{"id":15437,"date":"2020-05-01T06:54:24","date_gmt":"2020-05-01T11:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/?p=15437"},"modified":"2020-05-01T06:54:58","modified_gmt":"2020-05-01T11:54:58","slug":"george-soros-shadow-over-the-european-court-of-human-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/george-soros-shadow-over-the-european-court-of-human-rights","title":{"rendered":"George Soros’ Shadow Over the European Court of Human Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On February 25, I asked in an article<\/a> whether the European Court of Human Rights\n(ECHR) depends on George Soros. The article relied on a devastating report by\nthe European Center for Law & Justice (ECLJ)<\/a> in Strasbourg entitled Les ONG et les juges de la CEDH, 2009-2019<\/em><\/a> [\u201cNGOs and the Judges of the ECHR, 2009 \u2013\n2019\u201d<\/em> \u2014 available also in English<\/a> and Spanish<\/a>]. After two months, the ECHR has, by its\nactions, confirmed and strengthened the case of Soros’s influence on the Court.\nHow, and why, are the subects of a new ECLJ expos\u00e9<\/a> by its Director, Gr\u00e9gor Puppinck, who is also\na member of the Committee of Experts on the Reform of the ECHR. He is also the co-author\nof the February report. Before covering the new report, however, here is some\nbackground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ECLJ\u2019s February Findings<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ECLJ is an international organization\ndedicated to the promotion and protection of human rights and religious freedom\nthroughout the world. ECLJ has held special Consultative\nStatus before the Economic and\nSocial Council of the United Nations<\/a> since 2007.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a meticulous six-month investigation\nregarding the decade between 2009-2019, it produced the above-mentioned report,\nconcluding that out of the 100 permanent judges of the Court, 22\u2014almost a\nquarter of the assembly\u2014have links to seven particular NGOs. In fact, before\nbecoming judges on the Court, these individuals were collaborators and\nsometimes even managers of the NGOs in question. The organizations, in\nalphabetical order, to which the judges are tied are as follow: A.I.R.E. Centre<\/a> (Center for Individual Rights in Europe); Amnesty International<\/a>; the International Commission of Jurists<\/a>; the Helsinki committees<\/a> and foundations network; Human\nRights Watch<\/a>; Interights<\/a>\n(International Center for the Judicial Protection of Human Rights); and the Open Society Foundations<\/a> network with its various branches, in\nparticular the Open Society Justice Initiative<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of those 22 judges, 12 have had direct\nrelationships with Open Society, making it the single NGO in the list to which\nthe most judges are connected (a fact attested in the judges\u2019 own biographies\nas given on the website of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe<\/a>). What is more, the six other NGOs identified\nin the report are financed by Open Society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report also found that 18 of the 22 judges\nhad heard cases on the court presented or supported by Open Society. In the ten\nyears taken into consideration, the report identified 88 cases<\/em> that it\ndefined as \u201cproblematic\u201d in this regard. Additionally, in many more cases there\nwere also links between the judges and the NGOs, though indirect ones and\ntherefore not identifiable by the \u201cproblematic\u201d standard adopted in the report.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In sum, the February report clearly establishes\nthat what is at stake here in nothing less than the independence of the Court\nand the transparency of its work: important questions for the body that\narbitrates the matter of human rights in Europe! The ultimate question that\ncomes into view is whhether the Court is swayed by Open Society\u2014i.e<\/em>.\nbillionaire George Soros\u2019 network of organizations that propagates and finances\nabortion propoganda and transgender ideology throughout the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Most Controversial Judge\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, two months after the February report, the\nECHR has acted so as to only confirm the concerns contained therein: by electing\na man Dr. Puppinck calls \u201cthe most controversial judge\u201d\u2014Bulgarian Yonko Grozev\u2014to\nthe important post of \u201csection president.\u201d. Why does Puppinck find Grozev \u201cmost\ncontroversial?\u201d He writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGrozev has spent his entire career as a lawyer\nand activist in NGOs close to George Soros or financed by him, until he became\none of the world leaders of the Open Society branch specialising in the use of\njudicial institutions for political purposes (the Open Society Justice\nInitiative). He became known, inter alia, as a lawyer for a group of\npunk women (Pussy Riot) who committed a sacrilegious act in Moscow Cathedral.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be clear, we at iFamNews are strongly\nconvinced that everyone<\/em> has he right to a defense attorney. (This is, in\nfact, one of the most luminous legacies given to the world civilization by the\nMiddle Ages, including the Inquisition, as the Italian-American specialist John\nTedeschi clearly highlights in his The Prosecution of Heresy: Collected\nStudies on the Inquisition in Early Modern Italy<\/a>.) And we know all too well that only\ndespotisms and totalitarianisms deny this important right of a competent legal\ndefense. Nevertheless, these facts about Grozev do provoke our journalistic\ncuriosity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Dr. Puppincnk further details, \u201cAlready in\n2014, the modalities of [Grozev\u2019s] nomination in Strasbourg had been\nchallenged, as three members of the Bulgarian selection committee were his NGO\nfellows. A complaint to the Council of Europe by a local organisation about the\nirregularity of the selection procedure was dismissed.\u201d And the irregularities\nrun deeper: Mr. Grozev, says Puppinck, was an \u201cactivist\u201d, with \u201cno experience\nas a magistrate (like the majority of the judges in Strasbourg),\u201d when he was\nappointed as a judge on the ECHR. Then, \u201c[s]hortly after his election, his new\ncolleagues ruled in his favour in the Pussy Riot<\/em> case and ordered\nRussia to pay him, as is customary, substantial compensation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Advancing Even Higher<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once Mr. Grozev had been nominated as a judge, Puppinck\nexplains, several cases came up \u201cwhich he had brought before the ECHR himself\nas a lawyer, or which had been brought by his former NGOs.\u201d Puppinck says that\nwhile in 9 such cases Grozev recused himself, \u201che still participated in the\njudgment of at least 10 other cases brought or supported by NGOs which he\nhimself had founded or directed until recently.\u201d Puppinck provides a listing of these cases<\/a>. Puppinck goes on, \u201csuch conduct constitutes a\nserious and repeated breach of a judge’s basic ethical obligations\u201d and \u201cin any\nstate governed by the rule of law, the [subject] of such breaches would be\nliable to severe disciplinary sanctions.\u201d The Bulgarian Ministry of Justice even\npublicly raised the possibility of Mr. Grozev’s dismissal, though it left the\nmatter to the ECHR itself to decide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, though, Grozev has advanced even higher in\nthe ECHR, as he \u201cwill head one of the five sections of the Court, will exercise\ngeneral management powers within the Court, and will systematically sit in the\nmost important cases.\u201d He will also have power within his section to decide \u201calone,\non a case-by-case basis, whether to invite, allow or refuse the intervention of\nNGOs in cases.\u201d Not a bad gig, if you can get it\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, the European Court of Human Rights Depends on George Soros. They Admit It Themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":9223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"Yes, the European Court of Human Rights Depends on George Soros. 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He is an Italian professional journalist, member of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), essayist, translator, and lecturer. He has contributed and contributes to several journals and magazines both in print and online, both in Italy and abroad. Author of books, he has translated and\/or edited works by, among others, Edmund Burke, Charles Dickens, T.S. Eliot, Russell Kirk, J.R.R. Tolkien, R\u00e9gine Pernoud and Gustave Thibon. A Senior fellow at the\u00a0Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (Mecosta, Michigan) he is also a founding member as well as Board member of the Center for European Renewal (The Hague, The Netherlands). A member of the Editorial Board of The European Conservative magazine, as well as a member of the Advisory Council of the European Federation for Freedom of Belief, he serves as Director-in-Charge of the academic publication The Journal of CESNUR and the online Bitter Winter: A Magazine on Religious Liberty and Human Rights.","sameAs":["https:\/\/facebook.com\/MarcoRespinti","https:\/\/it.linkedin.com\/in\/marcorespinti","https:\/\/pinterest.it\/MarcoRespinti\/_created\/","https:\/\/x.com\/https:\/\/twitter.com\/MarcoRespinti","https:\/\/youtube.com\/channel\/UC1FbsvyQNTQ-snpsmRC12Og?view_as=subscriber"],"url":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/author\/mrespinti"}]}},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15437"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15439,"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15437\/revisions\/15439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}