Published on 23 December 2024
 
FIRST SECTION
Application no. 14971/19
Łukasz KOLADA
against Poland
lodged on 12 March 2019
communicated on 2 December 2024
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns the organisation of an assembly “March and Picnic of Silesian Uprisers” (Marsz i Piknik Powstańców Śląskich) in Katowice on 6 August 2018. The applicant was one of the organisers of the march which had been planned for approximately 80 persons and which finally gathered about 200 participants. It started at 3 p.m. and counter-demonstrators tried to block it. The police officers who were responsible for securing safety removed three blockages. After some 45 minutes, as the march was approaching narrow streets and police was afraid for security of participants, bystanders and property, the authorities of the city proposed the organisers to stop the march and continue the assembly in a square. When they refused, the Katowice Mayor decided to dissolve the assembly and ordered its participants to disperse. Upon the applicant’s appeal, the decision to dissolve the assembly was quashed by the Katowice Regional Court and then, upon further appeal by the Mayor of Katowice, the applicant’s original appeal was dismissed by the Katowice Court of Appeal.
The applicant complains that the dissolution of the march amounted to an interference with his right to freedom of assembly, in breach of Article 11 of the Convention.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1.  Has there been an interference with the applicant’s freedom of peaceful assembly within the meaning of Article 11 § 1 of the Convention?
 
2.  If so, was that interference prescribed by law and necessary in terms of Article 11 § 2 (see The United Macedonian Organisation Ilinden and Ivanov v. Bulgaria, no. 44079/98, 20 October 2005, and Bączkowski and Others v. Poland, no. 1543/06, 3 May 2007)?