6.  The applicant was born in 1942 and lives in Blagoevgrad.
7.  The background to the banning of the two rallies at issue in the present case has been set out in detail in the judgments in the following cases: Stankov and the United Macedonian Organisation Ilinden v. Bulgaria, nos. 29221/95 and 29225/95, ECHR 2001-IX; United Macedonian Organisation Ilinden and Ivanov v. Bulgaria, no. 44079/98, 20 October 2005; United Macedonian Organisation Ilinden-PIRIN and Others v. Bulgaria, no. 59489/00, 20 October 2005; Ivanov and Others v. Bulgaria, no. 46336/99, 24 November 2005; United Macedonian Organisation Ilinden and Others v. Bulgaria, no. 59491/00, 19 January 2006; United Macedonian Organisation Ilinden and Ivanov v. Bulgaria (no. 2), no. 37586/04, 18 October 2011; United Macedonian Organisation Ilinden and Others v. Bulgaria (no. 2), no. 34960/04, 18 October 2011; Singartiyski and Others v. Bulgaria, no. 48284/07, 18 October 2011; and United Macedonian Organisation Ilinden-PIRIN and Others v. Bulgaria (no. 2), nos. 41561/07 and 20972/08, 18 October 2011.
8.  The applicant was one of the applicants in Ivanov and Others (cited above). He is the brother of Mr Yordan Kostadinov Ivanov, who was one of the applicants in United Macedonian Organisation Ilinden and Ivanov, United Macedonian Organisation Ilinden and Others, United Macedonian Organisation Ilinden and Ivanov (no. 2), and United Macedonian Organisation Ilinden and Others (no. 2) (all cited above).
9.  On 15 September 2006 the applicant, acting on behalf of the unregistered organisation the Macedonian Initiative Committee, notified Blagoevgrad’s mayor that the Committee intended to stage a rally at 4 p.m. on 30 September 2006 in Macedonia Square to commemorate the eighty-second anniversary of “the day of the genocide of Macedonians in Bulgaria – 12 September 1924”. The rally would consist of the laying of wreaths and flowers and the reading of a short address.
10.  The same day the mayor replied to the applicant that the rally could not proceed as the municipality had planned an event in Macedonia Square for the same date – a concert marking the Day of Music. That parallel event made the staging of the rally impossible.
11.  On 18 September 2006, again acting on behalf of the Macedonian Initiative Committee, the applicant sought judicial review of the mayor’s decision. He argued that under the applicable international-law agreements, that organisation was entitled to stage peaceful rallies without being registered.
12.  In a final decision of 19 September 2006, the Blagoevgrad District Court held that the application was admissible and that the mayor’s decision was amenable to judicial review. However, it went on to find that the mayor’s decision was lawful, because there was a risk that the rights and freedoms of others might be infringed. It was not appropriate to hold the rally, which, in view of its intended theme, was political in character, alongside the municipality’s event. The performance of musical works could not at all be reconciled with political addresses. It was not proper to force music lovers to listen to political speeches and declarations, especially ones not accepted unequivocally by Bulgarian society, which was particularly sensitive to assertions that a Macedonian minority existed in Bulgaria and that its rights were being infringed.
13.  As a result, the Macedonian Initiative Committee called off the rally. The applicant submitted that he was not aware of whether the municipality’s event had in fact taken place. He had made a request for information in that connection under freedom-of-information laws, but had not received a reply. The municipality’s cultural calendar for 2006 showed that the concert marking the Day of Music had been scheduled for 1 October rather than 30 September 2006.
14.  An earlier attempt by the United Macedonian Organisation Ilinden (“Ilinden”), an unregistered association based in south-western Bulgaria, in an area known as the Pirin region or the geographic region of Pirin Macedonia, to organise a similar rally on 11 or 12 September 2006 had also been fruitless. Blagoevgrad’s mayor had banned that rally, and a legal challenge to his decision had been dismissed by the Blagoevgrad District Court on 8 September 2006 (see United Macedonian Organisation Ilinden and Ivanov (no. 2), cited above, §§ 58-63).
15.  The circumstances relating to the rally organised by Ilinden on 12 September 2007 are set out in United Macedonian Organisation Ilinden and Ivanov (no. 2) (cited above, §§ 90-95) in the following way:
“90.  On 28 August 2007 Ilinden notified the Mayor of Blagoevgrad of its intention to stage a rally on Macedonia Square, in front of Gotse Delchev’s monument, at 4.30 p.m. on 12 September 2007. The event, which was to mark the anniversary of ‘the genocide against the Macedonians’, would consist of the laying of a wreath and flowers on the monument and a short speech. It would last one hour. 91.  On 29 August 2007 the Mayor replied that the notification could not be examined as Ilinden had not produced documents proving its official registration. It was thus impossible to identify the ‘managing bodies of [the] event’. Moreover, the municipality had planned an event on Macedonia Square for the same date, a children’s holiday under the name ‘Hello, school’, to mark the beginning of the school year, which made the holding of the rally impossible. 92.  On 30 August 2007 Ilinden sought judicial review by the newly created Blagoevgrad Administrative Court ..., reiterating the arguments raised in its previous applications. In a decision of 30 August 2007 the Blagoevgrad Administrative Court found that under the 1990 Meetings and Marches Act, which was lex specialis in relation to the general rules of administrative procedure, the court competent to examine an application for judicial review of a Mayor’s decision to ban a rally was the district court. It therefore sent the file to the Blagoevgrad District Court. 93.  In a final decision of 5 September 2007 the Blagoevgrad District Court dismissed the application. It held that, while the lack of registration did not amount to sufficient grounds to prohibit the rally, the fact that another event, likely to draw a number of people, many of whom were children, was due to take place on the same date in Macedonia Square was enough to justify the ban. In the court’s view, it was inopportune to allow two wholly different events to be staged at the same time and place. 94.  According to the applicants, no school event took place at 4 p.m. on 12 September 2007 on Macedonia Square. When a number of members and supporters of Ilinden gathered in front of the American University in Blagoevgrad at about 5 p.m., they were stopped by the police and a number of them were arrested. They were taken to a police station, held for about three hours and charged with committing administrative offences for having tried to take part in a banned rally. 95.  On 22 October 2007 the deputy Mayor of Blagoevgrad imposed administrative punishments (fines of 200 Bulgarian levs (102.26 euros) each) on [Mr Yordan Kostadinov Ivanov] and on a number of members of Ilinden for having taken part in a banned rally, in breach of a public-order regulation issued by the Blagoevgrad Municipal Council. All of them sought judicial review. In a series of judgments delivered on 18 and 19 February, 11 March, and 22 and 29 May 2008 the Blagoevgrad District Court annulled the fines. In some of the judgments it found that they were invalid, as under the applicable rules the deputy Mayor had no power to impose administrative punishments. In other judgments the court found that the deputy Mayor’s decisions were defective because they did not specify which administrative offences had been committed. In others it held that although the Mayor’s ban on the rally planned for 12 September 2007 was legally binding, the actions of the members of Ilinden on that date had not amounted to the staging of a rally, as they had been too few and had not tried to wave banners and make speeches, but merely to lay flowers on Gotse Delchev’s monument. The court went on to say that every person, regardless of their political convictions, had the right to honour the memory of national heroes in peace.”
16.  It was the applicant who acted on behalf of Ilinden in its dealings with Blagoevgrad’s mayor and the courts in relation to that rally.