control are vague and vary from judgment to judgment.
GR1 (Government): Depending on the approach chosen by the court, the term control can include such components as decisive influence, as in Ilashko, and the close relationship by virtue of military, economic, financial, political support, as in Ivansok and others.
GR1 (Government): The court's failure to provide clear answers to these issues makes its case law unfeasible and undermines the court's credibility.
GR1 (Government): Judgments in the Transnistrian cases have further complicated the issue.
GR1 (Government): The notions of effective and overall control were not invented by the court.
GR1 (Government): The relevant jurisdictional tests were first formulated by the International Court of Justice and its decisions, and further elaborated by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
GR1 (Government): Still, for some unknown reason, the court departs from the existing system of international case law, stating that the test for establishing the existence of jurisdiction under Article 1 of the Convention differs from the test of establishing a state's responsibility for an internationally wrongful act under international law.
GR1 (Government): This is part 115 of Katan case.
GR1 (Government): From our point of view, by such judgments, the court worsens the conflict of case law of different international judicial bodies, thus contributing to the fragmentation of international law and opposes its case law to that of the International Court of Justice, one of the main bodies of the United Nations.
GR1 (Government): In other words, the united system of international law should not be undermined.
GR1 (Government): It should not be burdened by the coexisting conflicting approaches to the same issues, especially to such sensitive one as extraterritorial jurisdiction.
GR1 (Government): The International Court of Justice, when deciding on the international responsibility of an outside power for the internationally wrongful conduct of secessionist entity, examines whether the authorities of the secessionist entity were controlled by the outside power when performing their wrongful conduct.
GR1 (Government): It is commonly known that the case of Nicaragua versus United States and Bosnian genocide case are the leading cases on the issue in which the International Court of Justice formulated two tests of control, that of strict control and the effective control.
GR1 (Government): The requirements of the strict control established by the International Court of Justice are the following.
GR1 (Government): Firstly, the secessionist entity must be completely dependent on the outside power.
GR1 (Government): Secondly, the complete dependence must extend to all fields of activity of the secessionist entity.
GR1 (Government): Thirdly, the outside power must actually have made use of their potential for control inherent in their complete dependence.
GR1 (Government): It must have actually exercised a particularly high degree of control.
GR1 (Government): The effective control test, in its turn, is applied in cases of partial dependence of a secessionist entity on the outside power.
GR1 (Government): However, this partial dependence established under the effective control test of the International Court of Justice still does not allow regarding this entity as a de facto organ of the outside power, which is depend on.
GR1 (Government): The responsibility of an outside power still has to be established for specific conduct of the secessionist entity in the certain case.
GR1 (Government): It is also worth mentioning that the control should not be confused with support.
GR1 (Government): Subsequently, the appeal chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in Tadzic case applied the so-called overall control test, attributing the conduct of an organized group or entity to the outside power or the state.
GR1 (Government): From the standpoint of this test, the state's responsibility for actions of an organized entity to be established requires two points taken cumulatively.
GR1 (Government): The provision of financial and training assistance, military equipment, and operational support, participation in the organization, coordination, or planning of operations.
GR1 (Government): It is essential that the provision of economic, military, or other assistance in and of itself is not sufficient to establish overall control.
GR1 (Government): The tests of control of International Court of Justice and International Tribunal of former Yugoslavia differ in their strictness requiring various extent of participation of the outside power in the activity of the secessionist entity.
GR1 (Government): However, despite these differences, each of them correlate to the rules of customary international law, which are reflected in particular in Article 8 of the draft articles on state responsibility elaborated by the International Law Commission of the United Nations, according to which the conduct of a person or a group of persons shall be considered an act of a state under international law if they, in fact, acting on the instructions of or under the direction or control of that state in carrying out the conduct.
GR1 (Government): That means that both tests require participation of the outside power in the operations of the secessionist entity.
GR1 (Government): This requirement, however, is absent from the effective overall control test of the court, which abstractedness allows varying its elements depending on the approach chosen by the court.
GR1 (Government): The court went one step beyond in the case of Luisito, elaborating an even less stringent test than that of the ICTY.
GR1 (Government): Why?
GR1 (Government): According to the court's test of effective overall control subsequently applied in the Lashko and in Khatan cases, the state could be held generally responsible for any actions of a subordinate local administration.
GR1 (Government): Moreover, it seems that the court's finding as regard the existence of the effective control are based on a somewhat staircase scheme of criteria in which one elusive characteristic of control would be easily substituted by another.
GR1 (Government): Thus, the effective authority, which might not be the same as the effective control, could be replaced by decisive influence.
GR1 (Government): This term, which is exclusively an invention of the court and does not have analogs in the international law.
GR1 (Government): If none of them allow the court to came to the conclusion of the existence of the state jurisdiction at which it is already arrived earlier, the court simply refers to the manifestly erroneous presumption that the administration in any event survives by virtue of the military, economic, financial, and political support given to it by the outside power, thus coming to the stereotyped and ill-founded conclusion.
GR1 (Government): As regard this last criterion, it would be devoid of any logic to rely on the assumption that the secessionist entity survive by virtue of the military, economic, financial, and political support given to it.
GR1 (Government): This case, Ilashko, Para 392.
GR1 (Government): To impute the alleged violations to the Russian government in the present case, firstly, as it was shown above, no such support actually exists.
GR1 (Government): And secondly, the court obviously ignored the logical methods of the establishment of the causal links finding the provision by Russia of economic and humanitarian aid to the inhabitants as the main ground for human rights violations in Transnistria.
GR1 (Government): Thus, the court finds that the violation established inevitably constitute a consequence of the Russian support.
GR1 (Government): The court should provide firm evidence so as to prove that these circumstances inevitably precondition human rights violations and become the ground for their violation.
GR1 (Government): The gas prices could not affect the educational language in schools.
GR1 (Government): The armament store could not convict a person.
GR1 (Government): The amount of pensions could not affect the conditions of detention in Transnistria.
GR1 (Government): And peacekeepers hardly had any relation to the alleged fact that the applicant was not provided with the requisite medical assistance.
GR1 (Government): In other words, any legal construction should be based in the first place on the common sense.
GR1 (Government): The effective control in the view of the court means the obligation to ensure the whole range of the rights under the convention.
GR1 (Government): However, in this case, if one assess all circumstances straight and thoroughly, it is obvious that not only the insignificant number of Russian troops is arrested with no authority, but practically, it could not ensure the right to a fair trial or to a freedom of religion in such territory as Transnistria with its population of 500,000 people.
GR1 (Government): The initial finding of the court in the Lashko case as to the existence of the Russian Federation jurisdiction of the applicants should not be a frame of nature, allowing engagement of the responsibility of the Russian Federation for any violation occurring in the territory of Transnistria.
GR1 (Government): In Lashko, the government was held responsible not for the acts of ill treatment by the Transnistrian police itself, but because first, the acts committed by Russian agents, including the applicant's arrest, detention, and their transfer to Transnistrian police.
GR1 (Government): And they further inactively given a real opportunity to prevent or cease their violation.
GR1 (Government): Therefore, unlike in Khatam case, in the Lashko, the court did not deal with the question of attribution of the conduct of the Transnistrian authorities to the Russian Federation.
GR1 (Government): In this connection, any attempts to present Transnistrian cases as a sort of consistent case law would be artificial.
GR1 (Government): Given that the Russian government were neither involved in the alleged violations of the applicant's rights, nor have they been acknowledged under international law as an occupying power in Transnistria, we also believe that there is no presumption of our jurisdiction over the region.
GR1 (Government): Accordingly, the burden of proof as regards the absence of our control and of its causal link to the alleged violations should not be laid upon us.
GR1 (Government): Lastly, as regard the merits of the case in the absence of our direct or indirect involvement in the alleged violations of the applicant's rights, the government could not provide the court with any information in this regard.
GR1 (Government): Any attempts to this end would be speculative, and moreover, would inevitably constitute the interference in the sovereign international affairs of the Republic of Moldova.
GR1 (Government): Thank you for your attention.
Dean Spielmann (JudgeP): Thank you very much Mr. Matyushkin. I call now Ms. Hriplivii.
AP2 (Applicant): good morning.
AP2 (Applicant): Together with my colleague, Aleksandr Postyka, we will present the arguments on admissibility and merits of the Moser case.
AP2 (Applicant): The Moser case is different from other cases on the violation of human rights, including absolute rights, because it is critical to establish the jurisdiction and responsibilities of the defendant states.
AP2 (Applicant): The pleading will analyze the most important aspects regarding both the admissibility and the merits of the case.
AP2 (Applicant): Honorable court, we would like to underline the most important circumstances demonstrate any lack of doubt about the way the facts took place, because both governments claim not to have sufficient information about the fact of the case.
AP2 (Applicant): Referring to the first aspect on arrest and detention of the applicant, we will note that the facto arrest took place on 24 November 2008 in Tiraspol City.
AP2 (Applicant): The arrest was done by the employees of a very influential private company with residence in Tiraspol.
AP2 (Applicant): Upon detention, the applicant was accused that he caused damage to a respective company for $40,000 US.
AP2 (Applicant): Also then, the applicant was subjected to psychological pressure from the security agents and was threatened with a prolonged detention and arrest of family members if he failed to recognize the guilt.
AP2 (Applicant): Immediately upon obtaining the statement of the self-incrimination, the applicant was handed into the custody of the so-called local direction of fight against economic crimes and later placed in the preventive detention isolator from Tiraspol.
AP2 (Applicant): On 26 November 2008, the so-called Tiraspol People's Court ruled to apply arrest regarding the applicant and to keep him in the detention isolator.
AP2 (Applicant): The period of detention of the applicant was extended by the same time court seven times, while all the complaints of the applicants against the extension of arrest were rejected.
AP2 (Applicant): All the decisions contained the same rationale and followed the provision of local court that allows extended arrest solely because the applicant has grave charge brought against him.
AP2 (Applicant): Finally, after the court communicated the case on 1st July 2010, the so-called Tiraspol People's Court has issued a sentence by which it ruled the applicant guilty of theft of owner's property and especially large amounts.
AP2 (Applicant): The applicant was applied the punishment of seven years of deprivation of liberty with a suspension for five years.
AP2 (Applicant): Revisiting the goal of the lawsuit initiated by the company, it is very clear that the applicant was threatened that he would not be freed until he will not pay the damage that was initially estimated at $40,000 US.
AP2 (Applicant): The materials of the case confirmed that even after the relatives of the applicant gathered this amount and paid the claim damage, in December 2008, the applicant continued to be held in detention.
AP2 (Applicant): Starting with July 2009, the applicant was brought another charge of causing damages to the company in the total amount more than $82,000.
AP2 (Applicant): To force the applicant to pay the request amounts, the tormentors subjected the applicant to psychological pressure and torture.
AP2 (Applicant): Being aware of the applicant chronic respiratory disease, they intentionally placed him in isolators with terrible conditions.
AP2 (Applicant): All the isolators were offering unhealthy conditions of detention, high humidity, lack of access to natural light, and lack of ventilation, overcrowding, and heavy smoking in the cell.
AP2 (Applicant): All these conditions contributed to the applicant's more and more frequent fits of coughing and suffocation.
AP2 (Applicant): We annexed to the materials of the case the explanation of the applicants, of the relatives, of the lawyer, all of whom confirmed that in the first four months of detention, the applicant was constantly refused any medical assistance and he was intentionally placed in increasingly horrible conditions.
AP2 (Applicant): In May 2009, the doctors confirmed his prior diagnosis and that he had frequent suffocation fits with respiratory insufficiency of second and third degree.
AP2 (Applicant): Even though he was placed in the medical institution of the Tiraspol Penitentiary, his state of health worsened while the treatment he was given were superficial.
AP2 (Applicant): Thereby, on 15 February 2010, doctors found that the respiratory dysfunction continued to worsen and no effect of therapy was noticeable.
AP2 (Applicant): A continuing negative dynamic was observed, with an increase in the frequency of suffocation fits and increased difficulty in stopping them.
AP2 (Applicant): The evidence shows that the board of the doctors from the penitentiary institution concluded that the applicant's life expectancy was not favorable.
AP2 (Applicant): Nevertheless, immediately after the terminal diagnosis, the applicant was placed in the Hlynaya Penitentiary that featured even more horrible condition while the treatment stopped.
AP2 (Applicant): Consequently, we face a clear violation of Article 2 of Convention.
AP2 (Applicant): The administration that was applying the detention knew perfectly well that the medical diagnosis of the applicant, the critical state of his health, and the fatal consequences of any delay in treatment.
AP2 (Applicant): Even though they knew of his medical problems, the representative of administration intentionally used his illness of the applicant as an element of blackmailing.
AP2 (Applicant): They failed to offer any assistance, which practically meant a sentence to slow death.
AP2 (Applicant): One more aspect that should be stressed is that the applicant did realize that he could die because not having proper medical assistance.