London, 10 March 2008 

On 4 March 2008 the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) held that Romania had violated Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) of the European Convention on Human Rights in conjunction with Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment). The case of Stoica v. Romania (Application no. 42722/02) was lodged with the ECHR on 19 December 2002 following a failed attempt to invoke successful criminal justice procedures by the applicant’s family in Romania.

In 2001 in the course of a dispute in a village in north eastern Romania, Constantin Stoica, who 18 months previously had undergone a brain operation, was allegedly kicked and beaten by a police sergeant, D.T. Shortly after the incident, the applicant was declared severely disabled.

The applicant alleged that the impugned events and ill-treatment that he suffered, and the flaws in the investigation that ensued, had been motivated by racial prejudice, in breach of Article 14 taken in conjunction with Article 3. 

Considering the procedural limb of Article 3 taken in conjunction with Article 14, the Court found that the authorities did not do everything in their power to investigate the possible racist motives behind the incident, as is required of states when investigating violent incidents. Whilst the Court acknowledged that proving racial motivation will often be extremely difficult in practice and that the authorities had addressed, to a certain extent, the potential racist implications of the incidents, the Court remained concerned that the authorities’ had disregarded witness statements to the contrary and official police documentation describing the villagers’ alleged aggressive behaviour as “purely Gypsy”, which could not be considered completely racially neutral.

Moving on to consider the allegations of a substantive violation of Article 14, the Court referred to jurisprudence developed by the Grand Chamber in the case of Nachova and Others v. Bulgaria, stating that:

“[W]here it is alleged – as here – that a violent act was motivated by racial prejudice, shifting the burden of proof to the respondent Government might amount to requiring the latter to prove the absence of a particular subjective attitude on the part of the person concerned.”

In the present case, however, the Court found that the burden of proof did fall on the Government, “regard having had to all the evidence of discrimination ignored by the police and the military prosecutor and the above conclusion of a racially biased investigation into the incidents”. Finding a violation of the substantive limb of Article 14, taken in conjunction with Article 3, the Court held that:

“[T]he evidence indicating the racial motives behind the police officers' actions is clear and neither the prosecutor in charge with the criminal investigation nor the Government could explain in any other way the incidents or, to that end, put forward any arguments showing that the incidents were racially neutral.”

The Equal Rights Trust welcomes the judgment as a contribution to the complex questions of evidence and proof in Article 14 jurisprudence of the ECHR.
 

To view the ERT summary of the case click here.

To view the full court decision click here.