Reykjavík Grapevine - des. 2020, Blaðsíða 9

Reykjavík Grapevine - des. 2020, Blaðsíða 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.”

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