Высший административный суд Литвы
3 января 2011 года
Facts
The applicants complained that the authorities had unjustifiably rejected their requests, despite the evidence they had provided of their father's persecution and the family's exile as a result of the occupation regime, including their father's forced life under a foreign name.
Complaint
The applicants sought: annulment of the order of the Director of the Lithuanian Centre for Genocide and Resistance Research, by which they were denied the legal status of victims of the occupation, and recognition of such status. They also complained that there was no interpreter present in the proceedings.
Court’s ruling
There is no evidence in the case which could be considered as substantiating the applicants' status as exiles. Therefore, having examined the case, the Chamber of Judges come to the conclusion that the Commission on the Rights of Resistance Participants (Resistance Fighters) of the Lithuanian Population Genocide and Resistance Research Centre reasonably proposed to the Director General of the Centre not to recognise the legal status of a victim of the occupation between 1939 and 1990, and that the Director General reasonably refused to grant the applicants the legal status of victims. The applicants did not exercise their right to appeal against the Commission's findings, although they had such a right and were aware of it.
Administrative proceedings are conducted, decisions are taken and published in Lithuanian, and people who do not speak Lithuanian are guaranteed access to a translator. The minutes of the hearing show that the hearing took place without a translator, but there is no evidence in the case file that the applicant indicated at the hearing that she did not understand the language of the proceedings and requested a translator. During the appeal proceedings, the applicant confirmed that her position in the present case, both at first instance and on appeal, is no different from that of her sister applicant and that she fully supports the arguments. In these circumstances, it was held that the absence of an interpreter at the hearing could not be regarded as a fundamental breach of procedural rights which could have led to an unfair decision in the case. The applicants' arguments that the Court of first instance infringed their procedural rights by not including documents in a non-national language (not translated into Lithuanian) in the case are also rejected. Documents written in other languages are submitted to the court translated into Lithuanian and certified in accordance with the established procedure, therefore the court did not infringe the rules of administrative procedure by not accepting a document not translated into the national language and certified in accordance with the established procedure.
Accordingly, the appeal was dismissed.