Human Rights Watch World Report 2003
Table of Contents
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Human
Rights Developments
Defending
Human Rights
The
Role of the International Community
Ensuring minority rights remained
The government failed to
enact a long-pending constitutional law on minority rights. In February, the
cabinet rejected a draft produced by a working group that included minority
representatives. The cabinet then established a new working group, this time
without minority representation. As of November, the group had not presented a
new draft.
Seven years after the
Dayton Peace Agreement brought peace to the region, by the close of 2002 most
of the 350,000 displaced Croatian Serbs had still not returned home. Between
January and August, 7,800 Serbs returned (primarily elderly persons returning
to villages), increasing the total number of returnees to 110,000, according to
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). An unknown number of
returnees had departed again for F.R. Yugoslavia or
On July 12, the Croatian
Parliament set a December 31 deadline for the government to issue
administrative decisions on return of occupied private properties to their
owners. For property not returned by this deadline, the government obliged
itself to pay compensation to owners who had filed property claims. The
amendments disbanded the inefficient local housing commissions and vested the
State Prosecutor with the authority to file lawsuits against temporary users
who refused to vacate occupied property. The amendments left in place, however,
a number of obstacles to repossession of property. Most significant among these
was the requirement that before evicting temporary occupants the authorities
must provide them with alternative accommodation, which often proved difficult.
The right to alternative accommodation applied even to temporary occupants who
could afford to obtain other housing and to occupants who had previously lived
within a single household but since the war had multiple homes thanks to their
occupancy of Serb houses.
While eviction of
illegal occupants of Serb properties was legally mandated, in most cases in
which they refused to vacate the property, the competent housing commissions
had not sought court-ordered eviction. Only at the beginning of 2002 did the
Supreme Court abandon its earlier position and rule that owners, as well as the
local housing commissions, could sue to evict illegal occupants. Even where
courts had rendered final decisions in favor of the owner, however, the
judgments rarely led to actual repossession.
The situation was even
more hopeless for those who had pre-war tenancy rights in apartments. Deputy
Prime Minister Zeljka Antunovic stated in November 2001 that during the war
Serbs had left their apartments voluntarily, and accordingly, they had as a
matter of law lost their tenancy rights. Lovre Pejkovic, head of the
government's Directorate for Expelled Persons, Returnees, and Refugees, stated
in March 2002 that the government had no obligation to former tenancy rights
holders.
Roma continued to suffer
discrimination in all fields of public life. The Law on Citizenship required
citizenship applicants to have five years of permanent residence and excellent
Croatian language skills, preventing many Roma from obtaining citizenship.
Romani children were segregated into separate and educationally inferior
Roma-only classes. On April 19, a group of fifty-seven Romani children assisted
by the
The judiciary continued
to suffer from a large inherited backlog of pending cases, inexperienced judges
and staff, and political influence at the local level, particularly among
judicial appointees of the late President Franjo Tudjman.
In a step back from its
previous cooperation with the ICTY, the government failed to arrest and
transfer former general Ante Gotovina to the custody of the tribunal. Gotovina
was indicted in July 2001 for crimes during and after the 1995 Operation Storm.
On
In a welcome
development, the authorities accelerated domestic prosecution of ethnic Croats
suspected of war crimes committed during the 1991-95 war. Serious concerns
remained about the quality of these proceedings, however. Judicial bias and
witness tampering characterized some trials, including the high-profile trial
in
The central government
generally did not interfere with the independence of the media. In February
2002, the state-owned television station declined to air a program prepared by
a renowned journalist on the contemporary heritage of the Ustashas, the
Croatian World War II allies of Nazi Germany. In March, the Zagreb District
Court upheld two lower court libel decisions imposing fines amounting to
U.S.$24,000 on the satirical weekly Feral Tribune (distinguished for
debunking nationalistic myths and researching war crimes against Croatian Serbs).
In one of the judgments, the judge faulted Feral Tribune for publishing
"cosmopolitan opinions and views."
Robust and professional
human rights organizations were active, particularly in the urban centers of
THE ROLE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
United Nations
On
In its March 19
concluding observations, the U.N. CERD welcomed
Organization for Security and Cooperation in
The six-month report of
the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Mission to
Croatia presented on May 24 welcomed several important government policy
statements on property repossession, judiciary reform, regional cooperation,
and minority legislation. The report also pointed out the main areas of
concern, including return of refugees and property repossession, the issue of
tenancy rights, and the state of the judiciary and the rule of law. The mission
attempted to develop a dialogue with the government while issuing reports
critical of its return-related practices.
Council of Europe
In a March 1 decision in
the case Kutic v. Croatia, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) addressed
a Serb applicant's claim for compensation for property destroyed during the
1991-95 war. The case was typical of thousands of compensation claims filed by
Serb property owners in Croatian courts, which had simply stayed the
proceedings and failed to act on the claims. The ECHR held that there had been
a violation of the right of access to courts and ordered Croatia to pay the
applicant €10,000 in non-pecuniary damages. In several other cases, not related
to return of Serb refugees, the court also found violations of the right to a
fair hearing within a reasonable time and the right to an effective remedy.
On February 6, the
Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National
Minorities published its April 2001 opinion on Croatia. The committee found
that implementation of the Framework Convention had improved regrettably slowly
and singled out employment as the area in which the protection of the Serb and
Roma minorities merited urgent attention. In its response, the Croatian government
invoked the consequences of war as a factor affecting the rights of minorities,
and listed legislative and policy reforms underway to improve its record.
On September 27, Council
of Europe Secretary General Walter Schwimmer recalled that full co-operation
with the ICTY was one of the commitments that Croatia undertook upon accession
to the Council of Europe. He called for a swift and unconditional surrender of
the recently indicted General Bobetko to the tribunal.
European Union
During a July 2002 visit
to
In July, the
In October, Ambassador
Prosper publicly reminded the government of