For the first time, on Sunday, the Courts Security Service required several citizens to sign an undertaking before being allowed into a High Court of Justice hearing. The people involved were visitors who had previously disrupted hearings, been removed, and were listed in internal security reports. Their names had already come up after earlier incidents in which the security staff required them to identify themselves.
When the group arrived at the Supreme Court building to attend a hearing on petitions about changing the composition of the committee for selecting judges and how it operates, security staff told them entry would be allowed only if they signed a document titled, "Undertaking to Preserve the Order of the Hearing and Public Order in the Court." The form states, among other things, that the signer understands that disrupting court order may amount to a criminal offense or grounds for contempt proceedings.
The new measure was used for the first time in this case, but court security appears to intend to apply the same procedure in other sensitive hearings as well. The move comes amid heightened sensitivity around hearings tied to judicial appointments and court procedures.
After the incident, the Movement for Governance and Democracy sent a protest to the Courts Administration. The group said the court is continuing to erode the principle of open hearings, argued that citizens are being forced to choose between revealing personal details and signing the pledge in order to enter, and asked by what authority the courts are demanding this and whether privacy protections under the Privacy Protection Law are being fully observed.
