Reykjavík Grapevine - des. 2020, Síða 9

9 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 10— 2020
Out of bounds
Helga Baldvins Bjargardóttir, a lawyer
working on Elínborg and Borys’ cases,
is amongst the lawyers the Grapevine
spoke to who believe Article 19 is inter-
preted too broadly by the police and too
narrowly by the courts. She provided
a list of cases heard by the European
Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that
handed down rulings which not only
affirm the right to protest—they also
would completely overturn, or radi-
cally change, Article 19, and with it
the verdicts handed down by Icelandic
courts on numerous occasions.
Helga explains that Article 19 is
supposed to carry exceptions, as
outlined by the ECHR, and that the
police are supposed to take notice
of international obligations, such
as human rights obligations, in the
course of their work.
"In that regard, they can manage
control of traffic, they can forbid
people from staying in certain areas,
or ask them to leave,” she says. “They
have this authority, and if this had
been people entering the Ministry
drunk and disrupting the peace of the
staff in that way, the police would have
the full authority to ask them to leave
and, if they didn't, to arrest them. But
in the protestor case, the police don't
regard that the protestors have consti-
tutional and human rights to protest
and freedom of expression. Their
actions need to be balanced in regard
to these rights."
Helga also points out that when the
police step out of bounds, they should
be held liable.
”[The ECHR] also talks about how
when the police have this power to
give orders to protestors and arrest
them if they don't obey, that this goes
against the initial goal of the legisla-
tion. If you're going to arrest protes-
tors, you have to have something real
that they've done other than disobey-
ing police orders. The police have to
be preventing a crime, there has to be
chaos or people in danger for them to
be able to intervene in a case like that."
A narrow view
Sigrún Ingibjörg Gísladóttir, a lawyer
at the law offices of Réttur, agrees that
the police sometimes overstep the
power that Article 19 grants them.
“Essentially, you can have an article
that states there's a public obligation to
follow police orders, but that does not
mean the obligation should be abso-
lute,” she says. “It's an obligation that
needs to be considered and interpreted
in light of other rights and obligations.
Even if it's absolute in language, that
doesn't mean it can be absolute in
practice, because it needs to be inter-
preted in light of superseding laws,
such as the constitution and rulings of
the European Court of Human Rights,
as the European Convention of Human
Rights is an international agreement
that has been legislated into Icelandic
law. These are laws that supersede a
general law such as Article 19. Essen-
tially, Article 19 needs to be used while
respecting the rights encoded in these
higher laws, such as free speech and
the right to protest."
Aren’t protests
supposed to be
inconvenient?
One of the people who have cham-
pioned reform in this area is lawyer
Ragnar A!alsteinsson. He has long
fought for the rights of protestors,
having defended the so-called Reyk-
javík Nine—a group of protesters
accused of “violently” entering Parlia-
ment during protests in December
2008.
"The Icelandic courts tend to say
that any inconvenience made by
protestors needs to be stopped,” he
told us. “But the ECHR has stated
inconvenience is a natural conse-
quence of protests, and that the state
must understand this and not inter-
fere unless everything goes too far."
Another good example of this is
the case of Ragnhei!ur Freyja Kristí-
nardóttir and Jórunn Edda Helgadót-
tir, the latter of whom is represented
by Ragnar. In May 2016, they stood
up on board a plane set to deport an
asylum seeker. The plane was, at the
time, standing still on the runway,
with boarding not yet complete. As
they stood, they began speaking out
loud about the fact that a person was
being wrongfully deported on that
flight. Jórunn was quickly restrained
by passengers and flight attendants
and both were arrested.
"The District Court concluded we
had caused 'severe disruption of public
transportation' without substantial
reasoning for this,” Ragnhei!ur recalls.
“The judge in fact concluded that we
did not cause any delay of the plane,
or not a severe delay at least, but that
we did indeed cause 'discomfort' and
'unease' amongst the flight crew and
passengers. This is one of the defenses
in Appellate Court: no passengers have
ever given their testimonies in this
case. Which is very unfortunate, since
there were 170 passengers on that
plane, and none of them were asked
to come and give testimony. The other
peculiar thing is that people have very
seldom been prosecuted for this and
the times that people have, they have
been acquitted."
What counts
as evidence
While the prosecution can seemingly
offer any number of arguments in
protest cases as to why a given protes-
tor or group of protestors should be
convicted, arguments from the defense
often fall on deaf ears.
Borys experienced this firsthand,
saying that in regards to his case, “The
only thing that made it into the final
verdict was the testimonies of the
police. The judge seemed only inter-
ested in whether police gave an order
and whether it was obeyed. That’s it.”
B o r y s a n d o t h e r s h a d r a i s e d
concerns about the possible existence
of racism within the Icelandic police
force having some role in how the
police have responded to the refugee
protests, bringing up the excessive use
of force throughout many of refugee
organised demonstrations. In speak-
ing with Grapevine, Borys also pointed
out the new “border patrol van” rolled
out earlier this year, wherein one of
the officers talked openly about target-
ing “Albanians and Romanians.” This
concern, amongst many others, was
summarily dismissed by the court.
“[The judge] refused to call in
the unit commander [Arnar Rúnar
Marteinsson] for further questioning
about the justification for the police
using excessive force and especially
the ensuing arrests—a thing that
happened only during the last sit-in
and therefore in need of further justifi-
cation,” Borys says. “The judge was only
interested in whether the police gave
an order and whether it was obeyed
or not and entirely disinterested in
whether [police] actions violate any
higher laws—which in our opinion
they did. The arrests that ensued go
against both Icelandic constitution and
the Universal Declaration of Human
Sigrún Ingibjörg Gísladóttir, lawyer
“If you're going to arrest
protestors, you have
to have something real
that they've done other
than disobeying police
orders.”