European Court of Human Rights

Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 168

November 2013

Putistin v. Ukraine - 16882/03

Judgment 21.11.2013 [Section V] See: [2013] ECHR 1154

Article 8

Article 8-1

Respect for private life

Alleged failure to secure the right to reputation of an applicant whose father was allegedly defamed: no violation

 

Facts - The applicant is the son of Mikhail Putistin, now deceased, a former Dynamo Kyiv football player who took part in a game known as the “Death Match” in 1942. The game was played between a team which included professional players from Dynamo Kyiv and a team of German pilots, soldiers and technicians. Against the odds and despite allegations that the match was refereed unfairly by an SS officer, the German team was defeated 5-3. Allegedly as a result of their victory, the Dynamo Kyiv team suffered reprisals. A number of Ukrainian players were sent to a local concentration camp, where four of them were executed. In 2002 the Kyiv authorities commemorated the 60th anniversary of the match, which received wide media coverage. In 2001 the newspaper Komsomolska Pravda published an article entitled “The Truth about the Death Match”. It included an interview with a director and producer who discussed the possibility of making a film about the game, and a picture of the match poster from 1942. The poster contained the names of the players (including Mikhail Putistin), but these were not legible in the newspaper. The article included a quotation from the producer, who stated that there were only four players who had been executed, and that other players had “collaborated with the Gestapo”. Another part of the article listed the names of the players who had been executed, which did not include Mikhail Putistin. The applicant sued the newspaper and the journalist, seeking rectification of the article. He claimed that it suggested that his father had collaborated with the Gestapo. He also provided evidence that the archives held no information indicating that his father had worked for the Nazis, and documents establishing that his father had been taken to a concentration camp. The domestic courts rejected his claim, finding that the applicant had not been directly affected by the publication: his father was not directly mentioned in the text, and it was not possible to read his name on the photograph of the match poster published with the article.

Law - Article 8: The Court could accept that the reputation of a deceased member of a person’s family might, in certain circumstances, affect that person’s private life and identity, and thus come within the scope of Article 8. However, like the national courts, it found that the applicant had not been directly affected by the publication. Though a quotation in the article had suggested that some members of the Ukrainian team had collaborated with the Gestapo, none of the pictures or words referred to the applicant’s father. In order to interpret the article as claiming that the applicant’s father had collaborated with the Gestapo, it would be necessary for a reader to know that the applicant’s father’s name had appeared on the original poster of the match. The names appearing under the photograph of the poster as reproduced by the paper were illegible. The level of impact on the applicant had thus been quite remote. Moreover, the domestic courts had been obliged to have regard to the rights of the newspaper and the journalist and to balance those against the rights of the applicant. The article had informed the public of a proposed film on an historical subject. It had been neither provocative nor sensationalist. As the applicant’s Article 8 rights had been affected only marginally and in an indirect manner, the domestic courts had struck an appropriate balance between the competing rights.

Conclusion: no violation (unanimously).

 

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