ZAGREB, March 12, 2020 - "The Truth about the Istanbul Convention" NGO filed an application with the European Court of Human Rights on Thursday after the Constitutional Court dismissed its complaints about signature verification and obstruction in certain areas of gathering signatures for a referendum on the Convention.
"We consider the opinion of the Constitutional Court to be completely inadequate, even wrong, as confirmed by the dissenting opinion of Judge Miroslav Šumanović. The Constitutional Court either did not address our key complaints or dismissed them without a valid explanation," the group says in a leaflet which its activists handed out to reporters outside the government offices.
"We expect the European Court of Human Rights ((ECHR) to consider the situation in Croatia, which basically set a precedent. I don't think that it happened anywhere else that the ruling elites actually worked against their own citizens and their constitutional rights to a referendum," the coordinator of the initiative, Kristina Pavlović, told the press.
Asked what they were going to do if the ECHR told them they were wrong, Pavlović said that they had been fighting their legal battle for a year or two already. "We believe we have the arguments, the arguments are on our side, and we will fight as long as we can," she said.
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