Grigoryan and Sergeyeva v. Ukraine, No. 63409/11, ECtHR (Fourth Section), 28 March 2017

Prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment. Violent behavior by police officers driven by ethnic or racial bias. Prohibition of discrimination. Obligation to carry out effective investigations. Link between racist attitudes and acts of violence.

Art. 3 ECHR 
Art. 14 ECHR 

1. When investigating violent incidents, such as acts of ill-treatment, State authorities have an additional duty to take all reasonable steps to unmask any racist motive and to establish whether or not ethnic hatred or prejudice may have played a role in the events at hand. Proving racial motivation will admittedly often be difficult in practice. For this reason, the respondent State’s obligation to investigate possible racist overtones to a violent act is an obligation to use best endeavours and not absolute. In other words, the authorities must do what is reasonable in the circumstances to collect and secure the evidence, explore all practical means of discovering the truth and deliver fully reasoned, impartial and objective decisions, without omitting suspicious facts that may be indicative of racially motivated violence.
2. The authorities’ duty to investigate the existence of a possible link between racist attitudes and an act of violence is an aspect of their procedural obligations arising under Art. 3 ECHR, but it may also be seen as implicit in their responsibilities under Art. 14 ECHR to secure the fundamental values enshrined in Art. 3 ECHR without discrimination.

In the grounds for the judgment, the European Court of Human Rights has specified that such a clear failing was all the more regrettable in view of the concern about instances of racial profiling and harassment by police directed against individuals of foreign origin and non-Slavic appearance which has been expressed in a number of international report at the time.