Introduction : Religious Freedom and Religious Minorities in Contemporary Europe and Beyond

Współautorstwo: Hacohen, Aviad

Freedom of Religion, Minority Rights and the Law : The Status of Jewish and Muslim Minorities in Europe and Beyond / edited by Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias and Aviad Hacohen. London : Routledge, 2025, s. 1-15.

Strengthening the Protection of Religious Minorities by Establishing a New Universal Human Rights Treaty : A Necessary or Redundant Effort?

Freedom of Religion, Minority Rights and the Law : The Status of Jewish and Muslim Minorities in Europe and Beyond / edited by Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias and Aviad Hacohen. London : Routledge, 2025, s. 53-77.

Calls for the adoption of an international treaty dedicated to countering discrimination and hatred on the basis of religion – an instrument analogous to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) – have appeared regularly for several decades. They are the aftermath of an unsuccessful attempt to establish such a treaty when the ICERD was being formulated in the 1960s. Although preparations for the enactment of the “twin” conventions proceeded in parallel, works on the one with a religious dimension only concluded with the 1981 UN Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief (1981 Resolution), adopted by the UN General Assembly. Since then, the question remains open of whether the standard of protection against religious discrimination and hatred is adequate, or whether it needs to be strengthened or thoroughly redefined and supplemented in the face of continuing threats to the rights and freedoms of vulnerable groups, which include religious minorities and individuals persecuted because of their religion or belief. At the same time, an important element of the ongoing discussions is the need to protect individuals who, by manifesting their opposition to certain religious practices, for example, are exposed to harassment and persecution. In the face of conflicts over the scope of protection to be granted to religions as such (including their sacred symbols, books, or prophets) and controversies relating to the contradiction between certain religious practices or dogmas and the prohibition of religious discrimination, the probability of reaching a consensus in such a sensitive area is low, and the eventual treaty could even turn out to be less meaningful (in terms of its scope) than the existing 1981 Declaration. The proposed chapter is thus intended to present the most important arguments “for” and “against” establishing a new treaty on religious discrimination and hatred, though without aspiring to give exhaustive or prejudging answers.

The research conducted for this chapter has been funded by the Polish National Science Centre (Grant No. 2019/33/B/HS5/01634).

Ochrona grup wrażliwych przed antysemicką i antyromską dyskryminacją i nienawiścią jako zobowiązanie państwa w ocenie Europejskiego Trybunału Praw Człowieka oraz Europejskiej Komisji przeciwko Rasizmowi i Nietolerancji

Europejski Przegląd Sądowy 2025, nr 6, s. 19-24.

W lutym 2021 r. Europejski Trybunał Praw Człowieka wydał dwa w pewnym sensie bliźniacze, bo odnoszące się do tych samych faktów i uznające te same naruszenia Konwencji o ochronie praw człowieka i podstawowych wolności, wyroki przeciwko Bułgarii. Dotyczą one zakresu pozytywnych obowiązków państwa do zapewnienia właściwej ochrony przed antysemicką i antyromską dyskryminacją i nienawiścią. Konkludując, ETPC uznał, że nienawistne treści w realny sposób mogły wpływać na poczucie własnej wartości i tożsamości osób pochodzenia żydowskiego oraz romskiego jako całych społeczności, a w konsekwencji naruszać ich prawo do prywatności, jak również zakaz dyskryminacji. Orzeczenia w wyrokach ETPC 29335/13, Behar i Gutman, oraz 12567/13, Budinova i Chaprazov, podkreślają kolektywny wymiar naruszeń praw i wolności i mają przełożenie na sformułowanie pozytywnych zobowiązań państw, co stanowi o wyjątkowym charakterze tych decyzji Trybunału w Strasburgu. Jednocześnie to podejście ETPC znajduje odzwierciedlenie w stanowiskach Europejskiej Komisji przeciwko Rasizmowi i Nietolerancji Rady Europy (European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, ECRI), wspólnie tworząc rozszerzony europejski standard ochrony praw człowieka.

In February 2021, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR, the Court) issued two „twin” judgments against Bulgaria, relating to the same facts and recognising the same violations of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. They concern the scope of the state’s positive obligations to afford adequate protection against anti-Semitic and anti-Roma discrimination and hatred. In conclusion, the ECtHR found that hateful statements were actually capable of having an impact on the feeling of self-worth and on the sense of identity of people of Jewish and Roma origin as whole communities, and thus violate their right to protection of private life, as well as the prohibition of discrimination. The ECtHR judgments in Behar and Gutman (29335/13) and Budinova and Chaprazov (12567/13) cases emphasise a collective dimension of violations of rights and freedoms, and give rise to states’ positive obligations, which is what makes these decisions of the Strasbourg Court unique. At the same time, the approach adopted by the ECtHR is reflected in the position of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) of the Council of Europe, collectively establishing an extended European standard of human rights protection.

The research, the results of which are presented in this article, were carried out within the framework of the research grant „Protection of vulnerable groups under international human rights law” (UMO 2019/33/B/HS5/01634), awarded by the National Science Centre.

Wounds Unhealed : Polish-Ukrainian and Polish-Russian Memory Wars before 2022

The Politics of Memory Laws : Russia, Ukraine and Beyond / Uladzislau Belavusau, Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias, Maria Mälksoo and Angelika Nußberger (eds). Oxford : Hart Publishing, 2025, s. 145-162.

In a propaganda-serving interview in February 2024, by Trump fan Tucker Carlson, Putin once again presented his falsified version of history. In addition to his repeated narrative of the lack of a historical basis for Ukrainian statehood and national secession, he also commented on Poland. According to Putin, it was Poland that once reached for Kyiv and other ‘Russian lands’. It was Poland that in 1938, as Hitler’s accomplice, carried out a ‘partition of Czechoslovakia’, and thus bears blame for the outbreak of World War II (WWII) and yet at the same time, was deserving of the invasion. As commented by Carl Bildt, former Prime Minister of Sweden: ‘It is indeed true that in 1939 Poland didn’t bend to Hitler. For Putin, that seems to justify Hitler’s decision to invade and try to annihilate the country. His historical revisionism is breathtaking in all its implications’. At the same time, this is nothing new. In December 2019, in an attempt to justify the rationale behind the alliance between Stalin and Hitler known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Putin pointed to the ‘hyena of Europe’ – ie, Poland – as the culprit behind the war and the extermination of the Jews. For centuries, Poland, Ukraine and Russia have had a difficult historical relationship, burdened by successive dramatic conflicts, crimes and geopolitical reshuffles. The consequences of these tensions also emerged sharply after the breakthrough of 1989, when the collapse of the USSR and the Iron Curtain initially permitted hopes and plans for a new opening, including overcoming the conflicts accumulated around the common past. These hopes were quickly dashed. In recent years the dispute which began as primarily political and academic has extended to the legal field, sanctioning national ‘historical truths’ and, in the case of Russia, falsifying those concerning the entire history of twentieth-century Europe. At the same time, tensions between Russia and Ukraine took a dangerous turn. Ukraine’s strengthening of its identity, democracy and statehood, including through mnemonic constitutionalism, was a threat to authoritarian Russia. This is because authoritarian leaders fear the influence of their neighbours, which could lead to democratisation in their own country and thus the erosion of the authoritarian power base. This is not to say that Ukraine, invaded by Russia in 2014 and then in 2022, was an exemplary liberal democracy, but the contrast in the political and constitutional systems of the two countries was clear. In the last year before the war, 2021, Ukraine was classified by civil liberties monitor Freedom House as ‘partly free’ with a ‘transitional or hybrid’ regime, while Russia has been classified as a ‘captive’ autocracy since 2005. Russia’s trajectory has been the opposite to the extent that, as Timothy J Colton concluded, ‘If, from a democratization perspective, Ukraine prior to the war had been a work in progress, Russia was the inverse: a work in regress’. Each successive term of President Vladimir Putin (with a brief hiatus for Dmitry Medvedev, but with Putin in charge) has resulted in the systematic deterioration of democracy and the spread of authoritarian practices in Russia. The steady erosion of any semblance of competitive elections (with the brutal persecution and murder of the only viable opposition candidate, Alexei Navalny), and of individual rights (symbolised by Russia’s withdrawal from the Council of Europe (CoE) and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) system); the expansion of classifications and sanctions against the category of ‘foreign agents’, which affected many NGOs and activists and journalists; and the 2020 constitutional amendments which ratified further restrictions on freedom of expression and effectively ensured Putin a lifetime presidential term, are just some of the symptoms of the democratic decline of the Russian political system over the past decades. The legally approved distortion of history can be seen as another such symptom. At the same time, it is worth emphasising that the use of memory laws by those in power is neither a new phenomenon nor characteristic only of selected jurisdictions such as the ones in the present chapter. However, the visible proliferation of these regulations in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) over the last few decades, as well as the European origin of the most classic memory laws, such as the criminal prohibitions on Holocaust denial, warrant in-depth analysis precisely in the context of the European legal space. Post-war Europe, in its democratic and liberal part, laid the foundations of a newfound remembrance around the crimes of the Holocaust and a commitment to stop any authoritarian, criminal regimes in the future that could lead to a repeat of the Holocaust. Such a circumscribed field of remembrance, focusing on regulations that are closely related to the doctrine of ‘militant democracy’, including, for example, bans on negationism, the functioning of totalitarian political parties and associations, and the use of Nazi symbols, was confronted over time not only with the challenge of legal regulation of the aftermath of a different past – that of Stalin and communism – but also with attempts at a populist takeover of memory to serve particular political interests. These challenges were also confronted by the constitutional courts of some European states, as well as by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and, finally, the Court of Justice of the EU, which in 2021 ruled that Polish courts had no jurisdiction to hear an action against a German publisher for the use of the phrase ‘Polish extermination camp’, initiated by a Polish survivor of German Nazi concentration camps, because the plaintiff could not be considered a direct victim of a violation of personal rights on the basis of the contested publication. The rest of this chapter, which focuses on the last decade of mnemonic constitutionalism in Poland, Ukraine and Russia, is designed as follows: firstly in section II, the focus is placed on the analysis of legal aspects of the remembrance policy implemented by Polish authorities over the last decade in relation to Ukraine and Russia. Secondly, in section III the chapter discusses memory laws adopted in Ukraine and Russia, which stood in sharp opposition to those adopted in Poland, showing the deep duality – or contradiction – in the ways of remembering, and at the same time, proving the need to legally decree one’s own truth about the past. Next, the chapter reflects in section IV on possible (though extremely difficult) ways to discuss history legally, in a way that not only protects historical truth but also secures the proper implementation of human rights and freedoms. Section V concludes.

Funding provided by: University of Copenhagen.

Redakcja:

Freedom of Religion, Minority Rights and the Law : The Status of Jewish and Muslim Minorities in Europe and Beyond

Współredaktorstwo: Hacohen, Aviad

London : Routledge, 2025

ISBN 9781032696911; 9781032729770; 9781003423294

XXIX, [1], 337 stron.

This book provides an in-depth, scholarly reflection on the challenges that arise in guaranteeing religious freedom and protection of the rights of religious minorities in law and practice. Currently, the protection of religious minorities constitutes one of the foundations of the international human rights protection systems and is provided for in the constitutions of all democratic states. The volume identifies, analyses, and assesses the legal status of religious freedom and protection of religious minorities, with special focus on Jewish and Muslim minorities in the European and Israeli legal environments. It compares the discourses on the scope and boundaries of religious freedom with the actual treatment of religious freedom in legal regulations, the case law, and in practice by the general society. The book employs the resources of comparative law and national and international law, as well as legal theory. Extensive use is also made of decisions of the international courts, including the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union. The book will be a valuable resource for academics, researchers, and policymakers working in the areas of law and religion, international human rights law, comparative constitutional law, and religious studies.

Redakcja:

The Politics of Memory Laws : Russia, Ukraine and Beyond

Współredaktorstwo: Belavusaǔ, Uladzìslaǔ; Mälksoo, Maria; Nußberger, Angelika

Oxford : Hart Publishing, 2025

ISBN 9781509975303; 9781509975310; 9781509975327; 9781509975334

360 stron.

This open access book explores the political utility and consequences of memory laws with a focus on how militant memory laws frame, underpin and generate international conflicts. Proceeding from Russia's ongoing aggression against Ukraine, this examination plots how memory laws have preceded, partially led to, and encouraged the outbreak of the war itself via Russian propaganda. It also offers a broader perspective looking at developments in the Baltic States, Belarus, Finland, Germany, Hungary, and Poland, as well as in European (Council of Europe and European Union) law. Bringing together scholars with diverse perspectives, this book provides both analysis and conceptual reflection for scholars assessing the politics of memory laws.

Funding provided by: University of Copenhagen.

Introduction : Shadows of History : Memory Laws in Europe in the Context of the Russo-Ukrainian War

Współautorstwo: Belavusaǔ, Uladzìslaǔ; Mälksoo, Maria; Nußberger, Angelika

The Politics of Memory Laws : Russia, Ukraine and Beyond / Uladzislau Belavusau, Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias, Maria Mälksoo and Angelika Nußberger (eds). Oxford : Hart Publishing, 2025, s. 1-20.

Especially in times as geopolitically and axiologically volatile and uncertain as the present, with polarised societies and full-scale war in Europe, the law, embedded in its social functions and roles, should be immune to manipulation for political and ideological purposes. However, with reality demonstrating that the opposite is true, the topics covered in this book prove to be of significance.

Funding provided by: University of Copenhagen.