On 26 August, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in the case Erikas Rutkauskas v. Lithuania that the religious freedom of a religious minister of Jehovah’s Witnesses had been violated for failing to give him access to a civilian service replacing military service.
This is the second time in recent years that Lithuania has lost a similar case in Strasbourg. In June 2022, the court ruled in favour of another Jehovah’s Witness minister, Lithuanian citizen Stanislav Teliatnikov, who was living in Turkey at the time. He also refused military service in 2015 on religious grounds and sought an alternative.
The hurdle of the domestic proceedings
Having been called on under the Law on Conscription to perform military service, he refused on the grounds of his religious beliefs and conscience. His request to perform civilian service instead was not answered by the military authorities, which on 7 September 2015 also decided not to exempt the applicant from initial mandatory military service. The applicant challenged their decisions in the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court, which on 31 October 2017 dismissed the applicant’s appeal.
The applicant then lodged an appeal with the Supreme Administrative Court, asking the latter to suspend the case and to refer a question to the Constitutional Court on whether the State’s failure to include an exemption in the Law on Conscription from both mandatory military service and alternative national defence service for conscientious objectors breached the right to freedom of religion.
By a final ruling of 16 October 2019 the Supreme Administrative Court upheld the impugned decisions. It referred to the Constitutional Court’s ruling of 4 July 2017 and the Supreme Administrative Court’s prior ruling of 10 April 2019 (see Teliatnikov v. Lithuania, no. 51914/19, §§ 28-30, 7 June 2022) and held that the constitutional duty of a citizen to perform mandatory military service or alternative national defence service applied both to ministers of churches and religious organisations that were considered traditional in Lithuania, and also to ministers of non-traditional religious communities and associations.
There was thus a legal basis for holding that the military authorities’ decision not to release the applicant from mandatory military service was lawful. Furthermore, the questions related to the applicant’s status as subject to military conscription, such as whether he was medically fit to perform such service, or which type of service – military or alternative national defence service – should apply to him, or what the conditions of such service should be, were not the subject matter of the case.
The applicant complained under Article 9 of the Convention that despite his genuinely held religious beliefs and his conscience, he was denied the right to refuse military service. Even though he had never denied his civic obligations, no alternative civilian service had been provided for by Lithuanian law.
Some details of the decision of the European Court
The European Court stressed that the general principles on freedom of thought, conscience and religion as one of the foundations of a “democratic society” within the meaning of the Convention, and the States’ margin of appreciation in this area, have been set out in
Bayatyan v. Armenia [GC], no. 23459/03, §§ 124-25, in 2011
Adyan and Others v. Armenia, no. 75604/11, §§ 63-65, in 2017
Teliatnikov v. Lithuania, no. 51914/19, §§ 28-30, in 2022
In the last case, Teliatnikov v. Lithuania, no. 51914/19 Teliatnikov (§§ 97-110), the Court found that the system of mandatory military service failed to strike a fair balance between the interests of society as a whole and those of the applicant, who had never refused to comply with his civic obligations in general.
Erikas Rutkauskas, as a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, sought to be exempted from military service on the ground of his genuinely held religious convictions, and had referred to those grounds in his request to the military authority in 2015, just as in the case of Mr Teliatnikov.
The European Court held that there had been a violation of Article 9 (freedom of religion or belief) of the European Convention and held that Lithuania was to pay EUR 1,000 in respect of costs and expenses.
The court ordered the Lithuanian government to pay Rutkauskas 1,000 euros in compensation.
Laurynas Šedvydis, chair of the Lithuanian parliament’s Human Rights Committee, told BNS news agency that the system should be reformed.
“Lithuania should ensure better opportunities for people to serve in other ways because of their religious or personal beliefs,” he said. “Why, for example, shouldn’t service in the health sector be considered equally valuable?”
Lithuania reinstated mandatory military service in 2014 following Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
