The Estonian legal chancellor said that the detention in Estonia of four Falun Gong practitioners during the visit of the president of China in June was illegal, because the police gave too wide an interpretation to the term of public meeting.
Replying on Monday to an inquiry by Andres Herkel and Jaan Leppik, members of parliament from the oppositional Pro Patria Union on Monday, Legal Chancellor Allar Joks said that peaceful distribution of information materials based on an announcement of the international human rights organization Amnesty International, photography of that activity and wearing of the Falun Gong badge do not constitute a public meeting, which must be registered in the local self-government in agreement with the law.
Joks said the activity of the four Falung Gong members did not endanger the values the observation of which the limitations of the law on public meeting to the freedom of expression serve. Therefore extension of the law to the case under discussion is debatable. He added that under the Constitution, everyone is entitled to freely distribute ideas, opinions, convictions and other information orally, in print, in the form of pictures or in any other way.
Joks said that interpretation of the public meeting law in a way to literally rule out free distribution of information cannot be justified.
He said that an obligation to give seven days of advance notice of any distribution of information materials would be a reasonable limitation in the light of those democratic values the constitutional principle of the freedom of expression serves.
"By covert introduction of such an obligation we would step on the undemocratic road of restricting the free circulation of information," Joks said.
He added that the consequences of such a case could be sad in Estonia.
Joks said that the role of members of parliament, the legal chancellor, the police and the courts was in that the freedom of expression would not remain only on paper and therefore the impermissibility of the police action in June must be brought into relevance.
Responding to a similar inquiry at the end of September, Interior Minister Ain Seppik said that the police acted in keeping with the law when it detained on June 14 at the SAS Radisson hotel Swedish citizens Bolette and Peter Ebertz and Latvian citizens Andrejs Aboltins and Eriks Valinieks.
The minister said that they violated the order of the holding of public meetings, because the Swedes distributed to passers-by a small leaflet with a quotation from an official statement by Amnesty International on the violation of human rights in China.
Aboltins was shooting the distribution of the leaflet with a video camera from the distance, while Valinieks appeared after the three former persons had been arrest and was arrested as well because he was wearing a Falun Gong badge.
Seppik said the police took the foursome to the Central Tallinn police station where, among others, an employee of the Security Police talked to them.
The Interior Minister said that those detained violated the order of public meetings which requires that there must be a permission for the organization of a meeting.
Seppik added that by law, the permission for the organization of a meeting can only be given to an Estonian citizen or an alien residing in Estonia with a permament residence permit. He said none of the four met that requirement.
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