European Court of Human Rights

Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 171

February 2014

Pentikäinen v. Finland - 11882/10

Judgment 4.2.2014 [Section IV] See: [2014] ECHR 106

Article 10

Article 10-1

Freedom of expression

Arrest and conviction of journalist for not obeying police orders during a demonstration: no violation

 

Facts - The applicant was a photographer and journalist working for a Finnish magazine. In 2006 he was sent to report on a demonstration in Helsinki. Although a separate secure area had been reserved for the press, the applicant decided not to use it and stayed with the demonstrators. When the demonstration turned violent, the police sealed off the area concerned and ordered the protesters to disperse. Most people left but around 20 people, including the applicant, remained. They were again told to leave and were warned that they would be arrested if they did not. The applicant remained at the scene as he believed that the police order only applied to the demonstrators. Shortly afterwards he was arrested along with the remaining demonstrators and detained for over 17 hours. It is unclear when exactly the police became aware that he was a journalist. Subsequently, a district court found him guilty of disobeying police orders but decided not to impose a penalty. That decision was upheld on appeal and the applicant’s subsequent complaint to the Supreme Court was rejected.

Law - Article 10: The applicant’s arrest and conviction could be considered as constituting an interference with his freedom of expression which had been “prescribed by law” and pursued the legitimate aims of protecting public safety and preventing disorder and crime. As to the proportionality of that interference, the applicant had been given several opportunities to cover the event adequately. For example, he had not in any way been prevented from taking photographs of the demonstration and he had waived his right to use the separate secured area reserved for the press deciding instead to stay with the demonstrators even after the orders to disperse. Therefore, the interference with the applicant’s exercise of his journalistic freedom had only been of limited extent. Moreover, the conduct sanctioned by the criminal conviction had not been the applicant’s journalistic activity as such, but his refusal to comply with a police order at the very end of the demonstration, when the latter had been judged by the police to have become a riot. When assessing whether the “necessity” of such interference had been established convincingly by the domestic courts, the Court noted that, by reserving a separate, secure area for the press, the domestic authorities had acknowledged that the demonstration had been a matter of legitimate public interest and that there had been justified grounds for reporting on it to the public. The domestic courts had analysed the matter from the Article 10 viewpoint, balancing the applicant’s freedom of expression against the State’s interests, and found that there had been a pressing social need to take the impugned measures against the applicant. In particular, it had been necessary to disperse the crowd and to order people to leave because of the riot and the threat to public safety. As regards the applicant’s conviction, no penalty had been imposed and no entry of the conviction was made in his criminal record. Accordingly, taking into account the margin of appreciation afforded to the State in this area, the domestic courts appeared to have provided relevant and sufficient reasons to justify the applicant’s arrest and conviction and had thus struck a fair balance between the competing interests at stake.

Conclusion: no violation (five votes to two).

 

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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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