dentical gist. Some petitioners, such as the Orthodox Church, simply expressed their objection to the events and to the general idea of people being homosexual and identifying themselves as such. Others, such as the Supreme Mufti, informed the authorities of their intention to hold a protest against the events, whereas the senior Muslim authority in Nizhniy Novgorod threatened violence.
73. The Court has previously stressed in this connection that freedom of assembly as enshrined in Article 11 of the Convention protects a demonstration that may annoy or cause offence to persons opposed to the ideas or claims that it is seeking to promote (see Stankov and the United Macedonian Organisation Ilinden v. Bulgaria, Nos. 29221/95 and 29225/95, § 90, ECHR 2001-IX). The participants must be able to hold the demonstration without having to fear that they will be subjected to physical violence by their opponents. It is thus the duty of Contracting States to take reasonable and appropriate measures to enable lawful demonstrations to proceed peacefully (see Plattform "{Arzte fur} das Leben", cited above, §§ 32 and 34).
74. The Court cannot accept the Government's argument that these petitions should be viewed as a general indication that the Pride March and the picketing had the potential to cause public disorder. The first group of petitions, calling for the events to be prohibited because the petitioners considered them immoral, without a threat of immediate counteraction at the site of the events, were irrelevant to safety considerations. They could only be taken into account for the purpose of restrictions to be imposed for the protection of morals, an issue that will be specifically addressed below.
75. The next group of petitions, indicating the authors' intention to engage in protest actions at the site of the events because they found them objectionable, should, on the contrary, have been carefully assessed from the standpoint of security arrangements. As a general rule, where a serious threat of a violent counter-demonstration exists, the Court has allowed the domestic authorities a wide discretion in the choice of means to enable assemblies to take place without disturbance (see Plattform "{Arzte fur} das Leben", loc. cit.). However, the mere existence of a risk is insufficient for banning the event: in making their assessment the authorities must produce concrete estimates of the potential scale of disturbance in order to evaluate the resources necessary for neutralising the threat of violent clashes (see Barankevich, cited above, § 33). In the present case, no preliminary assessment of the risks posed by counter-demonstrations had been carried out. The subsequent events revealed that there was a potential total of about a hundred counter-protesters, a figure that is significant but by no means overwhelming on the scale of a city such as Moscow. The Court observes, moreover, that only a few of the petitions cited by the Government expressed determination on the part of the counter-protesters to proceed by unlawful means. The Government did not make any submissions as to whether any of the petitioners had attempted to give notice of their counter-demonstration. Had they done so, the authorities could have made arrangements to ensure that both events proceeded peacefully and lawfully, allowing both sides to achieve the goal of expressing their views without clashing with each other. It was for the Moscow authorities to address potential counter-protesters - whether by making a public statement or by replying to their petitions individually - in order to remind them to remain within the boundaries of the law when carrying out any protest actions.
76. As regards any statements calling for violence and inciting offences against the participants in a public event, such as those by a Muslim cleric from Nizhniy Novgorod, who reportedly said that homosexuals must be stoned to death (see p
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