Roma in
Introduction
1. Police violence against
Roma
1.1
Offences against human dignity and physical integrity
1.2.
Domestic standards
1.3.
International standards
1.4.
Extortion of information and unlawful deprivation of liberty
1.5.
Domestic standards
1.6.
International standards
1.7.
Communications to the Committee against Torture
2. Violent attacks on Roma
by private individuals
2.1.
Violent attacks by skinheads
2.2.
Violent attacks by other private individuals
2.3.
Violent attacks in schools
2.4.
Domestic standards
2.5.
International standards
3. Discrimination against
Roma
3.1.
Discrimination in education
3.2.
Discrimination in housing
3.3.
Discrimination in employment
3.4.
Discrimination in access to social welfare benefits
3.5.
Discrimination in public places
3.6.
Discriminatory practices by landlords
3.7.
Domestic standards
3.8.
International standards
4. Findings
5. Recommendations
Introduction
In
During
the period 1998-2002 the HLC provided legal aid to Roma victims of police
repression as well as investigated and documented scores of cases of police
violence against Roma. The police abused Roma by injuring their human dignity,
violating their physical integrity, unlawfully depraving them of their liberty,
and forcing them to make self-recriminatory statements. The racial prejudices
are so deep and the ethnic distance so great that police officers routinely
presume Roma guilty until proved innocent (the cases of the Roma settlement
Antena, the harassment of the pregnant Roma woman and her husband).
Recent
years have seen the emergence of a skinhead movement and its rapidly
growing popularity among unemployed and
poorly educated young people in Serbia’s major towns. Members of the Roma
community, especially municipal refuse collectors, are the main victims of the
brutality of this racist and ultra-nationalist movement (the beatings of street
sweepers, the boy in the street, Radmila Marinković). In such incidents
the police often play a passive part and there is usually no reaction from the
public.
The
aggressive attitude towards Roma of other citizens, who are not members of such
sub-culture groups, also gives rise to frequent concern. Under the influence of
alcohol, ‘weekend bullies’ raid Roma settlements and tenements in communal
yards mostly on Saturdays and Sunday nights and the police blame the attacks on
the Roma victims for allegedly provoking them. Living in constant fear for their
and their families’ personal safety, and feeling let down by the state, Roma
have been forced to organize their own self-defence groups (the attacks on the
Roma residents of Vilovskog and Požeška streets in Belgrade and in
Čačak).
Roma
children attending primary schools are regularly harassed by mostly underage
bullies (the case of Gordana Jovanović). Non-Roma children as a rule do
not associate with their Roma peers whom they openly despise. In the primary
and secondary school curricula there is nothing to encourage tolerance among
children and acquaint them with the culture and history of minority communities
(see the case of separate classes for Roma pupils in Subotica). Roma say that
their children drop out of school early mostly because they feel insecure and
are ill-treated and isolated there (the cases of Kristina Stanojević and
Safet and Zaim Beriša).
The
educational authorities clearly discriminate against the Roma by denying them
equal opportunities. Since the state does not provide pre-school instruction
for Roma children to facilitate their subsequent schooling, this task is as a
rule shouldered by non-governmental organizations. Because psychological tests
for school entrants are not linguistically and socially adapted for Roma
children, they score poorly and are sent to ‘special schools’ for handicapped
children.
Even
highly-educated Roma find it considerably difficult to find employment
according to their qualifications (the case of Julijana Aranđelović).
Roma without proper qualifications stand next to no chance of being employed,
especially by private employers (the cases of the Toma butcher’s shop and
Nataša Stević).
Roma
are denied access to many private night clubs, sports centres, and discotheques
on the excuse that the premises are currently hired for a private party or that
the Roma visitors are not properly dressed (the Trezor, Mondo, and Bombo night
clubs in Belgrade). The victim of such treatment who decides to sue for damages
finds that the rules of evidence favour the perpetrator and that it is not easy
for him to prove discrimination, especially of an indirect kind.
Discrimination
is also practised by landlords, who refuse to let premises not only to Roma families
but to organizations concerned with Roma rights (the case of the Roma Child
Centre).
Residents
of Roma settlements are frequently forcibly evicted and forced to live in
temporary shelters (the evictions from the Belgrade settlements ‘Old Airport’
and ‘Autokomanda’, and from Zimonjićeva St.; the eviction of the Saiti
family from their municipal flat after twenty-seven years occupancy). The state
has no systematic plans for permanently solving the housing problems of Roma
living in unfit settlements; when such settlements are evacuated, the competent
state authorities either disown all responsibility or fail to cooperate with
each other to provide alternative accommodation to the former residents. While
domestic legislation does not obligate the state to offer such accommodation to
forcibly evicted persons, the state authorities do not abide by relevant
international instruments.[1]
The
documentation forming the basis of this report comprises testimony of
individual victims of police repression, discrimination or violence, court records,
and medical records. The report relates to Serbia. Violations of Roma human
rights in Kosovo are dealt with in the HLC special report and a report on the
situation on the Roma in Montenegro is being prepared.
1. Police violence against
Roma
The
HLC has investigated a number of cases of unlawful police treatment of Roma on
the basis of interviews with victims and other information. In all these cases
police officers employed physical violence as their customary method of dealing
with Roma. The information shows that physical abuse was combined with methods
producing feelings of shame, humiliation and inferiority, and causing
destruction of property. The victims were kicked, punched, beaten with batons
and metal bars, handcuffed to radiators, denied food, water and the use of the
toilet. The police also behaved violently towards children, women, and
expectant mothers.
1.1. Offences against human
dignity and physical integrity
The
investigated cases show that during routine procedures such as identity checks
police officers regularly maltreated and physically abused Roma. Cases of
physical abuse, even of children, were registered in connection with other
police work such as execution of court orders. In one case a police officer
even used a firearm after a group of Roma had made jocular remarks about his
dog.
1.1.1. The case of the
cigarette seller
On
25 February 1998, Branko Kostić, a cigarette seller in the Crveni barjak
market in Kragujevac, was severely beaten by a member of the Kragujevac
Secretariat for Internal Affairs (SUP - police department) for not carrying an
identity card on his person.
Kostić
was hawking cigarettes in the market as he had regularly done before when a
plainclothes police officer by name Radovan Veličković approached him
and asked him to produce his identity card. Kostić replied that he did not
have it on him. The officer first searched Kostić roughly then started to
beat him. Following is Kostić’s description to the HLC of what followed:
The SUP member thrust his hands into my pockets
looking for the identity card. He slapped me in the face several times and
squeezed my arm real hard. He punched me about the kidneys. Zoran Simić,
an acquaintance of mine, asked the policeman why he was maltreating me. The
policeman told him to shut his mouth and mind his own business. He cursed by
Gypsy mother. [Roma often call themselves Gypsies or cigani in Serbian; however, when a Serb
uses this word it is invariably taken as an insult.] I couldn’t take any more of this abuse and wrenched myself free, my
torn jumper and jacket remaining in his hands. I ran towards the Kragujevac SUP
members who were on duty in the market. I knew those policemen from before. I
told them that the policeman Radovan Veličković had beaten me.
Radovan and I made our statements. The policemen advised me to forgive
Veličković and said I had to carry my identity card on me or I’d be fined.
The
witness, Zoran Simić, confirmed to the HLC that Veličković had
physically abused Kostić:
I saw a man I didn’t know go through Branko’s pockets.
I went up to the gentleman and asked him why he was maltreating him. He told me
it didn’t concern me and that I should mind my own business. The stranger
started to beat Branko on the head. He punched him in the kidneys, kicked him
about the body and dragged him towards the police station. I then called out to
the policemen on duty in the market.[2]
Kostić
went to see a doctor the same day to have his injuries examined. The doctor
found that he had suffered head concussion.
On
1.1.2. The case of the
brothers Marinković
The
brothers Miroslav and Masimo Marinković were wounded by a plainclothes
police officer in
Masimo
told the HLC what happened immediately before he and Miroslav were wounded:
My brother Miroslav went up to the plainclothes
policeman, not knowing who he was, and said to him, ‘Wait a minute, why are you
molesting my brother?’ The policeman pulled Miroslav by the jacket, took out a
large pistol and pointed it up briefly, said he was a policeman, then aimed the
pistol at Miroslav’s chest. Miroslav lowered his arms. As he pulled out the
pistol, the policeman held Miroslav by the jacket. As I pulled my brother
aside, the pistol fired. The same bullet hit both of us, Miroslav in the chest
and me in the forearm where it remained.[4]
After
firing the shot, the plainclothes police officer gave Miroslav first-aid
treatment while his girlfriend called an ambulance. Police in patrol car
arrived first and pushed the two Zorans into the vehicle to separate them from
the wounded men. When special riot police arrived, Zoran Jovanović and
Zoran Marinković were transferred to their van where they were insulted
and struck several times. An ambulance car took Miroslav and Masimo to the
Casualty Centre where Miroslav was kept five days and Masimo a month.
On
Because
the plainclothes police officer fired from a service weapon, the HLC brought an
action against the
1.1.3. The case of Ratko
Mitrović
On
I had my identity card on me and gave it to them to
inspect it. One of the policemen told me he knew I dealt in hard currency and
started to kick me and beat me on the back with a truncheon. He said, ‘You’re
just a Gypsy.’ He ordered me to gaze at the sky and eat the snow. The other
told me, ‘You’re in Stari Grad municipality territory now, you can’t walk about
as you please.’ They cursed my Gypsy mother. They beat and insulted me for
fifteen minutes.[7]
Ljubica
Đorđević witnessed the whole incident:
The policemen started to beat Ratko. They punched him
in the chest and beat him with a truncheon on the neck and back. They insulted
him. They cursed his Gypsy mother. They told him he couldn’t walk around in
Stari Grad municipality as he pleased.
Mitrović did not file a criminal complaint because he feared
retribution.
1.1.4. The demolition of the
Roma settlement Antena
By
Two
days later the police arrived with bulldozers, tore down the houses and levelled
the whole settlement. Many residents had their furniture and household
appliances destroyed. The bulldozers also wrecked several cars.
Bekim
Mujoli says in his statement to the HLC that while the houses were being
demolished he was confined by plainclothes police officers in their van for an
hour.
A police team led by police commander Bulatović
arrived at about
Ivan
Stevanović, aged 12, was also beaten. He said this in his statement to the
HLC:
A police van entered the settlement at great speed. I
ran to avoid being run over. Six men came out of the van and one of them hit me
with his hand on the head. As I ran away from him I dropped my toy and tried to
pick it up. At that moment the policeman caught up with me and gave me a kick
in the back.[9]
Fahri
Osmani told the HLC that the police beat people indiscriminately and that he
begged them not to destroy his furniture:
One plainclothes policeman struck my brother Besim. He
punched him in the left arm while Besim held a three-year child with his right.
Besim only said, ‘Man, why are you hitting me, don’t you see that I’ve a child
in my arms?’ I went up to my brother and told him to run. At that moment, the
policeman who’d struck my brother gave me a kick in the right leg and I couldn’t
move. After that he made to strike my wife Hata on the back. She was in her
fourth month of pregnancy. When our neighbour Iseni Iseni begged him not to
beat a pregnant woman, the policeman struck him on the back and kicked him in
the thigh. At that moment we all ran away. I tried to pick up some things from
the house. I managed to take some things outside, but the bulldozer ran over
them although I’d begged them to leave the things alone. Hardly anybody from
the settlement escaped without being slapped by the policemen.[10]
In
connection with the incident, the HLC on
1.1.5. The case of a Roma
from
On
At about
On
1.1.6. The severe harassment
of a Roma family in
At
about
I was woken by a noise. I raised the curtain and saw
two uniformed policemen banging on the door for all they were worth. I got
terribly frightened and quickly put on my clothes. Before I knew where I was
they’d broken the door open and entered the house. I couldn’t make out what
they wanted as I speak no Serbian. I told my sister to go fetch the neighbours
who spoke Serbian. They didn’t let her go. The tall one rushed at me, grabbing
me by the hair with one hand and shutting my mouth with the other. I tried to
wrest away and he started to beat me. He punched me in the forehead and struck
me about the body. The same policeman pulled my sister by the hair and punched
her in the face and body. While she struggled to break free the policeman
pulled hard at her clothes and tore her bra. The other policeman did not beat
us. They next went into the room and started to rummage through our things.
They yelled the name of my husband, Š.B., and I realized that they were looking
for him. He wasn’t at home. He’d left for
R.B.’s
sister A.S (b. 1977) described the incident as follows:
I was woken up by the police banging on our door. A
little later they broke the door open and entered the house. There were two of
them, wearing uniforms. I was in the house with my sister Remzija and her
children. I’m currently living in her house. After they broke the door and came
in, they started to shout, ‘Where’s Bajrami?’ My sister told me to go and fetch
the neighbours, but when I tried to leave the house one of the policemen
attacked me. He was tall with short wavy hair. He grabbed both me and my sister
by the hair and pulled us around. He first beat me, then my sister. He struck
us on the face and body with fists. He jerked at me so hard that he tore my
bra. I begged the policeman to let me bring in a neighbour who spoke Serbian
and Albanian to help us out because we don’t speak Serbian. My sister speaks no
Serbian at all and I speak it only very little.
The tall policeman said, ‘We don’t need any
neighbours.’ While I begged him to let me go, he held me by the hair and struck
me below the right eye and on the nose with his free hand. My nose started to
bleed. He struck me so hard that I fell down. Then he started to kick me. The
other policeman told him, ‘Let her go, aren’t you sorry for her?’ He wasn’t
even sorry about the children. He pulled Hava by the hair because she wouldn’t
be separated from her mother and shut up with the children in the other room.
He told Hava, ‘You stay here. We’re going to take your mum away and then bring
her back and bring you chocolate and candies.’ But Hava wouldn’t hear of it.
She screamed and tried to break free. He then made Hava, me and my sister stand
in a corner of the room.
The policeman asked my sister where her husband was.
He was asking for some mobile phone and said that her husband had stolen it. He
cursed her Shqiptar mother and swore at me too. I somehow got out and ran to fetch
our neighbour Muhamed Hašimi. He went there at once and started to interpret
for us.
One
of the Roma witnesses, M.H. described the incident to the HLC as follows:
I was asleep when S. woke me up. Crying, she told me,
‘Get up, they’re going to kill my sister.’ She went ahead and I followed. I
went to help with interpretation. I saw a police car and two policemen. I asked
them what I could do to help. The tall one told me, ‘Help us get this woman
into the car.’ She wouldn’t go inside, saying her husband wasn’t there and had
gone to
Then he forced Remzija to get into the car together
with her sister and children. The other policeman asked him, ‘Surely you can’t
take these naked and barefooted children away. Aren’t you sorry?’ The
neighbours gathered round. The tall policeman started to swear and yell, ‘Get
out of here! What are you watching for?’ Finally he let everybody go and the
two of them went away.
1.1.7. Wedding party
harassed over Roma music
On
On
The guests were already there at about
1.1.8. The case of Jovica
Petrović
On
On the morning of
1.1.9. The case of Nebojša
Maljić[13]
On
On
behalf of Nebojša Maljić, the Committee for Human Rights in Leskovac filed
a criminal complaint with the District Public Prosecutor’s Office in Leskovac
against the police officers for harassment. As of time of writing, the District
Public Prosecutor’s Office had not taken any action.
On
the other hand, at the request of the District Public Prosecutor’s Office
acting on a police criminal complaint, the investigative judge of the Municipal
Court in Leskovac instituted an investigation against Nebojša Maljić for
interfering with a public official on security duty, an offence punishable
under Article 23, paragraph 2 in conjunction with paragraph 1, of the Penal
Code of the Republic of Serbia.
1.1.10 The beating of Dž.S.
On
On
1.1.11. Police officer
maltreats children
On
‘How long am I supposed to keep chasing you away? Do
you take me for a monkey?’ He grabbed me by the ear and slapped me on the mouth
with the back of his hand. I turned around at once, wiped the blood off my
mouth with a handkerchief and walked away towards Južni bulevar street. I
walked around a bit and went back to join the other windscreen cleaners.
The
police officer then turned on the girl, Lj.R. This is her statement to the HLC:
The policeman said to me, ‘I’m gonna fuck your mother!
What you’re staring at?’ He slapped me on the left cheek, than punched me on
the same place, though not hard. I backed off from them, leaving behind my bag
with my keys in it. I stepped forward to pick up my bag and they told me to
buzz off. So I backed off again. Later
they told me I could have my bag back and promised not to beat me. As I picked
up my bag I had a look at their badges and the car licence plate and memorized
them.
The
HLC requested the police to carry out a prompt and impartial investigation into
the incident so that the culprits could be identified and punished. In a reply
carried by the media, the police denied the allegations set out in the HLC
public statement and said: ‘The traffic police officer, Stevo Blagojević,
approached a boy and a girl of Roma nationality aged about 13 or 14 who were
washing car windscreens and begging for money and asked them to pull back from
the carriageway as their presence on the carriageway was hazardous and
obstructed the normal flow of traffic. The caution was delivered in a loud and clear voice, without
any insult and physical contact being made, whereupon they voiced their
displeasure and withdrew.’ A citizen nettled by the police statement contacted
the HLC and told of a case of police officers harassing Roma children on the
same spot, but this turned out to be just another incident of this kind.
1.1.12. Roma man ill-treated
at a police station in Čačak
On
That evening we were celebrating my younger brother
Bojan Spasojević’s eighteenth birthday on the Roma society premises at
Shortly
after Popović was brought in, his brother Boško and his wife Jasna Spasojević
arrived at the station, saw what was going on through the window and went in.
In her statement to the HLC, Spasojević described the incident as follows:
I was there all the time from the moment the police
arrived at the party to the moment Boban was released from the police station.
Five minutes after Boban was taken away, we arrived at the police station by
car. From the car I saw a policeman slap Boban on the face. My husband Boško
and I went into the station. Boško went to the reception booth to show his
identity card and I proceeded to the office in which Boban was held. Having
seen the policeman slap Boban, I entered the office and asked at once, ‘What
kind of harassment is this?’ Policeman Vladan Popović took me by the arm
and out into the corridor. Then he pulled me by the hair and said, ‘Get out,
you cute Gypsy broad.’ My husband grabbed him by the hand and he let go of my
hair. We insisted on being told the policeman’s name, but at first they didn’t
want to tell us. We persisted and the duty policeman told us that the policeman
in question was Vladan Popović and that his official badge number was
109948.
Boban Popović was kept at the police station for two hours before
being released.
1.1.13. The beating of Jovan
Nikolić
On
11 November 2002, Jovan Nikolić (b. 1950) of Dobrinac village in Ruma
municipality presented himself for an interview at the police station in
Petrovaradin near Novi Sad. On his arrival at the station, he was requested by
an inspector whom his colleagues called Peđa to admit to stealing
television sets, tyres, power generators, and some other articles. After
Nikolić refused to admit, the inspector first slapped him in the face
several times, then pressed his head against a wall and squeezed his temples
with both hands. A police officer came in and began to beat Nikolić on the
shoulder with a truncheon. Nikolić described this torture in his statement
to the HLC:[16]
They kept telling me I had to admit and I kept
refusing. I begged them to stop beating me because I’d had pneumonia recently
and had breathing problems. The policeman replied, ‘You Gypsies think you can
get away with murder. I’d make a mincemeat of you if I could.’ After a short
while a police patrol from Bački Petrovac arrived and took me there. At
the police station I was questioned by inspector Miškar, who was surprised to
see me there because he knew me as an honest man. He talked with me without
harassing me in any way and I was released at about 7 p.m.
Three
days later, on November 14, a police patrol arrived at Nikolić’s house at
about 1 p.m. and took him to the police station in Ruma where he was taken over
by Petrovaradin police. The police officers beat him again and insisted that he
admit to stealing. Following is his account to the HLC of what happened:[17]
Several policemen, some in civilian clothes and others
in uniform, kept entering and leaving the room where I was. I think I saw two
plainclothes inspectors and four uniformed policemen in all. I recognized
inspector Peđa as one of them. They pushed me against a wall with my face
towards it and started to beat me again. I was ordered to lean against the wall
supporting myself on my hands and a uniformed policeman picked up a shovel and
struck me four times on the buttocks and thighs. The beating left bruises which
later I had taken pictures of. They insisted again that I admit to stealing.
Nikolić
then threatened the police officers with court action and said he would see a
doctor at once and request a medical certificate about his injuries. As a
result, a judge was consulted and Nikolić was ordered to spend forty-eight
hours in detention.[18]
On November 16 he was examined by an investigating judge and released.
Nikolić later visited the Health Centre in Ruma where he obtained a
medical certificate establishing light physical injuries.[19]
On 10 December 2002, the HLC filed a criminal complaint with the District
Public Prosecutor’s Office in Novi Sad against unidentified police officers
with the Petrovaradin police station.
1.2. Domestic standards
The
right to physical and psychological integrity of person, including the right to
dignity, honour and reputation, is inviolable under domestic legislation.
a) Constitutional guarantees
The
Constitution of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY)[20]
guaranteed the inviolability of the physical and psychological integrity of the
individual, his privacy and personal rights, and his dignity and security. The
FRY Constitution also prohibited all torture, degrading treatment and
punishment. It also penalized the use of force against a person deprived of his
liberty, any extortion of confessions and statements, and any torture,
humiliating punishment and treatment.[21]
However, these provisions did not include prohibition of cruel or inhuman
treatment or punishment laid down under Article 7 of the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights.
When
the FRY was transformed into the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, the FRY
Constitution was superseded by the Constitutional Charter which incorporates a
Charter on Human and Minority Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.[22]
The Charter guarantees the inviolability of physical wellbeing and mental
integrity[23] and
stipulates that an arrested person must be treated humanely and be entitled to
compensation in case of an unlawful arrest.[24]
Separate articles provide for additional[25]
and special[26]
guarantees to persons deprived of their liberty. These guarantees are more
comprehensive than those provided by the FRY Constitution.
The Constitution
of the Republic of Serbia[27]
guarantees respect for human personality and dignity, prohibits torture and
degrading punishment or treatment, and stipulates that human dignity is
inviolable.[28]
b) Criminal law provisions
The
Penal Code of the Republic of Yugoslavia protects the dignity and integrity of
the individual against unlawful acts by public officials, treating such
criminal offences as infliction of civil injury.[29]
These offences are grouped together with criminal offences against the rights
and liberties of man and the citizen. Infliction of civil injury by public
officials implies any action which threatens the physical and psychological
integrity of an individual, violates his honour and reputation, and causes him
physical pain or mental suffering (e.g. swearing, insulting, disparaging,
slapping of cheeks, pulling of hair, etc.). These criminal offences are
punishable by imprisonment from three months to three years.
If a
public official inflicts bodily harm on the victim through harassment, he shall
be tried for the criminal offence of inflicting a civil injury in conjunction
with the criminal offence inflicting bodily harm, that is, for both.
As
regards the criminal offences against life and limb, the Serbian Penal Code
distinguishes between four categories of injuries: slight bodily injuries,
serious slight bodily injuries,[30]
ordinary severe bodily injuries, and particularly severe bodily injuries.[31]
A person is deemed to have suffered a slight bodily injury if his life is not
in danger and/or if his health has not been permanently and seriously impaired.
Judicial practice considers bruises, abrasions, scratches, slight dislocations,
etc., as such injuries. Punishment for inflicting such injuries is imprisonment
for up to one year. If a slight bodily injury was caused with a weapon, a
dangerous implement or a similar object, the perpetrators will be imprisoned
for up to three years.
A
severe bodily injury implies severe harm to physical integrity or severe
impairment of health without however endangering the victim’s life. Punishment
for such an offence ranges from six months to five years in prison.
A
person is deemed to have suffered a particularly severe bodily injury if his
life is in danger, if any of his vital organs has been destroyed or damaged, if
he has been rendered permanently incapable of work, if his health has
permanently been impaired, or if he has been disfigured. Punishment for such
offences ranges from one year to ten years in prison. The gravest offence of
this kind, leading to the death of the victim as a result of the injuries
inflicted, is punishable by imprisonment from one year to twelve years.
c) Compensation
The
civil-law protection against violations of fundamental human rights, including
the right to physical and psychological integrity, provides for compensation by
the state. A claim for compensation is submitted under Article 14 of the
Charter on Human and Minority Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, Article 25 of
the Serbian Constitution and Article 172 (2), Articles 193-197, and Article 200
of the Law on Obligations. Article 25 of the Serbian Constitution and Article
172 (2) of the Law on Obligations lay down the criteria of liability of a legal
person (including the state) whose organ inflicts damage on a third person in
the discharge of its functions or in connection thereof. Articles 193-197 of
the Law on Obligations regulate the indemnity in money for physical damage in
the event of death, bodily harm or impairment of health. Article 200 of the Law
on Obligations regulates the indemnity in money for non-pecuniary damage as a
special form of recompense for physical or mental pain resulting from injury to
physical or psychological integrity.
1.3. International standards
The
Constitutional Charter of Serbia and Montenegro provides that ratified
international treaties and generally accepted rules of international law have
precedence over both the law of Serbia and Montenegro and the laws of the
member states,[32] and
the FRY Constitution contained a similar provision.[33]
The Constitutional Charter also provides for the direct implementation of
provisions of international agreements on human and minority rights applicable
in the territory of Serbia and Montenegro.[34]
Many international documents ratified by the FRY or having the force of
recommendation protect the physical and psychological integrity of the
individual against acts by public officials and prohibit any torture, cruel,
inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.[35]
Precise instructions for public officials on how to proceed in the discharge of
their functions are contained in numerous recommendations by international
organizations. Thus Article 2 of the UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement
Officials lays down that in the performance of their duty law enforcement
officials shall respect and protect human dignity and maintain and uphold the
human rights of all persons.[36]
Although recommendations and rules of international bodies are not binding
international documents, their authority as an elaboration of norms in
international human rights conventions is considerable.
1.4. Extortion of
information and unlawful deprivation of liberty
As a
rule, the police look for perpetrators of criminal offences against property,
such as theft and fraud, first in Roma settlements. Roma are treated as
suspects merely for being present in the part of the town where a criminal
office has been committed. In their operational work, police officers arrest
Roma without giving them the reasons; they present them with detention orders only
rarely; and, as a rule, they use force and threats to extort confession.
Several cases of extortion of evidence from children and minors under sixteen
years of age were registered during 2001.
1.4.1. The case of Krsta
Kalinović
On 8
July 2002, the Fifth Municipal Court in Belgrade sentenced Voždovac SUP police
officers Dragan Ninković and Goran Krstić to three months in prison
each for severely beating Krsta Kalinović (b. 1976) on 7 May 1998. In
order to extort information about a number of criminal offences committed in
Kalinić’s neighbourhood, the two police officers kicked, punched and beat
him with truncheons for over an hour, causing him numerous injuries in the form
of haematoma and swellings. On bringing Kalinović to the Voždovac police
station from his home, Ninković first ordered him to kneel so that he
could handcuff him to the table, then struck him on the soles with a truncheon
scores of times. Ninković next removed the handcuffs and used the
truncheon to beat Kalinović on the knees and fingers. Krstić struck
him on the head with a chair, then bashed his head against a wall several
times. As he did so, he told Kalinović that he would have him ‘locked up’
for six months and that his wife would have to prostitute herself in order to
feed herself. The police officers continued to torture Kalinović by
placing a plastic bag over his head, kicking him in the testicles and beating
him on the head with a truncheon. After that Kalinović was confined in a
solitary cell and released the next day. Although the HLC had filed the
criminal complaint in June 1998, the judgement was passed four years later.
This was one of the few cases in which police officers were sentenced for
torturing Roma (see case 1.1.1.).
1.4.2. The case of Stevan
Dimić
On
23 July 1998, Stevan Dimić (47) of Novi Sad was unlawfully deprived of his
liberty on charges of raping a fifteen-year-old girl from his home village of
Lok. In order to extort confession from him, police officers at the Novi Sad
police station on Kraljevića Marka St. forced him to lie face down on the
floor and placed a chair on his back. A police officer sat on the chair and
beat Dimić with a truncheon and an iron bar all over his body while
another pressed his head against the floor with a foot. Dimić was
handcuffed throughout the interrogation. He was also handcuffed to a clothes
rack with his legs spread wide apart and kicked in the testicles and beaten all
over his body with a truncheon. The police officers asked him if he had any
children; when he replied that he had none, they said he was not going to have
any anyway. A police officer insulted Dimić with the words: ‘You filthy
Gypsy! You half-wit! Confess or we’re gonna kill you!’ During his stay at the
police station Dimić discharged blood with his urine. The investigating
judge who took Dimić’s statement saw his injuries and advised him to see a
doctor. However, when he was returned to the detention cell he received no
medical help because the guards told him that ‘the doctor’s off duty at
weekends.’ He was examined by a doctor only a few days later. During his
detention Dimić was also humiliated: the guards insulted him on account of
his ethnicity and left his food on the floor; the other detainees in the cell
were handed their food properly.
Dimić
was released on 3 August 1998. He was later widely boycotted and had to close
down his cafe and store in the village. He suffered numerous other
embarrassments because frequent police visits to search his home had not escaped
the notice of his neighbours.
On 8
April 2000, the Municipal Court in Novi Sad pronounced Dimić not guilty of
statutory rape. The judgement of acquittal was confirmed by the District Court
on 12 December 2000.
Dimić
claimed damages for being unlawfully detained. On 11 September 2002, the
Municipal Court in Novi Sad ordered the Republic of Serbia to pay Dimić
240,000 dinars in compensation for his unlawful detention and harassment by
police officers at the police station and during his twelve-day detention.
1.4.3. The case of Dejan
Mitrović
On
25 March 1999, Dejan Mitrović of Belgrade went out at about 2 a.m. to buy
bread at a nearby store on Grčića Milenka St. He was stopped by a
police patrol, accused of being a thief, and abused and beaten for several
hours. This is his statement to the HLC:
They asked me what I did for a living and if I
thieved. I said that I didn’t thieve but sold things in the market. They said I
was lying and ought to confess that I’d been steeling things. They said, ‘Tell
us what you’ve stolen, you Gypsy motherfucker!’ I told them they could see for
themselves that I kept no stolen things if they went to my home. They took me
to a place where there’d been a burglary that night. They first took me to a
kiosk on Maksima Gorkog street that’d been broken into. They dragged me out of
the car, slapped me in the face, and asked me to admit to having stolen some
things. I said I hadn’t, so they drove me to a burglarized boutique on Južni
Bulevar street. They dragged me out and told me to admit to breaking in. One of
them keep saying, ‘Tell us, you Gypsy motherfucker, all you’ve done, what
you’ve stolen and the places you’ve broken into.’
The
police officers drove Mitrović home after about four hours. While he was
in the car, they spoke with his father Vlada Simić:
They asked me where Dejan was and whether he was in
the air-raid shelter since a NATO bombing raid was in progress. I said he’d
gone to the store to buy bread. Then the policeman told me, ‘Dejan is in the
car. Why did you send him to buy bread at two o’clock in the morning? We’ve had
a little chat with him.’ The policeman said he’d given Dejan a beating and that
Dejan was a stubborn lad.
After
this conversation the police officers let Mitrović go. One of them gave
him this piece of advice: ‘Don’t you go
out at night to buy bread. You see what happened to you.’
Dejan Mitrović did not want to file a criminal complaint because he
feared retaliation.
1.4.4. Roma man beaten in
front of wife and child
On
10 November 1999, Ljubomir Jovanović of Kragujevac was beaten in front of
his wife and two-year-old child.
On
the afternoon of that day a police patrol entered the Jovanović family’s
yard looking for Ljubomir’s son Dejan. They told Ljubomir that Dejan had stolen
a bicycle and wanted to know where he was. Ljubomir said he did not know. He
told the HLC what happened next:
They cursed my Gypsy mother and accused me of hiding
Dejan. One of them punched me about the left ear. I fell down. They pushed me
into the car. Inside, they punched me on the head and slapped me on the face.
They took me to the Kragujevac SUP. While I was entering the building, one of
them kicked me in the right leg so hard as to cause me an injury.[37]
Ljubomir’s
wife Snežana was inside the house with their child while he husband was beaten
in the yard. This is what she told the HLC:
The policemen asked Ljubomir where our son Dejan was.
Ljubomir said he didn’t know. One policeman yelled, ‘Don’t give me that shit,
you Gypsy motherfucker!’ and punched him on the head. He fell. They dragged him
away towards the car and drove away.[38]
Ljubomir
was released from the police station after half an hour. He had a severe
headache and was sick and confused, so he sought medical assistance. The
doctor’s certificate says he sustained ‘contusio
capitis’.
On 8
November 1999, the HLC filed a criminal complaint against the unidentified
Kragujevac SUP employees for extorting a confession[39]
and inflicting slight physical injuries.[40]
On 10 May 2000, the Municipal Public Prosecutor’s Office dismissed the criminal
complaint and informed Ljubomir Jovanović that he could proceed against
the perpetrators, whose identity had meanwhile been established, in the
capacity of private prosecutor by filing a prosecution request.[41]
On 12 April 2000, the HLC filed a prosecution request with the Municipal Court
in Kragujevac against police officers Oliver Rajović and Žarko
Borovićanin for committing the criminal offence of extorting information in contravention of Article 65 of
the Serbian Penal Code. On 19 December 2001 the Municipal Court decided to stay
the proceedings because the injured party’s attorney was late for the hearing,
whereupon the HLC attorneys applied for a reversion to the previous stage of
the proceedings. The Municipal Court dismissed the application on 26 September
2002 and the HLC attorneys appealed the decision on 7 October 2002.
1.4.5. The case of
Đorđe Toči
At
about 11 a.m. on 3 December 1999, Đorđe Toči and his father were
repairing a car in Jovana Bijelića
St. in Belgrade. Three plainclothes police officers approached Đorđe
and asked him whether he dealt in hard currency. This is his description of the
incident to the HLC:
One of the policemen called out to me, ‘Hey you,
baldy, come over here!’ I asked him what he wanted. He said he knew me for a
good guy and asked me how much the German mark was worth. I told him I didn’t
know. They said they were policemen, showed me their badges, and told me to
accompany them to the police station. They didn’t tell me why they were taking
me away. My father wanted to come along, but they told him to back off or he’d
be pulled in too. I calmed Father and got into the police van. They took me to
the police station in the company of several young men. I was kept in the
corridor till noon. I was questioned by a plainclothes inspector, I think his
name’s Dejan. He asked me who’d been stealing around the neighbourhood. I said
I didn’t know. He said, ‘Since you don’t know, you’re going to the Central
Prison.’ I was taken to the Central Prison at 9 p.m. I was kept in a solitary
cell for three days.[42]
Toči
was released after three days. No criminal or misdemeanour charges were brought
against him. Fearing retaliation, he did not want to press any charges against
the police officers who had unlawfully deprived him of his liberty.
1.4.6. Pregnant woman and
her husband harassed
Saša
Mustafić was beaten twice by police officers from the Čukarica police
station in Belgrade to make him confess to stealing. His wife Demira Gezvira,
who was heavily pregnant, was psychologically abused.
At
about noon on 3 August 2000, four plainclothes police officers swooped down on
Mustafić in a street in the Belgrade district of Banovo Brdo, punching him
on the back and stomach. Although he did not resist, they handcuffed him and
took him to the police station in Čukarica. They insisted that he confess
to breaking into a kiosk on Lješka St. in Banovo Brdo and stealing a bag.
Mustafić had never been detained before. This is his statement to the HLC:
At the police station, they removed my shoe-laces and
took me to a solitary cell. After half an hour, they took me to a room where
the policemen who’d brought me in were waiting for me. They asked me about some
housebreaking job. One of them said, ‘Come on, tell us what you stole.’ Then
they started to beat me. One of them punched me on the ribs and stomach. They
swore about my Gypsy mother. When I said I didn’t know where that flat was,
they replied, ‘OK, that’s not important, tell us where the bag is.’ He was
talking about some bag which was missing from the ‘Suncokret’ kiosk on Lješka
street. I said I knew nothing about it. One of them said, ‘Don’t you lie to us,
you Gypsy motherfucker. You Gypsies always lie and swear on your children’s
heads. You Gypsies are full-time thieves.’ Another started to beat me on the
hands, small of the back, spine and head with a truncheon. One policeman said,
‘He’s playing it dumb, why doesn’t he own up? Pass me that Albanian flag, I’d
love to whack him with it.’ They asked if I was circumcised. I said I wasn’t.
One of them picked up a pair of pliers and a knife and said, ‘Take off your
clothes, I’m gonna do it for you.’ But the telephone rang just then and he went
out.
After
being tortured like that for five hours, Mustafić was released from the
police station at about 5 p.m.
Mustafić’s
wife made the following description of his condition when he returned home:
He had four large bruises on the back and arms. One of
them was at least 5 cm wide. His left arm was swollen real bad. He had a bump
on the head. There was a gash on the back of the head. He was very pale. He
said he had a pain in the chest. He couldn’t eat for two days. He didn’t see a
doctor because he was afraid they’d bring him in and beat him again.
Four
days later, at 8 a.m. on August 7, two police officers burst into their flat
and detained both of them. At the Čukarica police station, four police
officers again beat him on the arms with truncheons in order to make him admit
to stealing the bag:
They asked me where I’d got the twenty German marks
from. I replied I worked in a flee market and that was my earnings. They told
me I was lying and that my wife had already admitted that I’d stolen a bag with
120 marks and some documents inside.[43]
Although
heavily pregnant, Gezvira was humiliated, threatened and sadistically abused to
admit to a theft she had not committed:
They asked me where I’d thrown the bag away. I cried
and said I knew nothing about it. They threatened me, ‘Now we’re going to beat
the hell out of you and you’re gonna lose that child of yours in fifteen
minutes.’ They said, ‘Don’t make us take out our truncheons, better own up.’
One of them asked, ‘How about licking my balls?’ and another said, ‘Don’t let’s
just stand around looking at each other. Which one of us do you like best?’ I
kept silent. They kept at me to tell them how I stole the bag. I kept my hands
on my belly and they ordered me to take them off. One of them took a truncheon
out of a drawer and said they’d make me watch Saša being beaten. They brought
Saša in and took me to a solitary cell. Half an hour later they brought me back
into the room where Saša was. They again questioned me about the bag in his
presence, then they let us go.[44]
Demira
Gezvira and Saša Mustafić were released at about 2 p.m. following six
hours of uninterrupted abuse.
On 3
January 2001, the HLC filed with the First Municipal Public Prosecutor’s Office
in Belgrade a criminal complaint on behalf of Saša Mustafić against the
unidentified public officials for harassment, extortion of information and
infliction of slight injuries. Saša Mustafić and Demira Gezvira made
statements to an investigating judge of the Second Municipal Court in Belgrade
on 23 August 2001.
1.4.7. The torture of Roma
men from Vinarce settlement
On
the pretext of looking for illicit weapons, Leskovac police on 28-29 January
2001 searched the Roma settlement Vinarce near Leskovac and detained eight
Roma, the oldest of whom was aged seventy-six. At the Leskovac police station,
they were treated brutally: during the two days they were beaten
intermittently, they were handcuffed and
given no food and water, and some of them were also denied the use of
the toilet.
Daka
Zekić (76) was taken to the police station at about 10 a.m. on 27 January
2001. Until he was released at 1 p.m. on January 29, he was given no food and
water. For two days and two nights Zekić was handcuffed alternately to a
metal cupboard and a radiator, as well as slapped and punched in the face and
beaten on the back with a truncheon by inspectors and uniformed police
officers. He vainly begged them to stop because he had recently had four ribs
broken as a result of a fall. The police officers continued to kick him on the
legs even after completely dislocating a knee joint.
On
behalf of Daka Zekić, the Committee for Human Rights in Leskovac and the
Yugoslav Committee of Human Rights Lawyers filed with the Municipal Public
Prosecutor’s Office in Leskovac a criminal complaint against the police
officers for extortion of information and unlawful deprivation of liberty.[45]
As of this writing, no indictment had been brought in.
Trajče
Bakić of Vinarce was arrested in the Leskovac market at about 10.30 a.m.
on 27 January 2001. At the police station in Leskovac until late that night he
was given no food and water and was denied the use of the toilet. All that time
an inspector and a uniformed police officer took turns slapping him on the
head, punching him on the back, and striking him on the palms and backs of the
hands with truncheons. When he slumped to the ground in pain, he was kicked all
over the body. The inspector kept calling him ‘Gypsy motherfucker’ and the
unformed police officer kept saying, ‘I’m worse than Hitler for Gypsies and
Jews.’ On his release from the police station Bakić was helped home by his
neighbour Saša Ramić because he could hardly walk.
On
behalf of Trajče Bakić, the Committee for Human Rights in Leskovac
and the Yugoslav Committee of Human Rights Lawyers filed a criminal complaint
with the Municipal Public Prosecutor’s Office in Leskovac against the police
officers for inflicting civil injury. The criminal complaint having been
dismissed, the Committee for Human Rights requested the investigative judge of
the Municipal Court in Leskovac to institute an investigation. As of this
writing no action had been taken.
Miroslav
Ajdarević of Vinarce was arrested at about 8 a.m. on January 28 and
detained at the Leskovac police station until 11.30 p.m. on January 29. To
extort from him a confession that he had a weapon, an inspector beat him while
he was handcuffed to a metal cupboard. The inspector used his hands and a metal
bar to beat Ajdarević repeatedly all over the body, causing him large
haematoma on the right arm and shoulder. At one time the inspector inserted
into his nostrils the sharp points of a 40 cm long crowbar for extracting nails
and threatened to kill him unless he admitted to possessing a weapon. In the
evening of January 28 the inspector did not allow Ajdarević to drink the
mineral water his brother had brought him. He spent the whole night handcuffed
to a bench. Ajdarević was the only one of the eight Roma from Vinarce to
have obtained a medical certificate testifying to his injuries. However, he had
to wait twenty days for it because the doctors to whom he had applied said they
were afraid of the police. The certificate says he suffered slight injuries
inflicted with a blunt object. The police never discovered the weapon they had
accused Ajdarević of possessing.
The
Committee for Human Rights in Leskovac filed with the Municipal Public
Prosecutor’s Office in Leskovac a criminal complaint against the police
officers who had abused Ajdarević while attempting to extort a confession
from him. As of this writing, no indictment had been raised.
Around
noon on 28 January 2001, Dejan Zekić and his wife Violeta Jašarević
were visited at their house in Vinarce village near Leskovac by three Leskovac
police officers. One of them was known to Dejan and Violeta as Ljubiša
Zdravković. Zdravković came upon Violeta on the porch and asked her
whether Dejan was at home, to which she replied that she could not tell. Dejan,
who had heard the question directed to Violeta, went out immediately and
introduced himself to the police officers. Zdravković slapped Violeta on
the face so hard that she fell down, then demanded that she hand over the
pistol her husband allegedly possessed. Violeta replied that her husband’s
pistol had already been confiscated by the police. Displeased with what he
heard, Zdravković continued to slap her in the face in front of children
and relatives. Zdravković then ordered Dejan, who describes himself as a
Christian Evangelic Church cleric, and Violeta to show him the room in which
Dejan held service. In the room Zdravković slapped Violeta again and
demanded that she give him the weapon, then slapped Dejan because he denied
possessing a weapon. The police officers then confiscated Dejan’s passport and
took Dejan and Violeta outside, where Zdravković gave Violeta another slap
in the face. A Leskovac police inspector known to Dejan as Saša appeared at the
yard gate, called out to Zdravković and told him to return the documents
to Dejan. After that the police officers allowed Violeta and Dejan to go back
into the house. The police officers had no search warrant, issued no
certificate of search and found no weapon.
The
Yugoslav Committee of Human Rights Lawyers and the Committee for Human Rights
in Leskovac filed a criminal complaint with the Municipal Public Prosecutor’s
Office in Leskovac against police officer Zdravković (Kt. No. 663/01) for
inflicting a civil injury. As of this
writing, the submitters had no knowledge of an indictment having been brought
in.
Sadrija
Kurtić of Vinarce village presented himself at the Leskovac police station
at about 3.30 p.m. on 27 January 2001. He had been telephoned from the police
station by his brother Srđan Kurtić on orders by the police. On his
arrival, Sadrija Kurtić was taken by an inspector named Saša into an
office where he saw another Roma from the village, Šerif Bakić. The
inspector ordered Bakić out and told Kurtić to confess everything.
When Kurtić said that he had informed a lawyer of his summons and was not
going to talk without his being present, the inspector started to beat him with
open hands on the head and back to make him disclose where the weapons were.
When Kurtić raised his hands to ward off the blows, the inspector called
in two colleagues who handcuffed him to a leg of a metal table. The police
officers then went out and searched Kutrić’s home. Not having found any
weapons, they released him at about 9.30 p.m.
The
Yugoslav Committee of Human Rights Lawyers and the Committee for Human rights
in Leskovac filed with the Municipal Public Prosecutor’s Office in Leskovac a
criminal complaint against the police inspector for extorting information and
making an unlawful arrest. As of this writing, the submitters had no knowledge
of an indictment having been brought in.
At
about 10 a.m. on 28 January 2001, Miodrag Bakterović of Vinarce village
was visited by three unformed police officers and an inspector by name Saša.
They took him to the Leskovac police station although they had no arrest
warrant.
On
their arrival at the police station, inspector Saša took Bakterović into
an office and fastened his leg to a metal table by means of handcuffs. The
inspector interrogated him for about three hours and insisted that he admit to
buying a pistol from a Roma named Sejdo. The inspector next drove
Bakterović into a corridor and handcuffed him to a radiator. Five minutes
later, a police officer named Ljubiša Zdravković removed the handcuffs and
let Bakterović go. Bakterović
was presented with no arrest or detention warrant. The Yugoslav
Committee of Human Rights Lawyers and the Committee for Human Rights in
Leskovac filed with the Municipal Public Prosecutor’s Office in Leskovac a
criminal complaint[46]
against the police officers involved for making an unlawful arrest. As of this
writing, the submitters were unable to confirm that a proceeding had been
instituted.
1.4.8. Roma youth beaten
with a wooden pole
On 5
March 2001, Miroslav Milić (18) was severely beaten by four police
officers from the Zvezdara district police station in Belgrade to make him
confess to stealing things from his former girlfriend’s flat.
A
plainclothes police officer arrived at Milić’s parents’ flat around noon
and took Milić to the police station. Milić was led into a
third-floor office. Following is his account of the incident to the HLC:
The policeman who’d brought me in started to curse my
Gypsy mother at once. He went out for a minute or two and returned in the
company of two others. They started to insult me and say I had to admit to
stealing. They threatened to keep me in a cell for a month and then transfer me
to the Central Prison.
The policeman who’d brought me in started to beat me
first. He struck me with a long, thick wooden pole on the buttocks and legs. I
was standing the whole time. Next he forced me to place my hands on the table
and hit me on them. The other two first watched, then took turns beating me
with the same wooden pole. I was beaten with the pole for about twenty minutes.
What with so many blows I stumbled and fell, and they proceeded to kick and
punch me in the back of the head. A fourth policeman entered the room after
those three had left off and struck me with the pistol handle on the head.
Throughout the beating they swore about my Gypsy mother and kept saying that
stealing was Gypsy business.
Next
day Milić sought medical assistance because he felt dizzy and sick and had
pain all over the body. The doctor established that he had suffered slight
injuries. On 9 March 2001, the HLC filed a criminal complaint against the four
unidentified police officers from Zvezdara for beating Milić in order to
extort a confession. As of the end of October 2002, the Public Prosecutor’s
Office had not respondent to the complaint.
1.4.9. Two Roma beaten in
Bačka Topola
On 7
May 2001, a police patrol entered the homes of two Roma men, Stevan
Braničić (b. 1963) and Saša Gojkov (b. 1973) of Ravno Selo village in
Vojvodina, and ordered them to present themselves at the police station in
Vrbas at 1 p.m. the same day. The first thing they were asked on their arrival
at the police station was why they had been stealing things from residents of
Bajša village. They had both been to the village the previous day to buy
piglets in order to resale them. They denied steeling anything. After being
questioned for two hours, they were transferred at about 3 p.m. to the police
station in Bačka Topola. Braničić was taken into an office where
an inspector named Josip Fontanji and two police officers were waiting.
Fontanji urged Braničić to make a confession and proceeded to beat
him without further ado:
While I was standing, I felt unexpected punches in the
stomach and the small of the back. After this, Fontanji and a policeman left
the room. I remained alone with the other policeman whose name I don’t know. He
started to beat me for all he was worth with a club about half a metre long - I
think it was braided wire wrapped up in leather or rubber. First he told me to
turn the palms of my hands upwards, then he struck me on them with the club a
couple of times. When I tried to withdraw my hands, he struck me with the club
on the top of the head, which gave me an enormous bump. He ordered me to face
the wall and place my hands against it. Then he started to beat me mercilessly
all over the body - the kidneys, shoulders, thighs, buttocks. A kick in the
thighs sent me down on my knees and he switched over to kicking me in the
stomach. He promised me that neither of us would leave the police station until
we both started to bleed from the nose and had to carry each other out of the
office.
After
slapping Gojkov in the face about ten times, inspector Fontanji took him into
an office from where he could hear clearly that Braničić was being
beaten next door. The police officer who was with Gojkov ordered him to face
the wall. Then he started to beat him with a truncheon on the back, legs and
buttocks while shouting, ‘Have you changed your mind? Confess! You’re gonna
squeal! You Gypsy motherfucker!’
Braničić
and Gojkov made no confession and were released at 7 p.m. As they were taking
their leave, the police officers threatened to beat them again if they ever set
their foot in Bačka Topola or Bajša villages again.
In
May 2001, the HLC filed a criminal complaint with the Municipal Public
Prosecutor’s Office in Bačka Topola against inspector Josip Fontanji and
the two unidentified local police officers for trying to extort information and
for inflicting slight injuries. On 7 June 2001, Braničić and Gojkov
were detained at the Bačka Topola police station and threatened by
Fontanji and another police officer in connection with the complaint.
Braničić said this in his statement to the HLC:
Inspector Fontanji asked me why I’d complained against
him and I replied because he’d beaten me. Then he said in a threatening voice,
‘Looks like this thing won’t end just like that.’ While I was writing a
statement, a plainclothes policeman entered the office and asked, ‘Is he one of
those who’ve complained against us? If you’d reported me, I’d go right to your
house and kill you. I can beat you right here senseless and you’ll never be
able to prove a thing.’
After
the Municipal Public Prosecutor’s Office in Bačka Topola failed to respond
to the criminal complaint, the HLC sent it a request for expedition of
proceedings on 23 August 2001 and received a reply from it on 6 September 2001.
A criminal investigation of the police officers involved started on 11 December
2001. As of this writing, both the victim and a witness had been examined.
1.4.10. The beating of a
twelve-year-old boy
On
21 June 2001, F., a Roma boy aged twelve was brought to the Belgrade SUP
headquarters on 29. Novembra St. He lives in one of Belgrade’s numerous
unhygienic shantytowns and begs for a living. He has no personal documents and
does not attend school. The following statement he made to the HLC shows that
the police resorted to severe violence in order to extort a confession from
him:
I live with Dad, Mom, three brothers and a sister. My
sister is the youngest, she’s two. My brother K., who’s also twelve, steals and
the police know that. They come to our flat often to ask about stolen things. I
don’t steal. That day, K. had forced open the boot of a Zastava car parked near
the ‘C’ supermarket in Flower Square and taken two track suits and two small
car loudspeakers. The policeman nicknamed Caki - he knows us because he sees us
in Slavija Square and round there all the time - came to our place and took me
to the police station on 29. Novembra street. He didn’t beat me on our way
there. Caki took me to a room on the fourth floor where we were alone. He asked
me my first and family names and wrote them down somewhere. After that he asked
me to give back the things my brother had taken from the car. Then he started
to slap me in the face and hit me with the truncheon on the palms of the hands,
thighs, arms, back, and neck. I don’t remember how long he beat me. My Dad and
Mom got scared when the police took me away, so they waited in the corridor of
the police station all that time. They didn’t ask policeman Caki why he’d
beaten me, they just took me home.
Fearing
retribution, the boy’s parents did not want to press charges against the police
officer. On 30 July 2001, the HLC disclosed the incident to the public and
urged the competent state authorities to punish the perpetrator adequately. On
11 September 2001, Colonel Ivan Đorđević, chief of cabinet of
the Minister of Internal Affairs, informed the HLC about the results of the
investigation carried out by the Belgrade SUP Internal Security Division. He
said that according to the records no Roma boy had been detained that day and
concluded that the HLC had published ‘untrue and unverified information’. The
HLC replied to Colonel Đorđević that it had great confidence in
the accuracy of the boy’s statement and observed that owing to their ignorance of
human rights and ingrained prejudices public officials did not treat Roma,
including their children, as human beings.
1.4.11. The case of Ramon
Jeseti
Ramon
Jeseti (b. 1982) of Kraljevo was physically and psychologically abused by the
police on several occasions during 2001. Ever since the police opened a file on
him several years ago for stealing, he has regularly been visited by police
officers and requested to inform on local offenders. In his statement to the
HLC, Ramon described what happened to him after he was brought to the Kraljevo
police station in July 2001 (he could not recall the exact date of the
incident):[47]
I got the worst of it in July this year. It was about
seven or eight o’clock in the morning when two inspectors in a white Zastava
car pulled up outside my house. Their names are Perica Vučković and
Dejan who’s nickname’s ‘Čarapan’. They told me to get the car
cassette-player and loudspeakers from the house and come along with them. I
went in, picked up the cassette-player and loudspeakers I’d stolen from a car,
and took them outside just as they’d told me to do. They put handcuffs on my
hands and helped me into the car. At the Kraljevo police station, we went into
Room 108. There were just the three of us inside. As soon as we walked in, I
explained where I’d nicked the cassette-player and they started asking me
questions about others. When I said I knew nothing about other
cassette-players, Dejan ‘Čarapan’ knocked me down and started to kick me
all over the body. Perica beat me with the truncheon on the back, palms of the
hands, head, and all over the body. They cursed my Gypsy mother and urged me to
confess. There was a bottle of plum brandy in the room and they made me drink
some. They didn’t drink any and I only had a small glass, after which I refused
to drink more. Dejan ‘Čarapan’ took out a cigarette-lighter and lit first
my hair then my beard. I put out the flames with my bare hands. I was badly
singed. This went on for about half an hour.
After that an inspector named Buco entered the room.
He’s short and plump and has black hair. He just came in, asked who I was, took
a baseball bat out of the cupboard and started to thrash me all over the body.
The bat broke in two and he continued to beat me with the stump until he
knocked hell out of me. He wanted me to admit what other things I’d stolen -
cars, phones, TV sets. I said nothing, but even if I’d known anything I’d have
confessed after that kind of beating. They kept coming in and going out. A man
would walk in, call me a Gypsy motherfucker, spit at me, and go out. None of
those in uniform touched me, it was only those in civilian clothes that did it.
I was handcuffed to the radiator. Dejan and Perica got out at about 3 p.m. and
I was left alone till 5 p.m. Some young policemen in uniform came in then and
told me to clear off.
I went home covered with blood, my hair and beard
badly singed. I saw a doctor and was given painkillers. I spent a few days in
bed during which time I passed blood with urine. I haven’t stolen a thing since
that day, so here I am, sifting through garbage. They’re still coming to my
place and accusing me of all sorts of things, and I just can’t convince them
that I don’t steal any more. The inspectors who keep visiting me are not always
the same ones. Three or four days later I was in Room 108 of the police station
again. An inspector called ‘Čunga’ and Dejan ‘Čarapan’ told me,
‘Don’t let us ever hear again that you’ve been to a doctor or complained to
somebody.’ They said this because we’d told Nebojša, the president of the Roma
society, what’d happened. The last time they picked me up was ten days ago.
They took me to Room 202 where inspectors ‘Čunga’ and ‘Mitre’ were waiting
for me. Again they wanted me to admit to something, slapped me in the face and
beat me with a small truncheon. I cried and begged them not to touch me. They
left off and told me I could go home.
Jeseti’s
paternal uncle Akif described his cousin’s condition on his return from the
police station:
Ramon came home covered with blood. His hair was
singed and he had heamatoma. We went to a hospital where he gave blood and urine
samples. Then they sent him to a surgeon to find out if he had any internal
bleeding. The surgeon said that fortunately there was none because Ramon was a
hefty fellow. The surgeon sent us to a general practitioner to give us a
certificate. As it was nearly closing time, they told us to come back tomorrow
and pay 300 dinars for the certificate. We didn’t have the money and left it at
that. I was given some drugs to ease the pain. We were also given some papers
but we don’t know where they are now.[48]
1.4.12. Police officers
break a boy’s arm
On
22 September 2001, a police patrol brutally beat a group of Roma children
collecting old paper from refuse containers in downtown Novi Sad. The police
officers insisted that the children admit to stealing. They knocked down the
fourteen-year-old boy E.M. and broke his arm while kicking him. Following is
the boy’s statement to the HLC:
On Saturday shortly after midnight, me and seven other
children from Veliki Rit set out for the city centre to collect old paper. We were
all Roma, none of us older than sixteen. At 2.30 p.m. we were outside McDonalds
taking old paper out of containers when two policeman in uniform came up to us.
One of them asked us what we were doing, and we replied that we were collecting
old paper. The policeman suddenly hit me on the head and I started to run. I
saw him hit a girl from our group with a walkie-talkie on the head, so she too
started to run. One of the policeman came running after me and yelled that he
was going to shoot me if I didn’t stop. I stopped, he caught up and started to
kick me savagely. He kicked me so hard that I slumped as if scythed down. The
other policeman came up and joined in. They kicked me all over the body. When I
covered my head with my arms for protection, they kicked me so hard that they
broke my arm. I started to cry because it hurt me terribly and they stopped. We
started for home soon afterwards. I couldn’t sleep because of the pain. Next
day my arm was so swollen that Mum took me to the doctor. He put my arm in a
cast.
E.M.’s
brother M.M. said this about the incident:
At about 2 a.m. on Saturday, I was collecting old
paper in the city centre with my brother and neighbours from Veliki Rit. Two
policemen came up and said, ‘Tell us what you’ve stolen.’ I saw one of the
policemen strike my brother on the head with the hand and a girl with a
walkie-talkie. She’s twelve. The two of them started to run in different
directions. I remained standing with the others in front of the container and
heard the policeman who was chasing Enis shout, ‘Stop or I’ll shoot!’ I saw my
brother fall after receiving a kick from the policeman. Then both of them
kicked him all over the body. That happened outside the Athens restaurant. One
of the policemen then told us to go home and called us ‘Albanian
motherfuckers’.
The
boys’ mother, Nafija Mamutovski, described the condition of E.M. on his return
from Novi Sad that night:
My sons returned from Novi Sad sometime about 5 a.m.
on Saturday. They go to Novi Sad to collect old paper almost every night
because that’s what we do for a living. My son at once told me everything and
went to bed. H was in pain and couldn’t sleep all night. In the morning I saw
that his arm was swollen. At about 7 a.m. I took him to a doctor and he put the
arm in a cast. The doctor told me that the arm was broken.
In
its reply of 4 December 2001 to the HLC’s request for investigating the
incident, the MUP said, among other things, that ‘...on the basis of the
inquiries made, it was not possible to establish with certainty whether the
injury of the minor E.M. was inflicted by members of the police force, that is,
what caused it, not were the perpetrators of this criminal act identified, for
which reasons the Secretariat in Novi Sad continues its investigations for the
purpose of clarifying the circumstances of this incident.’
1.4.13. The case of Danijel
Jovanović
On 5
June 2002, two uniformed police officers beat Danijel Jovanović (b. 1983)
of Kraljevo after founding a stolen bicycle in his possession. After questioning
Jovanović about the bicycle for some time, the two police officers called
in two plainclothes colleagues because he would not tell men anything.
Following is Jovanović’s statement to the HLC:[49]
Two policemen arrived: one was youngish with black
hair and of medium build, and had a scar running from the forehead to the top
of the head (later I learned that his name’s Draško Vučićević
and his nickname Vučko); the other
was youngish and stocky, of medium height, with black hair and small
pimples all over the face. Both were in civilian clothes and arrived in a
civilian car. They drove me to a place called Farmer’s Gate near
Drakčići village. While we were riding in that direction, the
policeman not driving the car took off his shoes and kicked me repeatedly with
the soles. When we arrived at the Farmer’s Gate they took me out of the car and
started to beat me with fists, hands, and feet. Vučko beat me on the back
along the length of the spine. As they did so, they kept telling me that I had
to cooperate with the police, that is, to report thefts and thieves. I denied
any such knowledge and they continued to beat me with fists, hands, and feet.
The other policeman told me I was a tough nut to crack. They beat me for about
half an hour, then took a break. After that, Vučko grabbed me by the
collar and dragged me off into a nearby copse. He took out the pistol, cocked
it, and asked me, ‘Do you want me to kill you?’ He told me that if I didn’t
talk he’d shoot me in the knee and asked me which one I liked to have it in.
Then he lost his temper and started to hit me on the head with the pistol. As I
used my hands to protect myself, he struck me with the pistol on one hand so
badly that later I had to have it stitched up. He led me back to the car and
they continued to punch and kick me there while urging me to collaborate by
telling on people. Vučko told me, ‘You really are a tough nut.’ They took
turns at beating and holding me for half an hour. When they finished beating
me, they drove me to a fountain to wash myself, then took me back to the
Farmer’s Gate and left me there. My parents took me to a doctor. The doctor
told them they had better report the incident to the police. While I was at the
doctor’s a policeman came and took my statement. After that my parents and I
went to see the chief of police. I described the two policemen and made a
statement. The chief of police asked me, ‘Must you really sue them?’ Two or
three days later we went to see lawyer Sakić in Kraljevo and asked him to
write a complaint. I don’t know whether he did it. The documents and the
doctor’s certificate are with him.’
Jovanović’s
parental uncle, Dragan Milenković, described to the HLC the victim’s
condition as it was two days after the incident:[50]
I saw Danijel two days after the incident. He had
black bruises all over the body and a bump on the head. Most of the bruises
were along the spine.’
1.5. Domestic standards
a) Unlawful deprivation of
liberty
The
Charter on Human and Minority Rights and Fundamental Freedoms prohibits
unlawful deprivation of liberty. A provision to this effect was also contained
in the FRY Constitution. The Charter regards as unlawful any deprivation of
liberty which is not carried out according to the cases and manners prescribed
by law of the state union or its member states. A person deprived of his
liberty must be given the reasons for the arrest and allowed to inform his next
of kin and a lawyer of his own choice of the fact. Any unlawful deprivation of
liberty is punishable and there are guarantees which enable an arrested person
to have the matter promptly investigated.[51]
A
person for whom there is ground for suspicion that he has committed a criminal
offence may be arrested and held in detention only on the basis of an order by
a competent court and if necessary for the conduct of a criminal proceeding.[52]
The Serbian Constitution contains similar provisions.[53]
While the Charter on Human and Minority Rights and Fundamental Freedoms
provides that an arrested person must be brought before a court within
forty-eight hours of arrest at the latest,[54]
the Serbian Constitution stipulates that detention must be of the shortest
possible duration.
The
Charter on Human and Minority Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the Serbian
Constitution[55]
entitle persons unlawfully deprived of their liberty to rehabilitation and
compensation for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage and guarantee their other
rights established by law (such as rights acquired on account of employment).
The damages must be settled by the Republic of Serbia.
The
new Criminal Procedure Code was adopted in December 2001 and took effect on 28
March 2002.[56] It
incorporates improvements on the provisions contained in its predecessor, the
Law on Criminal Procedure.[57]
The novelties relating to police work during proceedings prior to the bringing
in of the indictment include the following obligations: a person taken into
custody without a court order must be brought before an investigating judge at
once and informed of its right to a defence counsel already during the first
hearing;[58] if
the police wish to interview a person, the summons must be in writing and the
interview may not exceed four hours;[59]
etc.
If a
person is suspected of having committed a criminal offence, the Criminal
Procedure Code empowers the police to take him into custody and to bring him
before an investigating judge immediately or not later than twenty-four hours after
arrest.[60]
Under this provision, the police may only carry out the arrest while the
decision to keep the arrested person in detention rests with the investigating
judge when that person is brought before him. Until 7 December 2000, when a
Federal Constitutional Court ruling restricting police powers, the police were
authorized to bring a person into custody in the following cases: if the person
was suspected of having committed a criminal offence punishable by death; if
the person was likely to abscond, destroy material evidence, or influence
witnesses, accessaries, or harbourers; if, under the circumstances, he was
likely to commit the same offence again, complete the commission of a criminal
offence, or carry out a threat to commit a criminal offence, or if he was
suspected of having committed a criminal offence carrying a prison sentence of
ten years or more, where such an offence might lead to a disturbance of public
opinion likely to disrupt the conduct of the proceedings.
In
addition to empowering the police to deprive a person of his liberty, the
superseded Law on Criminal Procedure also authorized them to keep a person in
detention up to seventy-two hours at their own discretion. The police had the
power to order detention in the following cases: if the person was suspected of
having committed a criminal offence punishable by death; if the person was
likely to abscond or destroy the evidence of the criminal offence; if, under
the circumstances, he was likely to commit the same offence again, complete the
commission of a criminal offence, or carry out a threat to commit a criminal
offence.
On 7
December 2000, the Federal Constitutional Court considered the constitutional
character of Article 191 of the then-valid Law on Criminal Procedure with
respect to the grounds on which a person could be arrested and/or detained.[61]
The Court found the provisions of that article unduly broad and determined that
there was constitutional incompatibility regarding the powers of arrest and/or
detention in the following cases: if a
person was likely to commit the same criminal offence again or complete
the commission of a criminal offence or carry out a threat of committing a
criminal offence, or if he was suspected of having committed a criminal offence
carrying a prison sentence of ten years or more, where such an offence might
lead to a disturbance of public opinion likely to disrupt the conduct of the
proceedings. The Court took the view that the foregoing considerations
constituted insufficient grounds for making an arrest and/or imposing detention in order to ensure the proper
conduct of criminal proceedings. In its opinion, the purpose of these
considerations was to support objectives not directly related to the conduct of
criminal proceedings (such as preventing a disturbance of public opinion or
eliminating a threat to public security). By rendering these provisions
invalid, the Court considerably
restricted the grounds on which the police could make an arrest and the investigating
judge order detention under the Law of Criminal Procedure.
By
the same decision the Federal Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional
the provision of Article 196 of the Law on Criminal Procedure permitting the
police to order detention for up to seventy-two hours, because the FRY
Constitution stipulates that courts alone are vested with the powers of
detention.
The
Serbian Penal Code provides for the criminal offence of unlawful detention.[62]
The offence is grouped together with criminal offences against the rights and
freedoms of man and the citizen. Any person who deprives another of his liberty
of movement may be considered as having committed this criminal offence. An
aggravated (specified) form of this criminal offence involves the abuse of
office or powers on the part of a public official and is punishable by
imprisonment from three months to five years. If unlawful detention exceeds thirty days or was
carried out in a cruel manner as a result of which the detainee suffered
serious impairment of health or other grave consequences, the perpetrator may
be punished by imprisonment from one year to eight years; and if this results
in the death of the person unlawfully deprived of his liberty, the perpetrator
may be punished by imprisonment of at least three years.
b) Extortion of information
The
Charter on Human and Minority Rights and Fundamental Freedoms obligates law
enforcement personnel to respect the dignity of persons deprived of their
liberty. It prohibits in particular any violence against detained persons. The
Charter also prohibits the extortion of information.[63]
The
Serbian Penal Code prohibits public officials from extorting confessions or
statements by any means.[64]
The criminal offence of extortion of information is grouped together with
criminal offences against the rights and freedoms of man and the citizen. The
offence is deemed to have been committed if any force, threats or other
impermissible means and methods were used in order to extort a confession from
a person. An aggravated (specified) form is considered to have been committed
if heavy violence was used or if the defendant was put at a particularly severe
disadvantage during the proceedings as a result of a statement he made under
duress. The basic form of this criminal offence entails imprisonment of three months
to five years, and the aggravated form imprisonment of at least one year, which
means that the perpetrator may be sentenced to fifteen years in prison.
c) Compensation
Under
the Criminal Procedure Code, every person who has been unlawfully or unjustifiably
detained is entitled to compensation. Unlawful detention means detention
imposed on grounds other than those laid down by law, detention not backed by a
proper detention order, or detention exceeding the maximum time-limit laid down
by law. In view of the outcome of the proceedings, detention was unjustifiable
(though it may have been lawful) if the accused person was not found guilty.[65]
The Republic of Serbia is bound to compensate every person if he was detained
due to an error or illegal activity on the part of a public authority; if he
was kept in detention beyond the statutory time-limit; if no criminal
proceedings were instituted against him; or if the criminal proceedings against
him were discontinued by a finally binding decision.[66]
A claim for damages is submitted to the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of
Serbia and must be processed within three months. If the Ministry dismisses a
claim or does not respond within three months, the person who was unlawfully or
unjustifiably detained is entitled to sue the state for damages before a
competent court.
A
person who was unlawfully or unjustifiably detained or abused is entitled to
pecuniary and non-pecuniary compensation from the Republic of Serbia because
his physical and psychological integrity was violated. This kind of recompense
is dealt with in some detail in Section 1.2. c) of this report.
1.6. International standards
Serbia
and Montenegro are bound by a body of international documents which protect the
physical and psychological integrity of the individual and prohibit torture and
other cruel or inhuman treatment. Of special importance in this regard is the
Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment; the FRY has both signed and ratified it[67]
and recognized, by making a special declaration, the competence of the
Committee against Torture to receive and consider communications from or on
behalf of individuals.[68]
The
Convention obligates the State Parties to submit periodical reports on
compliance with the Convention to the Committee against Torture.[69]
In its annual report on the implementation of undertakings under the
Convention, the Committee against Torture voiced its concern at the omission of
the criminal offence of torture from the Penal Code of the FRY with reference
to Article 1 of the Convention.[70]
The
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibits torture, cruel
and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.[71]
The Covenant also provides for procedural guarantees against arbitrary and
unlawful arrest, making it obligatory for State Parties to specify the
conditions under which a person may be deprived of his liberty and to provide
judicial control of the lawful character of arrest and detention.[72]
Article 9 (5) of the Covenant states that a person who has been victim of
unlawful arrest or detention shall be entitled to compensation.
The
UN Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners provide that every person
deprived of his liberty must be shown respect for his dignity as a human being.[73]
Likewise, in treating such persons there must be no discrimination on the
grounds of race or nationality.
1.7. Communications to the
Committee against Torture
Owing
to the failure of Serbia and Montenegro to abide by the Convention against
Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the HLC
and the European Roma Rights Center (ERRC) submitted to the Committee against
Torture three communications on behalf of the following Roma victims of
torture: Jovica Dimitrov of Novi Sad, Danilo Dimitrijević of Novi Sad, and
Dragan Dimitrijević of Kragujevac.
1.7.1. The case of Jovica
Dimitrov
On 5
February 1996, Jovica Dimitrov was first verbally threatened and then
repeatedly struck with a baseball bat as well as punched and kicked at the
police station in Novi Sad. A medical certificate established several bruises
and stripe-shaped haematoma on the arms, shoulders, thighs, and knees. Although
Dimitrov filed a criminal complaint on 7 November 1996, it was only on 17 September
1999 that the Municipal Public Prosecutor’s Office instructed the investigating
judge to undertake certain investigatory steps.
The
HLC submitted the communication on 29 August 2000 and asked the Committee
against Torture to establish whether the competent authorities, if they were
aware of the fact that Dimitrov was tortured, omitted to order a prompt and
impartial investigation, and whether such a failure on their part deprived
Dimitrov of his right to compensation.
1.7.2. The case of Danilo
Dimitrijević
On
14 November 1997, Danilo Dimitrijević was beaten at the police station in
Novi Sad by an unidentified police officer who used a long pole and struck him
especially around the kidneys and on the back. On 24 November 1997,
Dimitrijević filed a criminal complaint with the Municipal Public
Prosecutor’s Office against the unidentified public official for trying to
extort information from him. The public prosecutor never dealt with the
criminal complaint in spite several written and oral requests by Dimitrijević
to expedite the proceedings. The HLC submitted the communication on
Dimitrijević’s behalf to the Committee against Torture on 7 August 2000.
1.7.3. The case of Dragan
Dimitrijević
On
27 October 1999, Dragan Dimitrijević and his relatives were celebrating
his family patron-saint’s day, St Petka, at his home in Kragujevac. At about
noon two police officers entered the house and took Dimitrijević into
custody. At the police station in Kragujevac, Dimitrijević was asked to
admit to stealing. Following is his account of what happened at the police
station:
They handcuffed me to a radiator, then proceeded to
kick me and beat me on the back and hands with a truncheon. I was beaten by
several of them. Policeman Mića Crnogorac told them to lay off but they
didn’t listen to him. One of them picked up a metal bar and beat me with it on
the back and arms. They unfastened me from the radiator and handcuffed me to a
bicycle, then beat me with the hands, truncheons and bar all over the body.
Worst of all was when they beat me on the head with the bar and blood started
coming out of my ears. They let me go at about 4.30 p.m. I couldn’t walk, so my
brother Veroljub waited for me outside the police station and took me home.[74]
The
brother gave the following description of Dimitrijević as he came out of
the police station:
He couldn’t walk when he came out, his arms and legs
hurt. His head was bleeding. The small blood vessels below his eyes had burst.
He lay in bed at home for two or three days. He bled from the ears for some
days. His legs were covered with bruises. His right arm was covered with
bruises.[75]
On
31 January 2000, Dimitrijević filed a criminal complaint against
unidentified public officials for committing the crimes of slight bodily harm
and civil injury. Although the HLC submitted four requests for expedition of
proceedings to the Municipal Public Prosecutor’s Office in Kragujevac between
26 July 2000 and 26 July 2001, no action had been taken by June 2002. On 20
December 2001, the HLC and the ERRC submitted to the Committee against Torture
a communication citing breaches of the Convention; although admittedly not all
domestic remedies had been exhausted, there was clearly no intention on the
part of the judicial authorities to provide the victim with redress.
2. Violent attacks on Roma
by private individuals
Physical
and verbal attacks on Roma are often motivated by deep prejudices. They are
perpetrated mostly by young men belonging to marginal sub-cultural groups with
extreme nationalist or racist leanings (i.e. skinheads, soccer and basketball
fans). The violence has the form of
systematic molestation, threats, insults, humiliation, physical attacks,
property destruction. Roma children too are victims of such violence.
2.1. Violent attacks by
skinheads
The
period covered by this Report was marked by an increase in the number of
skinhead attacks on Roma, particularly those employed as refuse collectors.[76]
In view of the increasingly frequent attacks on its personnel, the management
of the public utility company Gradska čistoća on 15 November 1999
urged the police to take effective measures to protect its staff against
skinhead attacks. The company director, Dragan Obradović, said that Roma
employees were almost the sole target of these attacks.[77]
Because making promises was about all the authorities did in connection with
these incidents, the Roma Congress Party on 9 November 1999 issued a public
statement urging the authorities to take effective action.
2.1.1. The beating of street
sweepers
At
about 1.30 p.m. on 30 November 1999, two Gradska čistoća public
utility company workers, Zlatko Stanković and Slobodan Stanković,
were beaten by a group of skinheads in the presence of numerous passers-by
outside the Hotel Moskva in the very heart of Belgrade.
On
that day, three men and a woman employed by the company were having a rest in
front of the company shed located in the park opposite the hotel. A group of
youths were sitting a few metres away smoking marijuana. One of the victims,
Zlatko Stanković, described the incident to the HLC as follows:
Three Partizan fans wearing scarves with the club’s
colours around their necks were sitting opposite us. One of them was probably a
skinhead. He had a short hair and wore a pilot’s jacket, boots and
military-style trousers. The skinhead stood up and started to piss against a
tree right next to us. My colleague Đorđe Marković warned him
that there was a woman with us and that it wasn’t a proper thing to do in her
presence. The youth pretended not to understand the problem. I repeated that we
had a woman in our company. He came up to me and started to push and hit me.
The other two joined in and brought me down with their blows. They kicked me
all over the body. Our foreman Jasin Meleči came running and shouted that
he’d called the police. While one of the youths suggested that they should
clear out, the skinhead urged them to kill me for tearing his sleeve. They
trotted away in the direction of the Hotel Balkan. Immediately afterwards a
horde of some fifty Partizan fans came along. I ran away.[78]
Foreman
Jasin Meleči describes what happened next:
All of a sudden, Partizan fans began swarming in from
the direction of the Terazije fountain. My workers started to run away.
Slobodan Stanković was caught, struck down and kicked. I shouted and cried
for help. After being kicked for a few minutes he fought free and escaped.[79]
On
18 January 2000, the HLC filed with the Municipal Public Prosecutor’s Office a
criminal complaint against unidentified persons for causing Slobodan
Stanković slight injuries. As of this writing, the Office had not informed
the HLC whether it had identified the attackers and whether it would prosecute.
2.1.2. Boy beaten in the
street
On
the evening of 8 April 2000, Dragiša Ajdarević (15) was beaten by a group
of skinheads while his was on his way to a nearby store in the company of a
friend. Following is Ajdarević’s statement to the HLC:
Some fifteen skinheads stood about outside the ‘Lembi’
store. They wore green pilot jackets and army boots, most had their hair
trimmed short, and were about nineteen or twenty years old. They ran towards us
shouting ‘Gypsies!’ My friend Miloš said he wasn’t a Gypsy and ran away. I was
caught and punched on the head and stomach. I fell under the blows. They
started to kick me.[80]
Miloš
informed Dragiša’s parents that some unknown youths were beating their son. The
parents arrived running and saw their son lying on the ground half naked and
covered with blood, with skinheads standing in a circle around him. Dragiša’s
father Nebojša says he tried to protect his son:
I approached them empty-handed. One of them said this
was no country for Gypsies and took a swing at me with a bottle. I hit him and
we started to fight. Some of the skinheads brandishing bottles chased Dragiša
around while others made for my wife. A girl threw stones and bottles at my
wife and struck her on the arms. She also tried to hit Dragiša with a bottle. I
hit one of them with a stone.
None
of the passers-by reacted. Nebojša Ajdarević called the police and was
taken to the police station together with some of the skinheads who had taken
part in the fight. At the police station, he learned that the name of the girl
who had attacked his son and wife was Nataša Marković. He asked her why
she hated the Roma:
Nataša told me that she’d always hated Gypsies and
that they ought to move out of Serbia. The policemen laughed. They took me into
another room and told me to remove my shoe-laces, hand over my watch, and empty
the pockets. Then they took me into a cell. I was locked up inside from 5 p.m.
to 9 a.m. As they let me go, one policeman said that Nataša was well connected
all over the city because her father is the director of the Hotel Ambassador.[81]
Nebojša
Ajdarević and two of the skinheads, Oliver Mirković and a minor named
A.K., were charged with misdemeanour. Ajdarević was acquitted and the
other two fined 600 dinars each.
On
25 May 2000, the HLC filed a criminal complaint against Nataša Marković, Oliver
Mirković and A.K. for inciting national, racial and religious hatred and
fomenting dissension and intolerance.[82]
On 16 May 2001, the District Court in Niš sentenced the two members of the
skinheads movement for inciting national and racial hatred and intolerance to
six months in prison suspended for two years. This was the first time a court
qualified an attack on members of a minority group as the criminal offence of
incitement to racial, religious and national hatred.
2.1.3. The case of Gordana
Jovanović
On
10 May 2000, Gordana Jovanović (13) was attacked by a group of underage
skinheads outside her school in the Belgrade district of Bežanijska kosa. The
girl suffered seventeen knife cuts. The Milan Rakić primary school had
been the scene of several attacks on Roma children before. Its Roma pupils are
isolated and keep to themselves.
During
the break earlier that day, Jovanović and her friend Đ.V. had been
threatened by the gang with rape, something which had been going on for months.
After the classes, Jovanović was accosted by the skinheads who wore masks
over their faces. She was brought to the ground and cut with a knife on the
chest and thighs. She said this in her statement to the HLC:
One of them cut me on the chest with a knife. He wiped
it on my face, licked it and told me that Gypsy blood was going to flow all
over the world. He said he was going to kill all Gypsies. Another ripped off my
clothes. The one giving the orders was almost bald, wore jeans supported by
braces and ‘Martin’ boots. He said the skinheads were going to exterminate the
Gypsies.
After
tormenting the girl for an hour, the skinheads let go of the girl when they saw
a group of Roma approaching. The passers-by did nothing to stop them. A Roma
took Jovanović home. She sought medical assistance at once. In addition to
numerous injuries, the doctor diagnosed a grave depression caused by the
traumatic experience.
The
school governor, Miodrag Kuburović, reported the incident to the police
the next day. The girl was summoned to the New Belgrade police station to help
with inquiries. She and her older sister Nataša were kept there for nine hours,
from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. The police threatened to arrest the victim’s parents.
They kept doubting whether I was telling the truth.
They also threatened to arrest my parents. The inspector ordered me into a room
and didn’t allow Nataša to come with me.
The inspector led me into an office and told me to
show him the ones who’d attacked me. Then some youths were marched into the
room. They stood right next to me. I didn’t recognize any of them. There were
five policemen in the room. They asked me if I had a boyfriend and if I had
sexual relations. They accused me of lying. They asked me why I’d hung behind
after the last lecture. I said I wasn’t skipping classes. One of them
threatened to arrest my whole family if I lied. I got scared and said I’d cut
myself.[83]
The
police filed a criminal complaint against the minors suspected of having
attacked and injured Gordana Jovanović and launched an investigation. On 7
August 2001, the First Municipal Court in Belgrade informed the victim’s
attorney that a corrective measure had been imposed on a minor named Ž.M. and
that further criminal proceedings had been discontinued.
2.14. Skinhead attacks a public transport ticket
collector
On
12 June 2002, Radmila Milenković of Belgrade was attacked in a No. 28
trolley-bus while collecting fares. A skinhead assaulted her without a cause and
spat at her and insulted her on ethnic grounds in front of the passengers who
did not react. Milenković described her ordeal as follows:
He treated me as an animal. He first spat at me and
shouted that Gypsies had polluted the city, stank, got in the way, and ought to
be exterminated. Then he started to kick me on the legs and hips. When my
husband, who was also in the trolley-bus, advanced on him he got out at the
next stop.
A
few days later, the Press Department of the Belgrade SUP announced that Darko
Trifunović (21) of Belgrade had been brought before an investigating judge
on suspicion of having beaten Radmila Milenković in a Belgrade Public
Transport company trolley-bus on June 12. The Centre for Minority Rights, a
non-governmental organization from Belgrade, on 19 June 2002 filed a criminal
complaint against Darko Trifunović of Belgrade for inciting national,
racial and religious hatred.
2.1.5. Roma beaten by
skinhead fans in Novi Sad
On 9
November 2002, two skinhead fans of the soccer club Vojvodina kicked Ištvan
Žiga (b. 1962) of Novi Sad on the head solely on account of his ethnic origin.
Žiga suffered slight injuries in the form of bruises and heamatoma on the face
and has a medical certificate to prove this.
At
about 2 p.m. Žiga was walking along Vase Stajića St. when he spotted three
youths on the opposite pavement. This is his description of the incident given
to the HLC:[84]
As I was walking past them, one of them shouted, ‘Hey,
you Gypsy, come over here!’ I replied, ‘Let me be, brother, I’ve nothing to do
with you.’ I started to run but two of them caught up with me and started to
beat me. The third one just walked away. They brought me down and kicked me
with their boots, especially the bald one. This went on for six or seven
minutes. I noticed a woman and a young man watching the scene from a window of
a nearby building. They reported the incident to the police who arrived soon
afterwards together with an ambulance car.
One
of the attackers was caught by the police a little later, identified by Žiga,
and taken to the police station on Radnička St. Žiga, who was also brought
in, described his second encounter with the attacker:
They questioned us for about an hour. A commander
named Adamović arrived at last, ordered that a record should me made, and
said that I and the one who’d beaten me should be allowed to go. The attacker
said I’d first made an insulting remark to him and that he’d been alone. This
was completely untrue. He said that he was a registered member of the skinhead
movement calling itself ‘Blood and Honour’. I can’t understand why the police
let him get away with it, because he’s known to have done such things before
and to have behaved violently towards Roma.
The
Novi Sad police later issued a public statement saying that they had filed a
criminal complaint against Goran Stojković (b. 1982) for beating Ištvan
Žiga.
On
23 December 2002, the HLC filed with the District Public Prosecutor’s Office in
Novi Sad a criminal complaint against Goran Stojković and two unidentified
skinheads for beating Žiga on racial grounds and thus committing the criminal
offence of instigating national, racial and religious hatred, dissension and
intolerance.[85]
2.1.6 Attack on a Roma settlement in Belgrade
Following
the NATO bombing in 1999, some 200 Roma displaced from Kosovo built houses in a
field next to housing blocks on Dr Ivana Ribara St. in New Belgrade. The
non-Roma population resented their Roma neighbours from the very start,
throwing stones at their houses and telling them that they were unwelcome and
must move out.
The
local population’s resentment culminated on 24 November 2002 when three
underage youths armed with a knife and a pistol raided the Roma settlement.
They beat up an eight-year-old child and smashed the windows on the house of
Sali Gaši, as a result of which he and his family moved out. One of the
attackers stabbed Neđmije Gaši, a displaced person from Kosovska
Mitrovica, in the right arm.
The
incident started with the three youths beating the eight-year-old boy, Fidan
Gaši, just outside the settlement. Following is Fidan’s statement to the HLC:[86]
I was playing with the ball in the street when the
three youths came up to me. Two of them were fair and the third, who was tall
and lean, had black hair. They asked, ‘What’s your problem? You got a problem?’
I said, ‘No problem at all.’ Suddenly they started to kick me and to curse my
Gypsy mother. One of them took out a pistol and pressed it against my forehead.
Then they knocked me down on the grass and went off towards our houses.
When
Gzim Hasani (34) saw the three youths striding through the settlement, he had
no knowledge that his son Fidan had been beaten. Following is his account of
what happened next:[87]
At about 3 p.m. on Sunday, November 24, I was in my
yard and saw three underage males passing by my house in the direction of the
house of Sali Gaši. They broke his fence and smashed his windows and shouted.
Two of them were fair-haired while the third had short black hair and was
taller. After that they turned back and entered my yard. The tall black-haired
one told me, ‘You Gypsy motherfuckers, only Serbs are going to live round
here.’ The fair-haired youth pointed a pistol at me. My wife Neđmije come
out of the house and dragged me inside. Then I learned that the three had beaten
my son Fidan and that the fair-haired one had held the pistol to his head. I
picked up a bar and went out after them. We started to push one another about.
I grabbed the blond one holding the pistol by the neck and we started to
wrestle. The other two started to kick me. The blond one put the pistol to my
temple and said, ‘Move out of here or I’m gonna fuck your Gypsy mother.’ My
wife Neđmije moved in and struck one of them with a pole on the back. At
that, the black-faired youth pulled out a knife and stabbed my wife in the arm
so that the blade came out the other end. Then they ran away and said that
they’d be back.
Neđmije
Gaši said this in her statement to the HLC:
We were inside the house drinking tea when my daughter
walked in and said that three youths had beaten my son Fidan. My husband was
outside. I saw those three standing outside our house and heard them threaten
him, ‘You’re not going to live here, you Gypsy motherfuckers!’ I went out and
pulled my husband inside. When he learned that they’d beaten our son, he went
out again. They started to scuffle and I saw one of them point a pistol at my
husband. I closed in with them with a pole in my hand but don’t remember what
happened next because I had a blackout. All I felt was blood dripping down my
arm. Afterwards I went to a hospital and had my arm bandaged.
The
police arrived soon afterwards and found two of the attackers a little later.
After being identified by the Roma residents, the attackers were taken to the
police station.
2.2. Violent attacks by other private individuals
In
connection with incidents involving physical attacks on Roma by private
individuals, the attitude of the police gives rise to particular concern. The
police are in the habit of justifying their failure to act on reports of such
incidents by arguing that the victims must have somehow provoked the attacks
and ought to bear the consequences.
2.2.1. Attacks on Roma families living on Vilovskog
St. in Belgrade
Several
Roma families live in dwellings connected by a communal yard on Vilovskog St.
in Belgrade. They have been persecuted by a group of youths for a number of
years without any consequences for the attackers. The police have ignored all
their complaints.
The
description of the following incident given by one of the residents, Dragan
Petrović, was typical of what occurred almost daily:
At about 9.30 p.m. on 11 August 1999, they hurled
bricks and stones into the yard yet again. I went out and asked them why they
did it. They cursed my Gypsy mother. My neighbour Dalibor Gašić pleaded
with them to stop throwing things at us because there were small children in
the yard. They threatened him with a shovel, cursed his Gypsy mother, and
promised to have all of us evicted. They struck me with the shovel on the shoulder.[88]
Earlier
that day, the bullies had attacked a six-year-old Roma girl, Milena
Vujičić, in the neighbourhood. Her mother Danijela Vujičić
said:
On 11 August 1999, my six-year-old daughter Milena
went out to the store to buy something. Outside the store, she was accosted by
three men and struck on the arm. None of the people inside the store tried to
protect the child. Later I went with my other children to the store to find out
what happened and to find those youths. There were three of them standing outside
the store. One of them grabbed me by the arm, another by the hair. I was with a
child then. I ran away.[89]
Ljiljana
Petrović and her neighbour Cvetko Glišić, both residents of the yard
dwellings, were brutally attacked in the street in October 1999:
Cvetko and I were on our way home. A group of youths
were standing at the corner of Vilovskog and Celjska streets. I recognized
Branko Blagojević as one of them. Cvetko said hello to them. We’d barely
got past them when two of them crept on us from behind. They started to beat us
with a bar. Cvetko ran away and I fell down under the blows. They beat me with
the bar and dragged me along the ground.[90]
On
29 November 1999, Jakup Haziri was brutally beaten and suffered serious
injuries:
Nine of them shot out of a car and started to beat me
without mercy. They cursed my Gypsy mother and threatened to kill me. They used
baseball bats on me.[91]
Having
realized that they had no other choice but to defend themselves, the Roma
residents began to set up night watches. Milorad Jeftić explained:
We’ve got to organize night watches to protect
ourselves. You see, I carry this pole tucked under my jacket all the time. You
never know when they’re going to strike, so I’ve got to defend myself.[92]
The
HLC filed a criminal complaint against unidentified persons for causing serious
injuries to Jakup Haziri. As of this writing, the Public Prosecutor had not
identified the perpetrators in order to institute criminal proceedings.
2.2.2. Expectant mother beaten in a public transport
bus
On
12 March 200, six youths beat up an expectant mother, Dragica Vasić, her
husband Irvan Useinović, and his sister Ivana Useinović.
That
day Irvan had taken Dragica for a regular medical check-up at the City
Hospital. His sister was with them. After the examination, they boarded a
public transport bus at about 4 p.m. In the bus, they were accosted and
attacked by six youths. Following is his statement to the HLC:
Three
of them had a prison haircut and the other three had short hair. They wore
tracksuits and sneakers. One of them approached Dragica and struck her hard in
the stomach. I told him that my wife was pregnant and that he should try to hit
me instead. He then punched her in the chest and slapped my sister in the face.
Both women were felled by the blows. He swore at us and said he hated Gypsies.
We got off and they followed us. We saw two policemen and asked them to protect
us. The youths ran away. I told the policemen what’d happened and they said
they didn’t wish to do anything about it. One of them said that we gypsies
loved to give trouble.[93]
Fearing
retribution, Useinović did not file a criminal complaint against the
unidentified perpetrators.
2.2.3. Persecution of Roma residents of Požeška St. in
Belgrade
Several
Roma families sharing a communal yard on Požeška St. in the Belgrade district
of Banovo Brdo have been at the mercy of a group of youths for two years. The
bullies visit the yard at night during weekends, throw stones and other objects
around, and make insults and threats. One of the residents, Blagoje
Mustafić, described the attacks as follows:
Besides us, there are three other families with a
total of eight children living in the communal yard. Some youths have been
coming in a red Ford at night for two years. They strike mostly at weekend
nights - Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. They throw stones at us, curse our
Gypsy mothers, and threaten to burn us alive in our homes if we don’t move out.
They are bald and big. My sister Ljubinka Davkić’s windows look onto the
street. They smashed her window with a stone weighing at least six kilos. They
also broke our windows, the stones flying into the rooms where the children
sleep. They could’ve killed the children with them.
We have organized night watches. The last time they
were around we called the police. The police said they couldn’t come and that
we’d probably provoked the youths, otherwise they wouldn’t be attacking us.
We’d called the police before and they sometimes came. They took our statements
and told us to write down the car licence plate.[94]
2.2.4. Beočin Roma kept in isolation
The
majority of Roma living in the municipality of Beočin in Vojvodina are
adherents of Islam. Most of them live in a separate neighbourhood called
Šljivik. Although the settlement is equipped with basic infrastructure
facilities and the houses are well-kept, its residents are shunned by their
non-Roma neighbours. The president of the Roma association in Beočin,
Ramiz Selimi, described the education problems to the HLC as follows:
Although our children enrol at primary schools they
often drop out before the eighth year. The number of Roma children attending
secondary schools is negligible, and only one of our children is currently
attending high school. Of the 150 Roma children currently attending primary
school, 90 are attending special classes for handicapped children. The problem
stems from their ignorance of the Serbian language. This is why our association
has launched a campaign to get as many of our children as possible to enter
pre-school institutions where they could be better prepared for school and
taught Serbian. Our association too has provided additional classes for
children with learning problems.
Because
of their non-Serb names and Muslim faith, these Roma have lived in isolation
especially since the NATO bombing. Says Selimi:
Since the outbreak of the conflict in Kosovo, our
position has grown steadily worse. The fact that most residents of Beočin
think that we are Albanians has caused us problems, especially during the
bombing. In those days even the president of the municipal SPS board told the
daily Dnevnik
that we are Albanians from Albania. During the bombing many workers of Romany
nationality were sacked - as many as thirteen from the ‘16. Oktobar’ public
utility company alone. Also, there were more and more fights with the non-Roma
population which called us Shqiptars and traitors. During the bombing the
air-raid shelter was divided into a Roma section and a non-Roma one. An old
Roma woman was denied access to the shelter during an air-raid only because she
wore harem pants. Before the outbreak of wars in the territory of the former
SFRY we had lived with the rest of the population on terms of equality; we had
mixed with them and mixed marriages were common; now the situation is much
worse although, unlike our youngsters, we speak the Serbian language much
better. Things have deteriorated so much that we dare not let our children go
to the town centre because they themselves are afraid to enter any cafe or
disco. If you’re brave enough to venture into the town centre, there’s a strong
chance that you’ll get beaten up. There’ve been many cases of people being
beaten by skinheads. But although the Beočin skinheads are well known,
none of them has ever been charged with a criminal offence or misdemeanour.
After the war in Kosovo another twenty or so Roma families arrived in
Beočin. They haven’t been accepted by the local population and some of
them have even been stoned and advised to go back to Kosovo.
Some
typical problems of young Roma were described by Muharem Diljaj (b. 1975):[95]
My job consists mainly in transporting goods from the
Beočin cement factory. During the bombing a foreman kicked me out, saying
they weren’t having any Gypsies carrying their
goods any more. There are frequent fights between us and Serbs, who
insult and call us Shqiptars, Gypsies, etc. At some time during 1998 there was
a fight between a Serb and a Roma in the Beočin discotheque, and as a
result of the incident the police forbade us Roma to visit the discotheque and
the cafes in the town centre. Although that was a long time ago, everybody
still remembers the event and Roma no longer go to the cafes in the centre of
the town.
E.D.
(b. 1988), who is repeatedly insulted at school by fellow children on account
of his religion, said this in his statement to the HLC:[96]
I’m a seventh-year pupil at the Jovan Grčić
Milenko primary school in Beočin. At the end of December 2001, I was
beaten in the school by a large group of eight-year pupils. They beat and
insulted me for being a Roma and called me Bin Laden because of my religion. My
father reported the beating and the insults to the school governor and the
police. No one has been punished for the incident yet.
Hamdija
Sabedin (b. 1980) complained that violence against the Beočin Roma goes on
unpunished:[97]
One day in October 1999 I was attacked in the market
by Žarko Aranović and Jovica Doknić. They kicked my car and called me
a Gypsy and Shqiptar. I got punched in the head a couple of times and had to be
hospitalized. Aranović and Doknić chased away all the Roma from the
market. I reported the incident to the police through our association, made a
statement, and demanded that the perpetrators should be criminally prosecuted.
All the same, no proceedings were ever taken against these persons and I
learned from my lawyers that even the records had disappeared from the police
station. As far as I know, no perpetrator has been punished yet although
attacks on us Roma are quite frequent.
2.2.5. Testimony by electronic mail
On
12 April 2002, the HLC received via e-mail the following account of an incident
from a resident of Pančevo named Vladan Kecman:
Dear friends,
It is a sad occasion that has prompted me to write to
you, because I was appalled by what I saw with my own eyes in the very heart of
Pančevo earlier today. At about 7 o’clock this evening, I was with my wife
and our eighteen-month-old child by the children’s sandpit in the city’s
central park opposite the TV Pančevo building when I witnessed an example
of Nazi attitudes at their worst, unfortunately on the part of ten-year-old
members of our society. While his parents were earning their daily bread by
selling balloons not far away, a Roma boy who can’t have been older than ten
walked into the sandpit apparently wishing to play with the other kids,
something all children like to do. But instead of receiving a welcome, he was
greeted with abuse from two children about his own age. First they tried to
chase him away with the words, ‘You’ve got no business here, you Gypsy boy,
this isn’t a place for Gypsies. You Gypsy motherfucker, your father and mother
are both Gypsies.’; then they started to hit him. Like every other caring
parent, the boy’s mother arrived in no time and protected her child against
these ill-bread young bullies. I’m not sure that my letter can change anything,
but I feel morally bound to bring to your attention this case of outrageous
Nazi-like behaviour by children whose minds are unfortunately already taken up
with such odious ideas about life and people.
2.2.6. The case of Staniša Simić
On 8
May 2000, Staniša Simić (b. 1973), a Roma displaced from Kosovo, was
drinking beer with his acquaintance Boban Bobić outside a store in the
village of Zaovine on Mount Tara, in the municipality of Bajina Bašta. Three
local men named Nikodin, Milovan and Dragoslav Jelisavčić were
standing and drinking beer next to them. At one moment, Nikodin told Milovan,
‘Get this Gypsy out of here.’ Milovan seized Simić by the throat and
started to push him around while shouting at him, ‘Get out of here, this isn’t
a place for you, you Gypsy motherfucker!’ Simić picked up a stone and hit
Milovan in the head, then ran off towards the refugee camp where he was
staying. Half an hour later, Nikodin and Dragoslav got in their car and drove
away to look for Simić. Outside the camp they were confronted by
Simić and other displaced Roma. In the ensuing brawl Simić struck
Dragoslav on the head with a pole. As Nikodin and Dragoslav withdrew, they
threatened the Roma with the words, ‘We’re going to fuck your Gypsy mothers!
You won’t live here as long as we’re around!’ Fearing retribution by locals,
Simić and his family moved out of the camp. On May 10 he was summoned to
the police station to make a statement and told that he would be criminally
prosecuted. Later the Municipal Public Prosecutor’s Office in Bajina Bašta
instituted criminal proceedings against Simić for inflicting slight
injuries during a fight with local Serbs who had insulted and attacked him on
ethnic grounds. During the hearing before the Municipal Court in Bajina Bašta
Simić was represented by HLC attorneys. Following three hearings involving
the examination of participants and witnesses, the Municipal Prosecutor dropped
the charges against Simić in September 2002.
This
case illustrates the discriminatory attitude of the police and judicial
authorities towards Roma. While the prosecuting authorities throughout Serbia
continue to ignore the numerous well-documented criminal complaints submitted
to them against persons accused of gross violence, torture and discrimination
against Roma, they and the police are quite willing to prosecute Roma even on
the scantiest of evidence.
2.2.7. Racist attitudes of municipal officials in
Titel
Slobodan
Stojković is a member of the Executive Council (government) of the
Assembly of the municipality of Titel and president of the local Roma
association. In May 2002 he realized for the first time that he was unwelcome
at his place of work when Lazar Paunić, the vice-president of the
Executive Council, removed his desk and chair from the office they shared.
The
attitude towards Stojković did not change after the incident, and
Paunić told a group of municipal deputies that he had thrown
Stojković out of the office because he could not stand all those Roma
filing into and out of the office to seek Stojković’s counsel and help.
Soon
afterwards somebody stuck a poster on the door of Stojković’s office
bearing the hand-written message ‘Out with the Gypsies’. Stevan Marjanov, the
president of the Executive Council, was another official noted for his racist
attitude towards Stojković. He and Paunić complained to the deputies
that it was Stojković’s ‘fault that the municipality is full of Gypsies’
and tried to enlist the support of the municipal president, Milivoje
Petrović.
In
his statement to the HLC, Petrović said:
At the beginning of May 2002, deputies Marko
Simić and Milenko Gajić asked me to come outside the office of
Slobodan Stojković. I saw a poster stuck on the door of his office bearing
the message ‘Out with the Gypsies’ in large letters. We took it off and placed
it on the desk of Stevan Marjanov because we were sure that he had written the
message himself. Stojković was repeatedly insulted by Stevan Marjanov and
Lazar Paunić for being a Roma both before and after the incident. The day
before the poster appeared Paunić had thrown out all Stojković’s
things from the office because he resented the Roma visitors coming to Stojković
for advice and help. Paunić and Marjanov had been complaining to us before
that our ‘municipality is full of Gypsies’ and even urging me to do something
about it.[98]
Having
failed to persuade the municipal president to have Stojković dismissed
from work, Marjanov and Paunić in January 2003 filed a request for
expelling Stojković from the Executive Council. Their explanation of this
gesture to the deputies was that ‘the Gypsy must get out.’
In
February 2003, the HLC and the Roma Association in Titel filed with the
District Public Prosecutor’s Office in Novi Sad a criminal complaint against
the two municipal officials for insulting and disparaging their Roma colleague
at work, thereby committing the criminal offence of fomenting national, racial
and religious hatred.[99]
2.2.8. The stoning of Roma homes in Čačak
In
July 2002, an unidentified person or persons stoned Roma houses in
Čačak and smashed the windows. Two houses were stoned on July 20 and
one of them again on the 27th. Milesa Mitrović (b. 1924), whose house was
targeted on both occasions, said that she felt unsafe and lived in constant
fear, and that she had to seek protection from friends and relatives because
the police had failed to find the perpetrator(s). Mitrović said this in
her statement to the HLC:[100]
On Saturday, July 20, I was alone in the house with my
granddaughter Zorana. I was still awake around 2.10 a.m. when I heard a crash.
I thought that something had happened in the street, but soon afterwards there
was a second one and I thought that a bomb had gone off. I didn’t dare go
outside. When I went out in the morning I saw a stone lying in front of the
door but still couldn’t believe that someone had attached us. Then my
granddaughter vacuum-cleaned the house and spotted a stone that’d flown in
through the window and landed in the living room. I called the police and they
came. I told them what’d happened and they took notes but didn’t take any
pictures. They asked me if I suspected anybody and I didn’t know what to say.
I’ve lived here since 1939 and have never had problems before.
The second attack happened seven days later, it was
also a Saturday. I was in the house with my granddaughter Zorana and grandson
Marko. Like the first time there was a crash after midnight, but this time I
knew that we’d been attacked again. Next morning we went out and saw that the
vacuumized double glazing was broken. The bars which had stopped the brick from
flying into the room were bent by the force of the blow. At about 10 a.m. the
police came again, had a quick look around, jotted something down, and went off
without coming in. I haven’t had any information from the police whether
they’ve found the attackers and continue to live in constant fear. My relatives
sometimes stay with me overnight to protect me. Since my son Miroslav spent seven
evenings here I haven’t been attacked.
2.2.9 Public intolerance of Roma in Subotica
The
attitude of the non-Roma population of Subotica towards their Roma fellow
citizens is illustrated by letters addressed to Nikola Peručić, head
of the Office for Appeals, Complaints and Petitions. In one such letter, a
group of residents from the district of Mali Bajmok, wrote among other things:
Please do not interpret the point we wish to make as
national hatred - that would be the least of our desires - for there are and
always will be Roma. We should just like you to picture this situation: of the
twenty-two pupils in a class at the Matko Vuković primary school, ten are
Roma children aged seven to eleven. Can good, average and particularly bright
children work in such conditions? Ten years hence, these ten Roma will have a
total of 100 children (for we all know how numerous their families are). That
is the logic of their numbers and our future.
While one may or may not agree with this, there is no
denying that for the past two years or so the female teachers at the Matko
Vuković primary school have been unable to hold physical education
classes, particularly in the afternoons, because the courses and playing
grounds are occupied by Gypsies. In most cases the police ignore teachers’
calls to come and chase the Gypsies away; or, if they do come, they join the
Gypsies in a game of football.
2.3. Violent attacks in schools
Roma
children drop out of school at an early age also because they feel personally
unsafe and rejected by their peers. Other children do not want to associate
with them, regard them as dirty and thieves, and also insult and beat them. The
consequence is a mass ghettoization of Roma children in schools. The school
system is ill-adapted for children from different cultural and social
environments. The curriculum has not been modified during the last ten years or
so, as a result of which it is dominated by Serb nationalism and ignores the
existence of the Roma literary, historical, and cultural heritage in Serbia.[101]
2.3.1. The case of Safet and Zaim Beriša
The
mother of Safet and Zaim Beriša, Ljubica Stanković, complains that her two
sons regularly return from their primary school covered with bruises. In
September 1999, Safet and Zaim were attacked by a group of boys with a knife.
Following is Safet’s description of the incident:
At the railway station, five boys came up to us. I
recognized three of them as being from our school. One of those I didn’t know
had a knife. They cursed our Gypsy mother and kicked and punched me. My brother
Zaim ran away. Our neighbour Milica Stanković, who happened to be there,
helped me out. She stood in front of me and told them to go away.[102]
Safet
went on to describe the attitude of his fellow pupils towards him:
Children in my
class call me a Gypsy and say all kinds of nasty things about my Gypsy mother.
One boy named Peđa sometimes hits me. During the break, many children call
me a Gypsy, and sometimes I also get a kick or a punch into the bargain. I’ve
complained several times to my teacher, Biljana Vuković. She promised that
she’d ask them to stop it, but they
still do it.
After
one such incident, when Zaim came home with bruises on the head and a broken
nose, the boys’ mother asked the school governor, Ratko Jokić, to help
protect her children. In spite of Jokić’s promises that the school would
take measures to protect its Roma pupils, the harassment continued as before
and Safet and Zaim left the school. In order to protect her sons, Ljubica had
their Albanian surname changed to Stanković.[103]
2.3.2. The case of the little poetess
Ljiljana
Burić (12) is a sixth-year pupil at the Desanka Maksimović primary
school in Belgrade. Her mother Anđelka told the HLC that her daughter had
been complaining that other children insult her and curse her Gypsy mother. The
girl wrote the following poem to describe her daily distress:[104]
They Keep Teasing Me
They keep teasing me
that I’m a little Gypsy girl,
and that I’m not one of their kind.
Just what they mean by that, I’ve no idea,
nor how they got it into their heads.
Isn’t my dress just like
hers?
And don’t I smile in the same way she does?
Will they ever learn, oh will they ever learn,
that we Gypsies are honest and pure at heart?
I’ve a mother just like she does,
my house is big and clean too,
and my eyes glimmer in sunshine
in the same way hers do.
They keep teasing me
that I’m a little Gypsy girl
though they themselves don’t know what that means.
At home we observe our family patron-saint’s day,
and my heart is aglow with love.
2.3.3. The case of Kristina Stanojević
Kristina
Stanojević is a fifth-year pupil at the Banović Strahinja primary
school in Belgrade.
Until last
year, I had been insulted by the children all the time. They would shout at me:
‘Gypsy face’, ‘You Gypsy motherfucker’, ‘You filthy Gypsy girl’ and suchlike.
Five of the boys were at it all the time. One would start it and the rest would
chime in. Some of the girls also treated me that way. I was one of the three
Roma in my class and we were all insulted in the same way. Once in May this
year one of the boys gave me a kick and said, ‘Clear out of here, you Gypsy
girl, have a good look at yourself in the mirror.’ Another boy hit me in the
face with a ball and accused me of stealing a coin from him. A girl from my
class used to hit, insult and push me around all the time. I complained to my
teacher. She told them to stop it and that we children should stick together.
But the children continued to tease me. I’m now in my fifth year and I’ve not
been bothered so far. The Serb schoolchildren don’t want to associate with
their fellow Roma pupils. I keep company with my sister Jelena and my Roma
girlfriends. Only one Serb girl mixes with us. Her name’s Nataša. She’s a very
good pupil. She’s never insulted us or called us Gypsies.[105]
2.4. Domestic standards
a) Constitutional guarantees
The
Charter on Human and Minority Rights and Fundamental Freedoms prohibits any
incitement and encouragement of national, ethnic, religious and other
inequality, as well as any incitement and fomentation of national, ethnic,
racial, religious and other hatred and intolerance.[106]
b) Criminal-law provisions
The
FRY Penal Code[107]
treats racism and discrimination against racial, national and religious groups
as the criminal offence of incitement of national, racial and religious hatred,
dissension and intolerance.[108]
This offence is grouped together with criminal offences against the
constitutional order and the security of the FRY. Commission of this offence
can either engender hatred, dissension or intolerance or encourage and deepen
existing sentiments. This criminal offence may be committed by insulting,
ridiculing or belittling national, racial or religious feelings and historical,
ethnic or cultural values. It may also be committed by denying a statutory
right if the motive was incitement or fomentation of hatred, dissension or
intolerance. The FRY Penal Code distinguishes between a basic form and several
more serious forms of the offence.
The
Serbian Penal Code protects the security of individuals and their right to live
in peace and tranquillity.[109]
This criminal offence is grouped with criminal offences against the rights and
liberties of man and the citizen.
c) Compensation
If
the victim suffers an injury to his physical or psychological integrity, he is
entitled to compensation for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage. The civil-law
remedies for injuries to physical and psychological integrity are given in some
detail in section 1.2. c) of this report. The provisions of the Law on
Obligations with respect to compensation are also applied where the perpetrator
is a physical person acting in a private capacity.
2.5. International standards
Many
international standards relating to the right to life and physical integrity
and the right to human dignity imply the obligation and duty of the state party
to protect these rights against individuals acting in a private capacity.
The
UN Human Rights Committee[110]
holds that the safeguards extended to individuals by a state party must include
protection against torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment by persons acting in a private capacity.[111]
The Committee holds that a state party is duty bound to give every person
protection through statutory and all other necessary measures against offences
prohibited under Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights whether committed in an official, quasi-official, or private capacity.[112]
The
UN Human Rights Committee holds states parties responsible for acts by third
persons also in respect of Article 5 of the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights. In its view, in order to safeguard the individual’s right to
security of person, the state party is bound to take ‘sensible and appropriate’
measures to protect the integrity of person against possible injury.[113]
3. Discrimination against Roma
The
beliefs that the Roma are less worthy as human beings and have no human dignity
are the commonest prejudices and stereotypes as far as this community is
concerned. To many ordinary people, the very fact that the Roma have a
different skin colour is proof that they are unlike the rest. The general
negative attitude is especially pronounced towards Roma with Albanian names.
3.1. Discrimination in education
Roma
children in general do not complete their elementary education and drop out in
large numbers especially during their third and fourth years at primary school.
Most Roma children live in poverty and in inadequate housing. Their homes are
usually makeshift shelters without running water, electricity and sewerage. The
children displaced from Kosovo are especially indigent. Most of those who had
attended classes in the Albanian language prior to their displacement in 1999
have not enrolled in schools in Serbia. These children do not speak Serbian,
and the Serbian educational authorities do not provide instruction in Albanian.
Owing to their ignorance of Serbian and their inadequate housing, such Roma
children as continue their education in Serbia are less successful than they
were in Kosovo. Since in Serbia there are no schools providing instruction in
the Romany language, Roma children are educated in Serbian or in a minority
language. Although the law on primary schools provides for basic Serbian
language lessons for pre-school-age children,[114]
this is rarely met in practice. As a result, Roma children enter primary school
with no or little knowledge of the language in which instruction is given.
The
so-called ‘special schools’ for handicapped children are a source of special
problems in Roma education. Roma children account for some 80 per cent of all
pupils attending these schools because they are graded according to inadequate
tests designed specifically for handicapped children. The testing does not take
account of the fact that Roma children come from a severely disadvantaged
social environment and do not speak the Serbian language in which the tests are
taken. As a result, mentally healthy Roma children are branded as mentally
handicapped by the very fact that they attend a ‘special school’. In a heavily
prejudiced society, children who graduate from a ‘special school’ stand no
chance of getting further education or employment.
By
law, a child is tested by a medical board for its mental health and, if a
mental problem is detected, a recommendation is made as to how the child should
be categorized. On the basis of such a recommendation, a municipal authority
determines the kind and degree of the mental handicap in question.[115]
The parent may appeal the determination to the competent ministry. Some Roma
parents accept the finding as it is in site of the fact that their child is mentally healthy because
attendance at a ‘special school’ brings them some advantages such as child
benefit, free assistance and care, and all-day attendance coupled with free
meals and free medical assistance. Even those few Roma parents who are aware of
the disadvantages of ‘special schools’ do not appeal because they are ignorant
of their rights.
Psychologist Mirjana Petrović, who works at the
Novi Beograd special primary school in New Belgrade, says that the school has
104 pupils of whom Roma children account for 80 per cent. She attributes this
high percentage of Roma children mostly to inadequate tests:
The Novi
Beograd special primary school formally has no pupil of average intellectual
capacity. The problem of the Roma children is the problem of the entire Roma
population. The attitude of us ‘whites’ to the Roma population is another
problem. Among ourselves we psychologists refer to the Roma children’s IQ
performance as the ‘Gypsy IQ’. This means that our ‘white’ tests show them as
retarded. But this also means that the tests are not adequate for the Roma
population. The crux of the problem is that neither the requirements of regular
schooling nor the tests are suitable for the Roma.
We’re actually
doing the Roma children a favour because by sending them to special schools
we’re pulling them out of regular schools where they cannot cope with the
curriculum. But the Roma population does have a larger proportion of
pseudo-mentally retarded children than others. The cause is well known, namely
the poverty and ignorance of their parents. Another problem lies in the
curricula of the regular schools, which are not easy even for children
characterized by average intellectual development. With better schooling there
would be fewer Roma children attending special schools.
As far as the
Roma children’s IQ is concerned, I’m in the clear before the law. They cannot
score more than 70 in the tests, which categorizes them as slightly retarded.
How can a Roma child lay out a cartoon during a test if he has never seen a
cartoon in his life? This doesn’t mean that they’re not bright. Just the other
day two workmen tried to bring a cupboard into the room, but they couldn’t get
it through the door. Finally a Roma boy in his eight year came forward and
instructed them how to manipulate the cupboard in order to negotiate the
door-frame.
In this school
the Roma children feel superior to their white peers. They are aware of this
themselves because they master the curriculum with far greater ease. Most of
the white children attending this school are moderately retarded, so they are
naturally no match for the much more intelligent Roma pupils.
Psychologist Dragana Đakić, who works at
the Sirogojno special primary school in Zemun, says that Roma children account
for 70 per cent of the school’s population of 250:
The problem of
the Roma children is that they are educationally neglected. They find the test
questions unintelligible. The Roma have no work habits. The Roma parents do not
care whether or not their children go to school. The claims that educationally
neglected Roma children can fit into regular schools are fairy tales. All we
get in the end is frustrated, neurotic children.
In testing
Roma children I’ve noticed that they have problems with abstract terms. This
has to do with the Romany language, which has a rather limited vocabulary. For
instance, it contains no such word as ‘dignity’, so a Roma child cannot
describe the meaning of that word because it has never heard it spoken. It just
cannot conceptualize it.
Or if a child
is asked in a test what he would do if he saw smoke rising from a building, he
is expected to say that he would phone the fire-brigade or tell a grown-up
person that the building is on fire. Roma children as a rule say that the wood
or coal stove should be cleaned out and the chimney pipe adjusted. I’ve no
other choice but to give such an answer zero rating. If I ask whether they
would give money to the Red Cross or to a beggar in the street, Roma children
say they would give it to the Red Cross. Now this is the correct answer, but
when I ask them why, they reply, ‘Because we get help from the Red Cross’. This
second answer is incorrect. Or if I ask them what an apple and a pear have in
common they know that both are fruit. But when I try to elicit a more abstract
comparison, I get the answer, ‘Both have a petal’. Such an answer is just not
good enough.
Many parents
of our pupils have graduated from this school, so they enroll their children
here as a matter of course. They know that their children will have fewer
problems graduating from this school than from a regular school with its much
more difficult curriculum. Also, the parents know that their children will
receive snacks, dinner and textbooks free of charge as well occasional
humanitarian aid in this school. They are distinguished by their inclination to
follow the line of least resistance.[116]
Dr Smiljka Polomčić, a neuropsychiatrist
on the Grading Board at the Institute of Mental Health attached to the New
Belgrade health centre, pointed to some educational problems of Roma girls:
Children
belonging to the various subcultures are educationally neglected,
linguistically inadequate, and poor test performers. Such children have a poor
command of both Serbian and their mother tongue. Their parents are usually
illiterate and have no ambition whatever to add to their knowledge. If asked
during a test where bread comes from, the children say ‘from the refuse
container’; and if you ask them where milk comes from, they answer ‘from the
shop’. Our biggest problem are nine-, ten- or twelve-year-old children with
such problems enrolling in the first year. What can you do with such children?
I cannot put a physically developed twelve-year-old Roma girl who, according to
their custom, is ready to have a child, in a class with seven-year-olds. Our
resort is to send her to the evening school if she is not intellectually
neglected. If she is, we then give her a chance in the special school.[117]
The Milan Rakić primary school in Belgrade has
a preparatory class for Roma children to help them attend regular classes. The
school’s special education teacher, Tatjana Trajković, spoke about her
experiences:
The
intelligence tests are not suitable for the Roma population above all because
it is educationally neglected. Roma
children enroll in the school with almost no prior knowledge. Our preparatory
class has so far graduated one generation of Roma children who are now
attending regular classes and are doing fine. There are at present twelve
children in the preparatory class.
The Roma
children who received preparatory instruction were better able to adapt
themselves to a regular school than other Roma children. They were more
successful even than those coming from the more prosperous Roma families who
had refused to let their children attend preparatory classes because they
considered them fully adapted .
During our
work with Roma children we noticed that their main problem was poor command of
the language. Our team includes, in addition to a teacher of the handicapped, a
psychologist and a woman teacher, a Roma student who acts as our interpreter.
The children learn both Romany and Serbian. Besides paying great attention to
the language, our chief concerns are improving the children’s psychomotility,
pre-operative and operative thinking and socialization, and taking them to
places of cultural interest. We take them to the theatre to watch plays for
children in Romany and Serbian, and we also take them to the zoo.[118]
At
the Vidovdan school for children with special needs in Bor, Roma account for
some 80 per cent of the 272 pupils. The school governor, Nada Todorović,
described the problems as follows:
The Vidovdan primary and secondary education school is
distinguished from other schools in that it caters for children with special
problems, that is, mentally retarded ones. In some cases fluency of linguistic
communication is all that is necessary to establish the right kind of contact
with the child. However, the low social and educational standards of Roma
families or ‘subculture’ is why Roma children attend ‘special schools’ in such
large numbers.
Children were previously tested in the nursery and
later directed to a regular or ‘special school’ as the case may be. These days,
before a child is enrolled, it must appear before a grading board comprising a
neuropsychiatrist, psychologist, paediatrician, speech therapist and, if
necessary, a special education teacher. If, during a one-month period of
observation, it is established that a child has been assigned to the wrong
school, it is sent before a re-grading board. In order to be enrolled at a school,
a child must present its birth certificate as well as the grading board
certificate. The children attending this school enjoy certain pecuniary
benefits such as free schooling, free meals, social welfare benefits, clothes.
This is why parents tell their children not to answer the questions the members
of the grading board are going to ask them, so these children end up in schools
where they do not belong.
The Vidovdan school has 272 pupils, of whom ten are
attending pre-school and 214 primary school classes, with a further forty-eight
in their ninth year receiving vocational training. At the moment, we’re
training them to be locksmiths, printers, and ready-made clothes makers. The
Roma, who account for 80 per cent of our pupils, are not mentally retarded but
socially neglected. In my opinion, they’re still not ready to attend a regular
school. The re-grading board has decided that three Roma children from our
school are now fit for a regular school.[119]
In
the school year 2002-03, 344 primary schools were established in Vojvodina, an
increase of two on the previous year. Roma attend regular classes in 234 of
these schools. Their and general educational problems in Vojvodina were
discussed by Rajko Jovanović, president of the Vojvodina Society for
Romany Language and Literature and vice-president of the Central Roma Cultural
and Publishing Society:[120]
The question of Roma general education and upbringing
in Vojvodina has received serious attention since 1998. The number of Roma
children attending primary schools in Vojvodina has been increasing steadily.
However, it is only since the start of the current school year that their
numbers have grown appreciably. Roma pupils are either present in or assigned
to 231 of the total of 344 primary schools in Vojvodina which provide a regular
curriculum. There are 570 Roma children in those schools.
In addition, twenty-one primary schools in Vojvodina
with instruction in the Serbian language provide Romany language classes within
an optional subject called ‘the Romany language with elements of the Roma
national culture’.[121]
In the schools providing optional instruction, the Roma pupils are grouped in
forty-six classes and taught their language by sixteen teachers. Their biggest
problem is the lack textbooks in the Romany language. At present, they have at
their disposal a primer, Lil grafemengo, and a workbook, Lil bućarimasko.
You may have heard that the first Roma primer, Lil grafemengo, was promoted on
Roma Day, 8 April 2000, in the Vuk Karadžić primary school in Deronje. The
Vojvodina Society for Romany Language and Literature has set up a Board to work
out an instruction plan and programme for Romany language lessons and
textbooks, but the Board can’t meet because we can’t provide its members even
with travelling expenses. Although we have asked the competent authorities
several times to provide us with basic teaching aids, we still don’t have even
a computer. Our priorities in the period immediately ahead will be to have the
Romany language accepted as a subject of study in primary schools as part of
the regular curriculum, as well as that the marks earned in this subject be
taken account of in calculating a pupil’s average grade.
According to our records, there are some 500 Roma
pupils attending secondary schools in Vojvodina. The University in Novi Sad has
eighty-five Roma students of whom seventy-two are supported from the budget. We
are now trying to provide grants to a number of Roma secondary school pupils
and University students.
3.1.1. Segregation of Roma children in Subotica
On
19 September 2002, the Assembly of the Municipality of Subotica adopted a
‘Decision to recommend the establishment of separate classes for children of
Roma displaced from the territory of the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and
Metohija’. The draft decision was adopted by the Assembly’s Executive Committee
the previous day. The decision thus formalized the state of affairs existing in
the municipality since September 2001, i.e. the operation of separate classes
for Roma children. At present there are separate classes for Roma children in
three schools in Subotica.
Jelena
Veljković, the governor of the Matko Vuković primary school in
Subotica, one of the three having such classes, said this in her statement to
the HLC:[122]
At the start of the school year 2001-02, a large
number of Roma children displaced from Kosovo began enrolling at our school.
Since they live in the territory our school covers, we requested the Provincial
Secretariat for Education and Culture to let us establish a separate class for
these pupils. In applying for funds to be able to set up and operate such
classes we had in mind the specific needs of these pupils. The problem is, a
great many of them do not speak any of the languages in which instruction is
given, and they were all of different ages although they were enrolling in the
first year. We had even a number of thirteen-year-olds who had never attended
school before. For this reason, we established a first-year class comprising
twenty-two pupils who were given a simplified course of study. Although
thirteen of them completed their first year successfully, they were not
separated from the rest; they are all still together in a combined class
receiving instruction according to first- and second-year curricula. This year
we have established two other first- and second-year classes. The Roma who
during the previous year had attended the fist year together with other
children, but were placed in separate classes owing to their poor command of
the language, are now attending the second year.
The Provincial Secretariat for Education and Culture
has voiced approval of our request for special classes, so we are now waiting
for their written decision and the funds.
Mića
Uzelac, the governor of the Đuro Salaj primary school, which has
fifty-three Roma pupils displaced from Kosovo, said:[123]
In view of the increase in the number of pupils, the
teachers’ board decided to request permission from the Provincial Secretariat for
Education and Culture to set up two first-year classes. These classes comprise
Roma aged seven to thirteen who speak neither Hungarian nor Serbian. I wish to
point out that such classes are necessary in view of the Roma pupils’ various
ages and specific language problems. We’ve had complaints from non-Roma parents
that their children cannot make progress because the Roma children are
obstructing classes.
Mihajlo
Kočić, the governor of the Sečenji Ištvan school, another which
has a separate class for Roma pupils displaced from Kosovo, said:[124]
In the school year 2002-03 the school enrolled more
first-year pupils than in previous years partly because there are among them
over twenty Roma from Kosovo. Some of them are over seven and speak neither
Hungarian nor Serbian. This is a problem for both teachers and pupils, so I
have pointed it out to the competent republican, provincial and municipal
educational authorities. Since we’ve still had no reply from them, we’ve set up
a class comprising nineteen pupils who will be instructed in Serbian according
to a simplified curriculum as from 21 October 2002. The non-Roma parents have
threatened to withdraw their children from the school because the Roma children
distract them.
Balaž
Piri Ištvan, member of the Executive Committee of the Municipality of Subotica
in charge of education affairs, said:[125]
The number of Roma children enrolled in primary
schools increased at the end of August 2002. I’m referring primarily to those
displaced from Kosovo. Considering that these children speak neither Hungarian
nor Serbian and that some of them are over eleven, the Assembly of the
Municipality of Subotica ruled that special classes for these children may be
formed. By the way, the pressure from the non-Roma parents on the municipality
to solve this problem has been considerable. After the Roma children were
organized in separate classes, their parents began to complain that if they remained
isolated in this way they would not be able to learn the language of their new
environment. While I agree with them, we couldn’t find another solution.
Although the Kosovo Roma settled in Subotica as far back as 1999, it is only
this year that they started enrolling their children in schools. In my view,
this is because certain social benefits, such as child benefit, are conditional
on regular schooling.
Vesna
Reljin, Deputy Provincial Secretary for Education and Culture in the Vojvodina
Executive Committee, gave the following reasons for the establishment of
separate classes:[126]
At the beginning of the current school year, three
primary schools in Subotica submitted requests for increasing the number of
classes to cope with the influx of Roma children. I granted the requests orally
and transmitted them to the Republican Ministry of Education and Sport for
final approval because funding is still a responsibility of the republic. As
far as I know, all the requests have been granted by the competent republican
ministry.
On
11 October 2002, the HLC and the ERRC made a public Appeal in which they
protested against the establishment of separate classes in Subotica for Roma
children displaced from Kosovo and Metohija. They pointed out that the
establishment of such classes would amount to racial discrimination
(segregation) and constitute a violation of several fundamental human rights.
They suggested that linguistic problems in these schools be dealt with through
mixed classes comprising Roma and non-Roma children, with additional
instruction for children who speak none of the languages in which teaching is
available. The HLC and the ERRC also proposed providing pre-school instruction
and taking other measures to attain the universally-accepted goal of multi-cultural
education for all children in Serbia.
The
Appeal was addressed to the President of the FRY, the Federal Ministry for
National and Ethnic Communities, the Serbian Ministry of Education and Sport,
the Provincial Secretariat for Education, the Assembly of the Municipality of
Subotica, the Office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Office of
the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Belgrade, the Office of the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Belgrade, and the Office of the Council
of Europe in Belgrade.
3.2. Discrimination in housing
Roma
live in poor hygienic conditions in illegal, isolated settlements devoid of
basic infrastructure. The examples documented by the HLC bear witness to the
indifference of the state authorities towards Roma evicted from such
settlements. The Roma thrown out of such settlements have no other choice but
to find new illegal locations, only to be evicted yet again.
3.2.1. Eviction of Roma families from a house on
Zimonjićeva St. in Belgrade
On
14 June 2001, fourteen Roma families were evicted, with police and private
security assistance, from a house at 30 Zimonjićeva St. in the Belgrade
district of Košutnjak. They were given five minutes to collect their belongings
and vacate the building. The families found a temporary shelter in a nearby
park. One of the evicted Roma, Nenad Memišević, described the incident as
follows:
On June 14, four executors and two policemen arrived
with construction machines and gave us five minutes to collect our things and
move out. We begged them to give us more time, but they started to break and
throw everything out. They smashed all our household appliances. The mother of
a five-month baby was told the child would be handed over to the Welfare Work
Centre unless she woke it up and took it out into the field. My brother begged
them to postpone the eviction because he had a six-year-old child who was
totally blind in one eye. They replied, ‘Why do you make babies if you can’t
give them a normal life?’
We all gathered together in the field across from the
house, at the corner of Zimonjićeva and Pustorečka streets by the
Lola Institute. We constructed cardboard huts in the field to have at least
some shelter. The field is strewn with rubble thrown out by the owners of the newly-adapted
villas in the neighbourhood. We’ve got to keep the fires going all night to
protect our children from the huge rats prowling the field. The rats are afraid
of light. A rat bit my younger child on the lip. I first rinsed the wound with
brandy, but then I realized we had to see a doctor. Recently people have
started to pelt us with stones from passing cars at night. They just pass by
and hurl a brick at us because we’re right there by the road. We keep all the
children together in the most secure room and keep watch.
The
Roma were warned by municipal inspectors that they would be thrown out of the
park at the beginning of October. The HLC requested the city and municipal
authorities to explain their action and warned them that the state or local self-government
authorities had no power to evict people without providing them with
provisional accommodation. It also pointed out that international document
binding on the FRY prohibited the forcible eviction of persons belonging to
vulnerable social communities such as Roma. As of this writing, the city
authorities had not replied to the HLC letter. The president of the Executive
Committee of the Municipality of Čukarica replied on July 24 that ‘in
issuing and executing an eviction order, the administrative agency does not
have to determine the national or religious background of the unlawful tenant,
only that its proceedings are according
to the law. The Municipality of Čukarica is neither able nor bound to provide
alternative accommodation to evicted persons or unlawful tenants.’
In
November 2001, the HLC received 7,500 euros from the Netherlands Government to
help find accommodation for these people. After a year of unsuccessful attempts
to secure a site for a building or to acquire additional funds through
municipal and city authorities, the money was returned because it could not buy
a building at market price.
3.2.2. Eviction of displaced Roma
Six
Roma families displaced from Kosovo and living in makeshift shelters made up
from cardboard, board, and plastic sheeting in a field near the Belgrade
locality of Autokomanda were evicted by inspectors of the Municipality of
Voždovac. Most of the twenty-seven people, including eight children aged one to
ten, eight children aged ten to fifteen, and one two-month-old baby, had no
personal documents whatever. Following their arrival from Kosovo, they had been
chased by municipal officials and the police from one location in Belgrade to
another. A few days before they were evicted, Ragib Azirović of Moravska village
near Priština recounted the group’s ordeal in Belgrade:[127]
Since we ran away from Kosovo in 1999, we’ve been
moving from one place in Belgrade to another. After Francuska street - that’s
where we stayed longest of all - we moved on to Dimitrija Tucovića street,
then to Cara Dušana street, then here by the motorway. About two months ago
they chased us away and flattened everything we had with bulldozers. We hid
behind the bushes some 100 metres away and made up a shelter from board and
plastic sheeting. My wife told me they were here again this morning, saying we
had to go on Friday. My family consists of five members: myself, my common-law
wife Indira Ademin, the sons Klaudijan aged two and Stiven aged one, and the
baby, daughter Senada, aged two months. None of us has any document. I was
afraid to apply because I had no document on me to prove who I was, everything
we had got left behind in Kosovo. Apart from the people who stop by to give us
something to wear, nobody’s been here to see how we live. Those who keep
chasing us around won’t let us stay here and live honestly by selling old
cardboard, rather than go out and steal. We’re ready to move farther away from
the motorway, but no, they’ve told us we’ve got to get out of here altogether.
3.2.3. Roma family evicted from flat after
twenty-seven years
The
Saiti family lived in a flat on Dvoržakova St. in Belgrade since 1975. They
were ordered to vacate the flat on 28 October 2002 by the Property Rights and
Housing Department of the Municipality of Čukarica.[128]
The
late Bajram Saiti, who took unlawful possession of the flat twenty-seven years
ago, was unemployed and supported his nine-member family on his welfare
benefits. Prior to the eviction, there were six members of the family in the
flat. The only wage-earner, Samit Saiti (23), has supported the rest of the
family since the death of his father, mother, and brother. Throughout their
tenancy, the Saitis regularly paid all their bills and were registered at that
address.
Although
the local Roma association, ‘Roma Life’, asked the municipal Executive
Committee to postpone the eviction until the family had found another
accommodation,[129]
the eviction order was upheld.
On
28 October 2002, the HLC filed a suit against the FRY and the Municipality of
Čukarica with the Second Municipal Court in Belgrade, insisting that the
family had a statutory right to purchase the flat they had occupied for
twenty-seven years. It also appealed to the then Serbian Prime Minister, the
late Zoran Đinđić, and the federal Minister for National and
Ethnic Communities, Rasim Ljajić, to help the family to exercise their
statutory right. In spite of all, the competent municipal authorities passed a
new eviction order and the family was thrown out into the street on 28 February
2003.
3.2.4. Eviction of the residents of the ‘Old Airport’
settlement
The
shanty-town in New Belgrade known as the ‘Old Airport’ dates back to 1987 when
the Yugoslav People’s Army left the location. Between 1987 and 1990 its
population comprised thirty-two Roma families. After the NATO bombing of 1999,
the population swelled considerably owing to the influx of Roma displaced from
Kosovo. In September 2001, sixteen families were evicted by order of the
Municipal Construction Department of the Municipality of New Belgrade. Further
evictions, scheduled for 24 March 2002, were prevented through joint action by
domestic and international human rights organizations. The problem came to
public notice again in August 2002, after the director of the IMT company of
Belgrade had given the residents until 1 September 2002 to move out. At that
moment the settlement housed a total of 205 families including 138 displaced
families from Kosovo. Meanwhile, the settlement had been fenced off with wire
and an appeal to the city authorities by the Roma residents had gone
unanswered. The Roma reached an oral understanding with the IMT management to
postpone the forcible eviction by a few days. When no reply came from the city
authorities they began a protest on 2 September 2002. Although they spent two
days in a park, no solution to their problem was found. The president of the
city government, Ljubomir Anđelković, received a Roma delegation to
inform them that the City of Belgrade Assembly had no obligations towards the
Roma residents. He also advised them to seek help from the Office of
Commissioner for Refugees and Displaced Persons and from the Ministry for
National and Ethnic Communities. The embittered Roma ended their protest on
September 3 due to hunger and cold.
During
the protest, however, an understanding was reached to postpone the evacuation
of a part of the settlement, due on 1 September 2002, until October 1 so that
an alternative site could be found. The meeting at which this was decided was
attended by representatives of the Roma settlement, the IMT director, and the
Minister for National and Ethnic Communities, Rasim Ljajić. The agreement
was not honoured, thirty-seven families fearing violence pulled out of their
own account from a fenced-off sector of the settlement, and demolition of that
part began. As a result, the number of families in the settlement decreased to
124, the rest having found shelter at other locations.
Frustrated
by the failure of the authorities to solve their problems and exposed to
continued pressure to move out, the angry Roma on 15 October 2002 staged a
protest in front of the Federal Palace in Belgrade. That day they were received
first by Rasim Ljajić and then by Vojislav Koštunica, the FRY President.
Koštunica promised to see to it that further evictions were halted until an
alternative site had been found.
On
21 October 2002, HLC attorneys filed a suit with the Fourth Municipal Court in
Belgrade against the FRY, the Republic of Serbia, the City of Belgrade, the
Municipality of New Belgrade, and the IMT and Gaj companies for violating the
personal rights of the residents of the Roma ‘Old Airport’ settlement. They
requested the court to order a suspension of further forcible evictions pending
the provision of alternative accommodation. On 7 November 2002, the HLC was
informed by the court that no such provisional measure had been ordered.
3.2.5. A rare considerate gesture towards Roma
Dragoljub
Petrović of Belgrade, a retired employee of the Čukarica A.D.
joint-stock company, was evicted from his flat at 9 Prvog maja St. in the
Belgrade district of Železnik at the end of lengthy litigation. He had occupied
the flat since 1986. The court established that the flat did not belong to the
Čukarica A.D. joint-stock company, which had allotted it to Petrović
in 1986, but to another company, the Ivo Lola Ribar Corporation A.D. After he
was evicted at the end of January, Petrović, who has a serious heart
condition, moved with his wife into a hostel for single persons belonging to
the corporation. The room was kindly placed at their disposal until May by a
corporation driver named Jugović, who in turn moved into the flat vacated
by Petrović. The HLC asked the corporation’s director, Lazar
Bajčetić, and the director of the company’s legal department, Radojka
Prvulović, to allow Petrović to remain in a hostel room permanently
with the possibility of even purchasing it at a later date. At the end of May,
Bajčetić granted the request and permitted Petrović to stay in
the hostel room indefinitely although he had never worked for the corporation.
This humanitarian decision on the part of the Belgrade enterprise and its
director was the only kind gesture towards the Roma known to the HLC.
3.3. Discrimination in employment
According
to a study on the social integration of the Roma, only 20 per cent of the Roma
population in Serbia fit for work are permanently employed, state enterprises
providing work for 5 per cent of them.[130]
Flagrant and unpunished discrimination against Roma job applicants is one of
the reasons why so many Roma are out of work. Roma are discriminated against by
both private employers (the case of the Toma butcher’s shop) and institutions
financed from the state budget (the case of Julijana Aranđelović).
3.3.1. The case of Julijana Aranđelović
Since
Julijana Aranđelović graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in Niš in
1992, she has been looking for work in vain. She has since passed the state
examination and specialized in physical medicine while doing voluntary work. At
the middle of June 1998, her mother Seada applied for help to the District
Board of the then ruling Socialist Party of Serbia in Niš. At their
recommendation, Aranđelović went for an interview at the local Health
Centre. During the interview, the Health Centre director, Vlasta Mitić,
showed more interest in her origin than in her vocational qualifications. He
told her he would have a job for her if and when the Health Centre opened an
out-patient clinic in the local Roma settlement.
On 2
August 1998, Goran Nikolić of the SPS District Board got in touch with
Julijana and her mother and advised them to go for another interview at the Niš
Health Centre. This time, Julijana’s husband Nebojša went along. The secretary
of the Health Centre director told them that Julijana could have a job if she
agreed to work in out-patient clinics in villages around Niš three or four days
a week. She asked them for additional documents and told them to bring them by
noon that day. When they returned with the documents, they were told flatly
that there was no work for Julijana. This time Julijana was determined to seek
an explanation from the director and waited outside his office until he came
out. As soon as he saw them, the director started to insult and curse them. The
medical staff present at the scene did not react.
3.3.2. Discrimination at the Toma butcher’s shop
At
the beginning of November 1999, the Toma butcher’s shop in Belgrade published
an advertisement in the newspapers for two cleaning work vacancies. Živana
Miladinović and her neighbour Stanka Marinković reported at the shop
on November 15 to inquire about the vacancies. The proprietor, Toma Grbić,
told them that while Miladinović did not meet the requirements, he could
give Marinković work on probation. Marinković described her
subsequent conversation with the proprietor as follows:
I asked him why he’d admit only me if he needed two
cleaning women. He said Živana was ‘coloured’ and that I would do because I was
white. I replied that Živana might be more hard-working than me in spite of her
darker skin. I told him that I too was a Gypsy and that what he did was
deplorable because Gypsies had the same rights as everybody else. The owner
said, ‘Don’t take offence, but such are the rules. The cleaner is supposed to
prepare the butcher’s breakfast, but the butcher can’t eat what a Gypsy woman
prepares for him.[131]
3.3.3. The case of Nataša Stević
Nataša
Stević (b. 1983) of Kragujevac, a graduate of a secondary school of
commerce, was looking for work in newspaper advertisements. She told the HLC
what happened when, in October 2001, she answered one advertisement:[132]
The advertisement said that the Vega bakery needed
three females to sell pastry. They said you could phone or apply in person. I
decided to go there because the bakery is near where I live. I went in and told
the saleswomen, ‘Excuse me, I’ve come in connection with the ad.’ One of them
told me to wait and went out through a back door to fetch someone. A woman
about thirty years old came out. I heard the others call her Violeta. She asked
me if there was anything she could do for me. I replied that I wanted a job.
She looked me up and down - I’ll never forget that disparaging look in her eyes
- and asked me, ‘You need a job?’ I replied, ‘Yes, the ad is still open.’
Violeta replied, ‘We don’t need workers.’
A
few days later, Nataša saw a non-Roma friend of hers working as a salesgirl in
the bakery.
3.4. Discrimination in access to social welfare
benefits
Roma
are often discriminated against regarding their entitlement to social welfare
benefits, particularly to the special kind called family relief. Their
applications are frequently turned down because their ‘missed earnings’ are set
too high by social workers applying loose criteria. Under the Law on Social
Welfare and Social Security of Citizens,[133]
in working out the total income of unemployed persons fit for work, social
workers take into account all the family receipts including income from
unregistered business and ‘missed earnings’.
3.4.1. Discrimination against displaced Roma
The
six members of the Sahiti family, who settled in Zrenjanin following the NATO
bombing in 1999, were deprived of their right to social welfare because, in the
opinion of the Social Work Centre in Zrenjanin, they were not eligible on
account of their total earnings. The Social Work Centre gave the following
explanation for its decision to reject the family’s application: ‘During the
period October-December 2001, Šaha Sahiti sold bags in the market and earned on
average 1,250 dinars a month on that score. During the same period, her husband
Baškim Sahiti let pass an opportunity to work and earn on average 2,500 dinars
a month. If he had worked in farming for ten days a month, he would have earned
2,500 dinars a month since a daily wage was 250 dinars. Their total and missed
earnings in the period October-December 2001 thus amounted on average to 3,750 dinars
a month.’[134]
Since,
in the opinion of the Social Work Centre, the Sahiti family’s total ‘earnings’
in the period exceeded the 3,614.72-dinar maximum eligibility threshold fixed
for families with five or more members, they were prevented from enjoying their
right to social welfare benefits. Their appeal to the Provincial Secretariat
for Health and Social Policy in Novi Sad was rejected and the decision of the
first-instance authority upheld.
3.4.2. The case of Sadrija Kurtić
Sadrija
Kurtić of Leskovac was receiving social welfare benefits until 5 May 2001,
after which they were discontinued by decision of the Social Work Centre in
Leskovac.[135] The
Social Work Centre said in its statement of reasons that he owned a van with
licence plates LE-398-85, was reselling goods, and was earning on average 50
dinars a day. Kurtić appealed to the Serbian Ministry of Labour and
Veterans’ and Social Affairs as a second-instance authority. The Ministry
dismissed the appeal as unfounded and confirmed the decision of the Social Work
Centre.[136]
The
Social Work Centre had calculated on 1 March 2002 that of the four members of
the Kurtić family, Sadrija, his wife, and their son had been earning 3,000
dinars a month selling deep-freeze plastic bags during the first quarter of 2001,
each of them earning 50 dinars a day for twenty days during a month. Since, in
the opinion of the Social Work Centre, the Kurtić family’s total earnings
in the period exceeded the 2,099.50-dinar maximum eligibility threshold fixed
for four-member families in the Municipality of Leskovac for the first quarter
of 2001, the family could not exercise their right to social welfare benefits.
3.5. Discrimination in public places
Roma
are denied access to many public places such a night-clubs, discotheques,
restaurants, sports centres. Their chances of being admitted are less if the
place is privately-owned. Publicly-owned establishments such as cinemas,
theatres, some restaurants and most sports and recreational facilities rarely
engage in this kind of discriminatory practice.
Discrimination
in access to public places is very hard to prove before a court of law. The
proprietors usually defend themselves by stating that on the day in question
there was a private party going on in the establishment, that it is open for
members only, or that the Roma visitors were not properly attired. For this
reason, the victims of discrimination employ a ‘testing’ technique, which is
very useful in detecting discrimination as to colour, ethnicity, sex, etc.[137]
The tests are used for scientific purposes or as evidence in claims for damages.
The
HLC carried out several such tests in Belgrade and other towns in Serbia during
2000. The persons who took part in the tests were Roma and non-Roma volunteers
from the HLC and two Roma organizations: the Oasis Association and the
Democratic Roma Association. They gathered unmistakable evidence of anti-Roma
discrimination especially by four Belgrade private night-clubs: Trezor, Mondo,
Lagum, and Bombo. A discriminatory practice was also detected at the
Krsmanovača Sports Centre in Šabac.
The
HLC filed criminal complaints against unidentified persons in the employ of the
Trezor night-club and the Krsmanovača Sports Centre for violating the
equality of citizens.[138]
On receipt of the criminal complaint, the Municipal Public Prosecutor’s Office
in Šabac recommended the investigating judge to proceed to an investigation in
order to identify the alleged perpetrators.[139]
However, on 11 December 2001, the Municipal Public Prosecutor’s Office in Šabac
dismissed the criminal complaint. The HLC attorneys then filed a request for
investigation and an investigation is pending.
On
21 July 200, the HLC filed a criminal complaint against unidentified persons in
the employ of the Trezor discotheque in Belgrade. However, the Third Public
Prosecutor’s Office did not take action even after four HLC requests to
expedite proceedings. At the end of January 2002, the HLC filed a petition with
the Federal Constitutional Court as a court of last instance before taking the
last step of turning to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination.[140]
On 2
April 2003, the HLC and the ERRC submitted a joint communication to the
Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The Committee is
expected to find Serbia and Montenegro in breach of the International
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The
communication requests the Serbian state authorities to investigate the
incident and to compensate the victims. The authorities are also expected to
take effective measures to prevent discrimination in access to public places.
On
behalf of the victims, the HLC also filed a civil action for compensation for
non-pecuniary damage against the proprietors of the Mondo, Trezor, Lagum, and
Bombo night-clubs in Belgrade and the Krsmanovača Sports Centre in Šabac
on charges of violating the plaintiffs’ personal rights. The HLC wants the
court to prohibit all such discrimination in the future and the respondents to
apologize publicly and to publish the integral text of the judgement in the
daily newspaper Danas.
Proceedings
for compensation were instituted only in the case of the proprietor of the
Krsmanovača Sports Centre. On 20 February 2002, the Municipal Court in
Šabac ordered the company Jugenttt (transport-trade-tourism) - Sports and
Recreational Centre Krsmanovača of Šabac to publish at its expense a
public apology in the daily Politika
to the Roma plaintiffs Merihana Rustemov, Jordan Vasić and Zoran
Vasić, who were denied access by Centre employees to the swimming-pool
solely on account of their ethnicity. By the same judgement, the court ordered
the Centre to desist from violating personal rights through discrimination in
granting access to the swimming-pool. The judgement, which fully met the HLC
claims, was the first in domestic legal practice to sanction racial
discrimination as a clear violation of a right belonging to a person. The court
also accepted the testing technique as a valid method of detection of
discrimination. The judgement affirmed that, from the standpoint of interests
of general concern to society,
discrimination in granting access to facilities in state, public or
private ownership was equally unacceptable. The defendant has appealed the
judgement and appellate proceedings are pending.
3.6. Discriminatory practices by landlords
Nearly
all landlords refuse to let flats both to Roma families and to non-governmental
organizations and other institutions concerned with Roma rights.
3.6.1. The case of the Roma Child Centre
At
the end of 2000, Milica Simić, director of the Roma Child Centre, tried in
vain to rent business premises. This
non-governmental organization educates Roma children aged seven to fifteen by
providing supplementary instruction in all the subjects covered by the primary
school curriculum. Of the eighty-four children who enrolled last year, none
lost a year or had to sit for a makeup examination. The Centre also provides
programmes to prevent alcoholism and drug abuse and has volunteers to help children
begging in the streets. The children eat and wash themselves on the premises.
Over
forty landlords refused to let their flats as soon as they found out what the
organization did and that its director was a Roma woman. Following are some of
Simić’s experiences of landlords:
I engaged several agencies to help us find the flat we
wanted. None refused me on account of my nationality. As a rule, the agencies
want to get the job done so they can charge you their commission, but then the
landlords refuse to let to Roma.
While I inspected a flat on Kneza Miloša street, I
told the landlord what my organization did and he didn’t seem to mind. In the
evening, however, before we were due to sign the contract, the agency owner
rang me up to tell me that the landlord had bowed out because he was afraid
that the Roma children would steal everything from the flat.
During our first meeting, the owner of the flat at 3
Majke Jevrosime street had no objection to letting the flat to a Roma
organization. A few days later, however, someone from the agency rang me up to
tell me that the landlord had raised the rent from 800 to 1,000 German marks a
month and wasn’t sure whether he’d want anything to do with Gypsies for even
that much money.
After such experiences, I instructed the agencies to
explain to the landlords what kind of organization we were in order not to
waste any more of my time on those who won’t let to Roma. The agencies
presumably followed my instructions, but the landlords behaved the same. The
owner of a just-refurbished flat on Milutina Bojića street nearly threw me
out: ‘You’d better get out. We’ve nothing to talk about. I didn’t have the flat
refurbished just in order that Gypsies should move in,’ he said. The agent said
nothing in my defence. He stayed behind probably to make an apology to the
landlord.[141]
3.7. Domestic standards
The
Charter on Human and Minority Rights and Fundamental Freedoms lays down that
all persons are equal before the law and have the right to equal legal
protection, without any discrimination whatever. The equality of the citizens
is guaranteed without distinction as to their national origin, race, colour,
sex, language, religion, property status or other personal attribute.[142]
The Serbian Constitution is less inclusive because it does not guarantee the
equality of all before the law and makes no reference to the obligation of all
persons, not just state and other organs, to respect the rights and freedoms of
others.[143] In
both documents, the principle of non-discrimination applies only to the
citizens of Serbia and Montenegro. The Charter on Human and Minority Rights and
Fundamental Freedoms provides for the temporary imposition of special measures
required for the exercise of the equality of citizens (‘affirmative action’
measures).[144]
b) Criminal law provisions
Criminal
law protection of the equality of the citizens without distinction as to
nationality, race, religion, political or other beliefs, sex, language,
education or social status is provided by the Serbian Penal Code by sanctioning
violations of the equality of the citizens, an offence grouped together with
criminal offences against the rights and liberties of man and the citizen.[145]
This criminal offence is committed either by denying or limiting the rights of
others which rightfully belong to them, or by giving them benefits or
privileges to which they are not entitled. The offence can only be committed
against the citizens, that is, against the nationals of Serbia and Montenegro.
The offence is punishable by imprisonment from three months to five years.
In
the FRY Penal Code, the criminal offence of racial and other forms of
discrimination is grouped together with criminal offences against humanity and
international law. In this way, the FRY Penal Code protects against unlawful discrimination
the human rights and liberties recognized by the international community.[146]
The FRY Penal Code prohibits any discriminatory act in relation to those
‘rights recognized by the international community’ which are not violated by
other criminal offences. The term ‘right recognized by the international
community’ should be interpreted as referring to every
internationally-guaranteed right, not only to those covered by the
international treaties ratified by the former FRY. There are three grades of this
criminal offence: a) violation of fundamental internationally-recognized human
rights and freedoms on grounds of race, colour, nationality or ethnic origin;
b) persecution of organizations or individuals for their commitment to the
equality of people; c) dissemination of the idea of one race being superior to
another, propagation of racial hatred, or instigation of racial discrimination.
The victim may be any person, not just a citizen of Serbia and Montenegro.
Grades a) and b) carry a prison sentence from six months to five years and
grade c) from three months to three years.
c) Compensation
State
authorities or natural persons who discriminate against people on grounds of
their inherent or acquired attributes thereby violate their human dignity.
Therefore, a person whose human dignity has been injured is entitled to
compensation.[147] In
adjudicating a claim for non-pecuniary damages by a person alleging to have
been humiliated, the Serbian Supreme Court recently cited discrimination as a
way of injuring a person’s human dignity. In its judgement No. 1321/97 of 2
April 1997, the Serbian Supreme Court took the position that ‘human dignity and
a person’s private life are inviolable under the Constitution... [and that any
offence against them] constitutes an act of discrimination and the grounds for
compensation for an injury to honour and reputation.’
If
in a civil action the respondent is found guilty of violating the plaintiff’s
personal right or rights, the court may order him to publish at his expense the
judgement or a correction of the damaging statement at issue, withdraw such a
statement, or do anything else necessary to fulfil the purpose of the
compensation. If the injury resulted in physical pain or mental suffering or
fear, the plaintiff may also claim indemnity in money for non-pecuniary damage.[148]
Under
the Law on Obligations, any violation of a right belonging to a person -
discrimination being a special case of such violations - is always viewed in
the context of compensation. This means that in practice a victim of
discrimination must prove not only an injury to his honour, reputation, dignity
or other right guaranteed by the Constitution and international conventions,
but also that the injury caused him fear, physical pain or mental suffering. This
is essential in claiming any indemnity in money for non-pecuniary damage.[149]
With regard to the power of a court of law or another competent authority to
order the cessation of an action constituting a violation of a personal right,[150]
or to order the publication of a judgement or a correction,[151]
some theorists hold that the provisions of the Law on Obligations may be
applied where a violation of a right belonging to a person has been proved,
without having to prove the infliction of fear, physical pain or mental
suffering. However, judicial practitioners are of a quite opposite view.
With
regard to responsibility for damage, the Law on Obligations places the burden
of proof of damage on the person who allegedly caused it, his responsibility
being based on his assumed guilt.[152]
This provision is not applied in cases of indirect discrimination because it
may occur without premeditation or negligence. What matters in the event of an
indirect discrimination is not the mental attitude of the perpetrator but the
effect itself, that is, regardless of whether the perpetrator is to blame or
not. The rules of evidence in domestic litigation concerning charges of
discrimination do not favour the plaintiff because very often he has to prove
that he was the victim of such treatment. On the other hand, under relevant
international standards the plaintiff has merely to raise the possibility of
discrimination and it is up to the respondent to prove that he committed no
such act.
3.8. International standards
International
conventions define discrimination as ‘any distinction, exclusion, restriction
or preference’ based on any inadmissible ground which has the ‘purpose or
effect of nullifying or impairing...human rights and fundamental freedoms.’[153]
Distinctions may be made between people according to their inherent attributes
such as colour, sex, birth, citizenship, nationality, social status, or their
acquired attributes such as political beliefs, property status, religion.
Although international law prohibits distinction on both accounts, some of
these attributes are nevertheless openly omitted and/or allowed.[154]
The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination states explicitly that any distinction between citizens and
non-citizens is not regarded as racial discrimination; other international
conventions use the words ‘any person’, ‘everyone, ‘every person’, ‘any
citizen’, etc., to denote the rights which may or may not be guaranteed to
foreign nationals and stateless persons.[155]
Article
5 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination contains the obligation of states parties to eliminate all forms
of racial discrimination regarding the enjoyment of civil, political, economic,
social and cultural rights. Article 5 reads:
In compliance with the fundamental obligations laid
down in article 2 of this Convention, States Parties undertake to prohibit and
to eliminate racial discrimination in all its forms and to guarantee the right
of everyone, without distinction as to race, colour, or national or ethnic
origin, to equality before the law, notably in the enjoyment of the following
rights:
(a) The right to equal
treatment before the tribunals and all organs administering justice;
(b) The right to security of
person and protection by the State against violence or bodily harm, whether
inflicted by government officials or by any individual group or institution;
(c) Political rights, in
particular the rights to participate in elections to vote and to stand for
election on the basis of universal and equal suffrage, to take part in the
Government as well as in the conduct of public affairs at any level and to have
equal access to public service;
(d) Other civil rights, in
particular;
(i) The right to freedom of
movement and residence within the border of the State;
(ii) The right to leave any
country, including one’s own, and to return to one’s country;
(iii) The right to
nationality;
(iv) The right to marriage
and choice of spouse;
(v) The right to own
property alone as well as in association with others;
(vi) The right to inherit;
(vii) The right to freedom
of thought, conscience and religion;
(viii) The right to freedom
of opinion and expression;
(ix) The right to freedom of
peaceful assembly and association;
(e) Economic, social and
cultural rights, in particular:
(i) The rights to work, to
free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work, to
protection against unemployment, to equal pay for equal work, to just and
favourable remuneration;
(ii) The right to form and
joint trade unions;
(iii) The right to housing;
(iv) The right to public
health, medical care, social security and social services;
(v) The right to education
and training;
(vi) The right to equal
participation in cultural activities;
(f) The right of access to
any place or service intended for use by the general public, such as transport,
hotels, restaurants, cafes, theatres and parks.
Article
2 of Convention 111 of the International Labour Organization obligates states
parties to pursue a policy to promote, by methods compatible with national
conditions and practice, equality in education and in the choice of occupation
with a view to eliminating discrimination in these spheres.[156]
Under
Article 3 of the UNESCO Convention against Discrimination in Education, states
parties undertake to prohibit this form of discrimination by law where
necessary.
The
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibits, under Article
26, any discrimination, thus extending protection to rights not guaranteed by
the Covenant. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights lays down that the rights guaranteed by it are to be exercised by all
without discrimination.[157]
At
its 37th Session the UN Human Rights Committee gave a broader definition of
discrimination that any of its predecessors, namely that the term
discrimination’ should be understood to imply any distinction, exclusion,
restriction or preference which is based on any ground such as race, colour,
sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin,
property, birth or other status, and which has the purpose of effect of
nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by all persons,
on an equal footing, of all rights and freedoms.[158]
4. Findings
The
conditions for the protection and promotion of Roma rights in Serbia improved
during 2001 and 2002 thanks to the adoption of relevant legislation and
acceptance of international conventions and covenants.
The
Federal Law on the Protection of Rights and Liberties of National Minorities[159]
adopted by the FRY Assembly guarantees the Roma the status of a national
minority and provides for the adoption of measures and legal acts to improve
the situation of persons belonging to the Roma national minority.[160]
Accession to the Council of Europe Framework Convention on the Protection of
National Minorities in May 2001 marked the beginning of a process of
harmonization of minority rights with and their protection in accordance with
relevant international standards. In 2001 the FRY recognized the competence of
two major UN bodies to receive and consider communications by individuals
claiming violations of their rights under UN conventions: the competence of the
Human Rights Committee was recognized by a Law on the Ratification of the
Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights;[161]
that of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination was
recognized by a Declaration of the FRY Government of June 7 pursuant to Article
14 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
The Declaration introduced into the domestic legal system an important remedy
making it possible for victims of discrimination to appeal to the Committee.
Although the former FRY Government designated the Federal Constitutional Court
as the court of the highest instance competent to deal with citizens’ petitions
before they are referred to the Committee, it turned out that it had no such
competence under the Law on the Federal Constitutional Court. The Declaration
of the FRY Government alone was therefore not enough to establish the
competence of the Federal Constitutional Court in this matter. The
Constitutional Charter of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro provides for
a Court of Serbia and Montenegro to consider petitions from citizens alleging
violations of their rights and liberties by an institution of the state union.
However, the Court of Serbia and Montenegro is not specifically designated as
the domestic court of the highest instance regarding this matter.[162]
A
law against discrimination would have been a valuable addition to the
legislation because the existing provisions do not provide adequate protection
to the victims.
The
Roma are subjected to discrimination in all the spheres of social life: they
live on the margins of society in extremely unfavourable conditions and perform
the lowest-paid jobs; furthermore, owing to language problems, inadequate
curricula and racism at school, their children do not acquire even the most
elementary formal education. Because of their lack of education and bad living
conditions, the coming Roma generations are unlikely to achieve better social
promotion and integration.
The
increase of open violence against Roma was the most noticeable problem.
Frequent harassment and even torture by public officials, including law
enforcement officials, gave rise to particular concern. Owing to their marked
racial prejudices and the belief that they would not be called to account,
members of the police force harassed Roma, extorted information from them, and
unlawfully deprived them of their liberty and held them in detention. The
numerous incidents investigated by the HLC offered no grounds for suspicion
that the Roma victims were guilty of any criminal offence (the case of Saša
Mustafić). The police drastically overstepped their authority in these
cases solely on account of the racial origin of the victims. In many cases the
victims refused to press charges because they feared retribution (the cases of
Đorđe Toči, Ratko Mitrović and Irvan Useinović). When
criminal complaints were filed by the HLC on behalf of the victims, the
prosecuting authorities either failed to inform the submitter whether the
perpetrators had been identified, or eventually dismissed the complaints. In
this way the submitter was prevented from assuming the prosecution of the case
in his capacity of a private prosecutor.
In
cases where the HLC succeeded in continuing with the prosecution in its
capacity of a private prosecutor on behalf of the victims, the proceedings
dragged on for years because the courts of first instance took too long to
establish the guilt of the perpetrators. Scores of hearings before these courts
were unnecessarily delayed mostly because the accused ignored the court summons
(the cases of Branko Kostić and Ljubomir Jovanović).
There
was an increase in the number of racially-motivated attacks on Roma in Belgrade
and in many other towns across Serbia by organized groups such as skinheads and
soccer fans. The skinhead movement, whose ideology propagates hatred of the
Roma, spread in all large towns in Serbia. Police officers called to break up
violent attacks with racist motives often treated the Roma as perpetrators
rather than victims (the case of Nebojša Ajdarević).
Roma
residents of some urban districts were harassed time and again by the same
private individuals. The incidents investigated by the HLC showed that in every
single case the motive was the ethnic origin of the victims. The law enforcement
organs remained passive and blamed the attacks on the victims (the cases of
Roma residents of Vilovskog and Požeška streets).
School
violence against Roma pupils assumed disturbing proportions. According to HLC
data, physical violence and verbal abuse were among the main reasons why Roma
left school at an early stage (the case of Safet and Zaim Beriša).
The
educational authorities continued to ignore the problem of adequately
integrating Roma children into the educational system. The authorities were under
no obligation to organize preparatory classes for Roma children in primary
schools to help them adapt socially and psychologically to the school
environment and learn the language in which instruction is given. The Roma
children from Kosovo, who do not speak or write Serbian, were neither provided
with instruction in Albanian nor helped to learn Serbian. Only a very few
schools in Serbia and Vojvodina had optional classes in the Romany language and
national culture twice a week. The Serbian Ministry of Education and school
governors engaged in systematic segregation and discrimination against Roma
children by first assessing their abilities by inadequate tests and then
dispatching them to ‘special schools’ reserved for handicapped children. The
establishment in regular schools of separate classes for Roma children was an
act of racial segregation (the case of Subotica schools).The Committee on the
Elimination of Racial Discrimination in 2000 adopted a general recommendation[163]
which calls on the states parties to the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Racial Discrimination to prevent and avoid segregation of Roma school
children and to promote inter-cultural education.
Roma
seeking employment, visiting public places or looking for accommodation were
discriminated against as a matter of course. Although the domestic legal system
prohibits discrimination in principle, the courts do not schedule hearings on
well-documented charges of direct and indirect discrimination (the
discriminatory practice by the Belgrade night-clubs Trezor, Mondo, Bombo, and
Lagum).
The
state dealt with the Roma problems in a haphazard manner on a case-to-case
basis. It appeared that the state authorities were still ignorant of the need
for a comprehensive effort towards permanently eliminating racial
discrimination in all major spheres of public life, such as employment,
education, use of language, access to public places.
Serbia
and Montenegro have no integral law against racial discrimination to provide,
among other things, adequate compensation to the victims. In addition, the
process laws (e.g. the Civil Procedure Code) do not even envisage a separate
procedure to protect the rights of victims of discrimination. The HLC is of the
opinion that the present rules of procedure before civil courts dealing with
discrimination complaints have proved inadequate, especially when it comes to
proving the deed. A plaintiff suing for non-pecuniary damages under the present
Civil Procedure Code is at a disadvantage because most courts interpret the
rules of evidence narrowly, expecting the plaintiff to furnish the entire
evidence of discrimination. This is not always simple and is sometimes even
impossible, especially in cases involving indirect discrimination.
Unfortunately, neither the Civil Code Procedure nor the domestic judicial
practice take account of the modern approach adopted by the European Court of
Justice whereby the burden of proof in discrimination proceedings rests with
the respondent once the plaintiff has raised an arguable claim.
In
their 2002 reports,[164]
leading international human rights organizations expressed concern about Roma
human rights violations in Serbia and called on the state authorities to adopt
effective safeguards and measures to promote Roma rights. In connection with
the former FRY’s accession application, the ERRC wrote to, among others, Peter
Schieder, president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe,
pointing to the practice of anti-Roma discrimination in Serbia including police
abuse, forced evictions, discrimination in employment, access to public places,
heath care, etc.[165]
5. Recommendations
In
order to bring domestic laws into line with the international minority rights
standards, the competent authorities should take the following action:
a)
ratify Protocol No. 12 to the European Convention for the Protection of Human
Rights and Fundamental Freedoms because its provisions enlarge the scope of
protection of the principle of equality and non-discrimination laid down in the
Convention. All Council of Europe members and applicants for membership are
expected to sign and ratify Protocol No. 12;
b)
adopt an inclusive Law Against Racial Discrimination to prohibit direct and
indirect racial discrimination, harassment on racial grounds as well as
inducement and incitement to discrimination and violence. The law should be
fully compatible with the EU Race Equality Directive[166]
the fundamental principles of which are to be incorporated into the law of all
member states by 2003. The Directive is among the European Commission standards
(‘aquis’) which must be adopted by states applying for associate membership. It
prohibits any discrimination by natural and legal persons acting in their
official or private capacity and applies to the following domains: employment,
conditions of work and promotion, trade union organization, education, social
welfare, health care, access to goods and services. The Directive provides that
member countries may adopt special measures to prevent or compensate for discrimination
associated with racial or ethnic origin;
c)
amend the Civil Procedure Code to provide the victims of discrimination with
adequate legal remedies, in conformity with the jurisprudence of the European
Court of Justice and the EU Race Equality Directive. This would be effected by
the addition to the present law of an emergency procedure employing special
rules of evidence to help a victim of discrimination promptly and effectively
to prove the existence of a violation and to obtain a just recompense. Once the
victim of discrimination has raised an arguable claim, the respondent himself
would have to provide evidence that no rule of equal treatment was broken;
d)
complement the material criminal legislation by introducing the criminal
offence of ‘torture’ in full compliance with Article 1 of the Convention
against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
In its periodical report on the implementation of obligations under the
Convention, the Committee against Torture voiced its concern at the omission of
the criminal offence of torture from the Penal Code of the FRY with reference
to Article 1 of the Convention.[167]
Incorporation of the definition of torture as given in Article 1 of the
Convention calls for a well-conceived legislative procedure in the domain of
material criminal legislation. Article 4 of the Convention requires that each
state party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its
criminal law. Incorporating the definition of torture verbatim into the Penal
Code would make it possible to view the criminal offence of extorting a
statement (confession) in a new light as well as render the application of this
provision much more precise, transparent and effective;
e)
in harmonizing domestic legislation with relevant international standards, they
should pay particular attention to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Racial Discrimination (already ratified by Serbia and Montenegro) as
well as to the UN Model National Legislation for the Guidance of Governments in
the Enactment of Further Legislation against Racial Discrimination;
f)
honour the international instruments ratified by Serbia and Montenegro all the
more so as, under Article 10 of the Constitutional Charter of Serbia and Montenegro,
they have precedence over the domestic legislation.
The
Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, the Government of the Republic of Serbia,
the ministries in charge of local self-government, education, and national
minorities, and local assemblies should take the following action:
a)
organize joint projects in collaboration with local self-government agencies,
schools and non-governmental organizations aimed at suppressing racial,
national and religious intolerance. Such projects should focus on work with and
education of teaching staff and children through school human rights workshops,
appropriate publications and collaboration with the media with a view to
suppressing racial, ethnic and religious intolerance and xenophobia;
b)
organize compulsory preparatory teaching of the Serbian language to Roma
children. This would eliminate their initial disadvantage and enable them to
follow instruction from their first year at school on an equal footing. At the
same time, the Romany language should be introduced as a subject in school
curricula in conformity with the recommendations of the Council of Europe and
the OSCE Hague recommendations.[168]
Supplementary primary-school instruction for Roma children is essential to
accelerate their adaptation in the process of education;
c)
introduce special opportunities for Roma seeking university education or
applying for work. University admission requirements should be relaxed for Roma
applicants and state scholarships awarded to all full-time Roma students.
Likewise, employers financed from the federal, republican or municipal budgets
(i.e. educational institutions, health institutions, administrative agencies,
the police, the judiciary, and local bodies) should lower their employment
criteria for Roma applicants. Such opportunities would no doubt help create a
highly educated and skilled Roma workforce;
d)
introduce courses and special training for members of the police force and the
judiciary (courts and prosecuting organs) in international standards and
domestic regulations on minority rights protection and discrimination
prohibition. Effective mechanisms of internal control are necessary in order
that members of the police force and government officials applying
discriminatory measures and procedures could be punished for disciplinary
offences;
e)
adopt regulations and take measures, in conformity with the obligations under
the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to enforce
application of Article 11 of the Covenant (right to adequate housing), as well
as desist from evicting the residents of Roma settlements. The general
situation of the Roma can be improved if priority is given to improving their
housing conditions.[169]
The
Law on University Education should be amended to make possible the establishment
of an Institute for the Romany Language which would monitor the quality of
instruction in the Roma language, carry on scientific-research work in that
language, train experts to lecture in both languages, and keep records on the
number of teachers qualified enough to lecture in the Romany language;
f)
prepare a national code of ethics for police officers as soon as possible,
bearing in mind that the UN General Assembly adopted its Code of Conduct for
Law Enforcement Officials as far back as 1979. The fundamental ethic standards
established by the Code should also form the basis of a national code. Under
the Code, the duties of law enforcement officials include acting in conformity
with the law, respecting human dignity, upholding the human rights and freedoms
of all persons, reporting breaches of the Code to superior officers, etc. They
may not inflict, instigate or tolerate any act of torture and may use force
only when strictly necessary and to the extent required for the performance of
their duty.
[1] 1. Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Article, as well as the comments on Article 11 (right to adequate standard of living) by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as authentic interpreter of the Covenant provisions: General Comment N0. 4 of 1991 and General Comment No. 7 of 1997.
[2] HLC files, statement by Zoran Simić, 8 December 1999.
[3] Article 23 of the Law on Internal Affairs of the Republic of Serbia states that a person acting in an official capacity may use firearms only if by using other instruments of restraint he cannot protect people’s lives, prevent the escape of persons caught in the act of committing specified serious criminal offences, prevent the escape of a wanted person in connection with criminal offences prosecutable ex-officio, remove an immediate threat to his own life, repel an attack on the facility or person in his charge.
[4] HLC files, statement by Masimo Marinković, 3 December 1999.
[5] Article 220 of the Penal Code of the Republic of Serbia (Serbian Penal Code) states:
‘1. A person who disrupts the public tranquility or disturbs the peace by grossly insulting or abusing another person, committing violence against another person, provoking a fight, or behaving insolently and recklessly, a predilection for such behaviour having been manifested by his earlier conduct, shall be punished by imprisonment from three months to three years. 2. If an offence referred to in paragraph 1 of this Article was committed by a group of persons, if a person suffered minor bodily harm as a result, or if severe indignity was inflicted on citizens, the perpetrator shall be punished by imprisonment from six months to five years.’
[6] Article 25 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia: ‘1. Every person is entitled to compensation of property and non-property damage inflicted on him through unlawful or irregular work of an official or a state agency or organization exercising public powers, in accordance with law. 2. The damages shall be paid by the Republic of Serbia or the organization exercising public powers.’
Article 200 of the Law on Obligations: ‘1. The court shall award just indemnity in money to a person who has suffered physical pain, mental suffering due to impairment of faculties, disfigurement, injury to reputation or honour, infringement of liberty or personal rights, death of a close person, and fear, if it finds that the circumstances of the case, and especially the intensity of pain and fear and their duration, so warrant, irrespective of any material compensation or absence thereof. 2. In deciding on a claim for non-pecuniary damages, as well as on its amount, the court shall take into consideration the significance of the good damaged and the purpose of the damages, as well as make sure that the damages do not subserve aspirations incompatible with their nature and their social purpose.’
[7] HLC files, statement by Ratko Mitrović, 15 February 2000.
[8] HLC files, statement by Bekim Mujoli, 12 June 2000.
[9] HLC files, statement by Ivan Stevanović, 12 June 2000.
[10] HLC files, statement by Fahri Osmani, 12 June 2000.
[11] Article 66 of the Serbian Penal Code: ‘A public official who in the exercise of his duties abuses or insults another person, or treats him in such a manner as to injure his human dignity, shall be punished by imprisonment from three months to three years.’
[12] Letter from the Subotica SUP, 22 June 2001, No. AP-07-3-11/01.
[13] Source: Human Rights Committee in Leskovac.
[14] Medical certificate dated 19 April 2002 and issued by the Novi Sad Emergency Surgery Department.
[15] HLC files, statement by Boban Spasojević, 16 August 2002.
[16] HLC files, statement by Jasna Spasojević, 16 August 2002.
[17] HLC files, statement by Jovan Nikolić, 18 November 2002.
[18] Apprehension and transfer report of 16 November 2002, Petrovaradin police station, ref. No. KU-5911/02.
[19] Ruma Health Centre, medical certificate, 19 November 2002.
[20] Article 22 of the FRY Constitution: ‘The inviolability of the physical and psychological integrity of the individual, his privacy and personal rights shall be guaranteed.’
[21] Article 25 of the FRY Constitution: ‘1. Respect for the human personality and dignity in criminal and all other proceedings in the event of detention or restriction of freedom, as well as during the serving of a prison sentence, shall be guaranteed. 2. The use of force against a suspect who has been detained or whose freedom has been restricted, as well as any forcible extortion of confessions or statements, shall be prohibited and punishable. 3. No one may be subjected to torture, or to degrading treatment or punishment.’
[22] The Charter on Human and Minority Rights and Fundamental Freedoms was adopted and promulgated on 4 February 2003.
[23] Article 12 of the Charter on Human and Minority Rights and Fundamental Freedoms: ‘1. Everyone is entitled to inviolability of his or her physical wellbeing and mental integrity. 2. No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment. 3. No one shall be subjected to medical or scientific experiments without his freely given consent.’
[24] Article 14 of the Charter of Human and Minority Rights and Fundamental Freedoms: ‘...6. Everyone who is arrested shall be entitled to take proceedings by which the lawfulness of his arrest shall be decided speedily by a court and his release ordered if the arrest is not lawful. 7. The arrested person shall be treated humanely and with respect for his personal dignity. Any violence against the arrested person and the extortion of evidence shall in particular be prohibited. 8. Everyone who is arrested unlawfully shall have a right to compensation.’
[25] Article 15 of the Charter on Human and Minority Rights and Fundamental Freedoms: ‘1. The arrested person shall be informed promptly that he has the right not to make any statements and the right to have a defence lawyer of his own choosing present during the hearing. 2. The arrested person shall be promptly, and not later that within 48 hours brought before a competent court. Otherwise, he shall be released. 3. A person reasonably suspected of having committed a criminal act may be detained only upon the decision of the competent court, if that is necessary for the purposes of conducting the criminal proceedings. 4. Duration of detention shall be reduced to the shortest necessary time in accordance with the law, which shall be taken care of by the competent court.’
[26] Article 16 of the Charter on Human and Minority Rights and Fundamental Freedoms: ‘1. Everyone has the right to be informed promptly, in detail and in a language which he understands, of the nature and reasons for bringing charges against him, and is entitled to a prompt trial. 2. Everyone has the right to a defence, including the right to take a defence counsel of his own choosing before the court or other authority competent for conducting the proceedings, to communicate without hindrances with his defence counsel and to have sufficient time and facilities for the preparation of his defence. 3. The law shall specify the cases in which the interests of fairness require that the accused be given a defence counsel ex officio if he is not able to pay for the defence counsel’s services. 4. The accused shall have the right to be assisted by an interpreter if he can not understand or speak the language used in the proceedings. 5. No person that is accessible to the court or other authority competent for conducting the proceedings shall be punished unless he has been given the opportunity to be heads and to defend himself. 6. No one shall be forced to testify against himself or to admit guilt.’
[27] Article 26 of the Serbian Constitution: ‘1. Respect for the human being and his dignity shall be guaranteed in criminal and any other proceedings, in the event of deprivation or restriction of liberty, as well as during imprisonment. 2. No one shall be subjected to torture, humiliating punishment or treatment. 3. It is prohibited to use a man, without his consent, as an object in medical and other scientific experiments.’
[28] Article 18 of the Serbian Constitution: ‘Human dignity and the right to a private life are inviolable.’
[29] Article 66 of the Serbian Penal Code: ‘A public official who in the exercise of his duties abuses or insults another person, or treats him in such a manner as to injure his human dignity, shall be punished by imprisonment from three months to three years.’
[30] Article 54 of the Serbian Penal Code: ‘1. A person who causes another light injuries or impairs his health slightly shall be punished by imprisonment of up to one year. 2. If such injury is caused by a weapon, an offensive implement or another object suitable for causing severe injury or serious impairment of health, the perpetrator shall be punished by imprisonment of up to three years. 3. The perpetrator of an offence referred to in paragraph 2 may be given judicial caution if he was provoked by improper or rude behaviour on the part of the aggrieved party. 4. Prosecution of an offence referred to in paragraph 1 of this Article is instituted on the basis of a civil lawsuit.’
[31] Article 53 of the Serbian Penal Code: ‘1. A person who causes another severe injuries or impairs his health severely shall be punished by imprisonment of up to one year. 2. A sentence of imprisonment from one year to ten years shall be imposed on a person who causes another severe bodily harm or serious impairment of health so as to threaten his life, or destroy or permanently or substantially damage an important part of his body or organ, or render him permanently unfit for work, or permanently and seriously impair his health, or render him disfigured. 3. If the injured person dies as a result of injuries referred to in paragraphs 1 and 2 of this Article, the perpetrator shall be punished by imprisonment from one year to twelve years. 4. A person who commits an offence referred to in paragraphs 1 and 2 of this Article involuntarily shall be punished by imprisonment of up to three years. 5. A person who involuntarily commits an offence referred to in paragraphs 1-3 of this Article because, through no fault of his own, he was strongly provoked by an assault or grave insult by the victim, shall be punished by imprisonment of up to three years in respect of an offence referred to paragraph 1 or by imprisonment from one to five years in respect of an offence referred to in paragraphs 2-3.’
[32] Article 10 of the Constitutional Charter of Serbia and Montenegro.
[33] Article 16 (2) of the FRY Constitution.
[34] Article 9 (3) of the Constitutional Charter of Serbia and Montenegro.
[35] Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: ‘No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In particular, no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation.’
Article 2 of the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment: ‘1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction. 2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. 3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.’
[36] The Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials was adopted by General Assembly resolution 34/169 of 17 December 1979.
[37] HLC files, statement by Ljubomir Jovanović, 5 May 2000.
[38] HLC files, statement by Snežana Jovanović, 5 May 2000.
[39] Article 65 of the Serbian Penal Code: ‘1. A public official who in the performance of his duties uses force or threats or other unlawful methods with the intention of extorting a confession or a statement from an accused person, a witness, an expert or another person, shall be punished by imprisonment of at least one year. 2. If a confession or a statement was extorted by using heavy violence, or if the accused person is put at a particularly grave disadvantage during the criminal proceedings as a result of a statement extorted from him, the perpetrator shall be punished by imprisonment of at least a year. ’
[40] Article 54 of the Serbian Penal Code: ‘1. A person who causes another light injuries or impairs his health slightly shall be punished by imprisonment of up to one year. 2. If such injury is caused by a weapon, an offensive implement or another object suitable for causing severe injury or serious impairment of health, the perpetrator shall be punished by imprisonment of up to three years. 3. The perpetrator of an offence referred to in paragraph 2 may be given judicial caution if he was provoked by improper or rude behaviour on the part of the aggrieved party. 4. Prosecution of an offence referred to in paragraph 1 of this Article is instituted on the basis of a civil lawsuit.’
[41] Article 61 of the Criminal Procedure Code: ‘1. Where the State Attorney determines that no grounds exist to institute prosecution for a criminal offense subject to public prosecution or where he determines that there are no grounds to institute prosecution against one of the accessories reported to the authorities, he is bound within eight days to notify the injured person thereof and instruct him that he can assume prosecution by himself. The same procedure shall apply to the court when it renders a ruling discontinuing the proceedings because the State Attorney has desisted from prosecution. 2. The injured person shall be entitled to institute or continue prosecution within eight days following receipt of the notice referred to in paragraph 1 of this Article. 3. If the State Attorney withdraws the indictment, the injured person may, in assuming prosecution, adhere to the charge raised or bring a new charge. 4. The injured person who is not notified that the State Attorney has failed to institute prosecution or has desisted from prosecution may, within three months from the day the State Attorney dismissed the crime report or the ruling discontinuing the procedure was rendered, declare to the court having jurisdiction that he shall institute or continue proceedings. 5. When the State Attorney or the court notifies the injured person that he may assume prosecution, they shall inform him of the procedural actions he may undertake in order to realize that right. 6. If the subsidiary prosecutor dies pending the term for assuming prosecution or pending proceedings, his spouse, his cohabitee or a person living with him in some other type of a permanent life community, children, parents, adopted child, adoptive parent, or his siblings may within three months after his death assume prosecution or declare that they shall continue proceedings. 7. The ruling discontinuing the proceedings rendered because the State Attorney has desisted from prosecution shall enter into force after the terms referred to in paragraphs 2 and 4 of this Article have expired.’
[42] HLC files, statement by Đorđe Toči, 23 June 2000.
[43] HLC files, statement by Saša Mustafić, 15 August 2000.
[44] HLC files, statement by Demira Gezvira, 15 August 2000.
[45] Kt. No. 662/01.
[46] Kt. No. 661/01.
[47] HLC files, statement by Ramon Jeseti, 22 November 2001.
[48] HLC files, statement by Akif Jeseti, 22 November 2001.
[49] HLC files, statement by Danijel Jovanović, 1 october 2002.
[50] HLC files, statement by Dragan Milenković, 1 October 2002.
[51] Article 14 (6) of the Charter on Human and Minority Rights and Fundamental Freedoms: ‘Everyone who is arrested shall be entitled to take proceedings by which the lawfulness of his arrest shall be decided speedily by a court and his release ordered if the arrest is not lawful.’
[52] Article 15 (3) of the Charter on Human and Minority Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
[53] Article 15 of the Serbian Constitution: ‘1. Man’s liberty is inviolable. 2. No one may be deprived of his liberty, except on such grounds and in accordance with such procedure as is established by law.’
[54] Article 15 (2) of the Charter on Human and Minority Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
[55] Article 23 of the Serbian Constitution: ‘1. No one shall be punished for an act which prior to the commission was not provided as a punishable offence by the law or statutory instruments based on law, nor be subject to pronouncing a punishment which has not been established for such an act by the law. 2. Criminal offences and penalties for the offenders may be established only by law. 3. No one may be considered guilty of a criminal offence until so proven by a final judgement by a court of law. 4. A person who has been unjustifiably convicted for a criminal offence or wrongfully deprived of his liberty shall be entitled to compensation of damage from public funds, as well as to other rights established by law.’
[56] Službeni list SRJ (FRY Official Gazette), No. 70/2001.
[57] The Law on Criminal Procedure ceased in its effects on 28 March 2002 as the new Criminal Procedure Code took effect.
[58] Article 5 of the Criminal Procedure Code: ‘1. A person deprived of his liberty shall be immediately informed in his language or in the language that he understands, of the reasons for deprivation of liberty, that he is under no obligation to testify, that he is entitled to a defense counsel of his own choice, and that he is entitled to request his family or his other close persons to be informed that he is deprived of his liberty. 2. A person deprived of his liberty without a court decision shall be brought immediately before the competent investigative judge.’
[59] See Article 226 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
[60] Article 142 of the Criminal Procedure Code: ‘1. Detention shall be ordered: (1) Against a person suspected on well-founded grounds of having committed a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment for a term of twenty years or more severe punishment. Where circumstances indicate that according to law a milder sentence may be imposed [Article 42, paragraph 1, of the FRY Penal Code], detention does not have to be ordered. (2) Against the accused sentenced by the court at the first instance to a punishment of imprisonment of five years or more if the accused is not already in detention and if this is justifiable because of the manner in which the criminal offense was committed or other special grave circumstances of the criminal offense. 2. If there exists reasonable suspicion that a person has committed a criminal offense and there are no grounds for detention referred to in paragraph 1 of this Article, for the purpose of the tranquil conduct of criminal proceedings, detention against this person may be ordered: (1) If the person is in hiding or his identity cannot be established, or if there are other circumstances indicating a danger of flight; (2) If there are circumstances indicating that he may destroy, hide, change or forge items of evidence or traces of the criminal offence or if particular circumstances indicate that he may impede the proceedings by influencing witnesses, co-principals or accessories; (3) If special circumstances indicate that he may repeat the criminal offense or complete the attempted one, or perpetrate the criminal offence he threatens to commit; 4) If a duly summoned defendant obviously evades appearance at the trial. 3. In the case referred to in paragraph 2 subparagraph 1 of this Article, detention ordered only because it was not possible to establish the identity of the person shall last until this identity is established. In the case referred to in paragraph 2 subparagraph 2 of this Article, detention shall be vacated as soon as the evidence because of which detention was ordered is secured. Detention ordered in accordance with paragraph 2 subparagraph 4 of this Article may last until the pronunciation of the final judgement, but not more than one month.’
Article 195 of the Law on Criminal Procedure: ‘1. Authorized Ministry of Internal Affairs public officials deprive a person of his liberty for any reason laid down in Article 191 of this law but must transfer him without delay to the competent investigating judge or to the investigating judge of the inferior court in whose territory the criminal offence was committed if the seat of that court can be reached more quickly. On delivering the person, the authorized Ministry of Internal Affairs public official shall inform the investigating judge why and when the person was deprived of his liberty. 2. If due to unavoidable circumstances the person deprived of his liberty could not be brought before the investigating judge within 24 hours, the public official shall explain the delay separately. An explanation shall be given also if a delay occurred while the person was being transferred at the request of the investigating judge. 3. If due to a delay during transfer the investigating judge was unable to issue a detention order within the time-limit laid down in Article 192 (3), he shall render such decision when the person deprived of his liberty is brought before him.’
[61] The Federal Constitutional Court reviewed, among other things, the constitutional validity of Article 191, paragraph 2, points 3 and 4, of the Law on Criminal Procedure. The provision of Article 191 lays down the general grounds on which an investigating judge or an internal affairs authority could order detention. Since Article 195, which empowers the police to take a person into custody, refers to Article 191 regarding the grounds for making an arrest, the Federal Constitutional Court, in restricting the grounds for detention laid down by Article 191, indirectly restricted the police powers laid down by Article 195 for taking a person into custody although it did not assess the constitutional validity of that article.
[62] Article 63 of the Serbian Penal Code: ‘1. A person who unlawfully detains another, keeps him in detention, or deprives him of his liberty of movement in any other way, shall be punished by imprisonment of up to one year. 2. Any such attempt shall be a punishable offence. 3. A public official who commits unlawful detention by abusing his office or powers shall be punished by imprisonment from three months to five years. 4. If unlawful detention exceeds thirty days or was carried out in a cruel manner as a result of which the detainee suffers serious impairment of health or other grave consequences, the perpetrator shall be punished by imprisonment from one year to eight years. 5. If this results in the death of the person unlawfully deprived of his liberty, the perpetrator shall be punished by imprisonment of at least three years.’
[63] Article 14 (7) of the Charter on Human and Minority Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
[64] Article 65 of the Serbian Penal Code: ‘1. A public official who in the performance of his duties uses force or threats or other unlawful methods with the intention of extorting a confession or a statement from an accused person, a witness, an expert or another person, shall be punished by imprisonment of at least one year. 2. If a confession or a statement was extorted by using heavy violence, or if the accused person is put at a particularly grave disadvantage during the criminal proceedings as a result of a statement extorted from him, the perpetrator shall be punished by imprisonment of at least a year. ’
[65] Professor Dr Tihomir Vasiljević and Professor Dr Momčilo Grubač, Komentar Zakona o krivičnom postupku (Commentaries on the Law on Criminal Procedure), Službeni glasnik, Belgrade, 1999, p. 879.
[66]
Article 560 of the Criminal Procedure Code: ‘1.
Entitled to compensation of damages shall also be the person: (1) Who was
detained but criminal proceedings were not instituted or were discontinued by a
final ruling or who was acquitted by a final judgement or where the charge was
rejected; ... (3) Who, due to an error or the unlawful action of state
authorities, was deprived of his liberty without legal grounds, or kept in
detention or penitentiary institution for a longer period of time than
prescribed...’
[67] The Convention was adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly resolution 39/46 of 10 December 1984. It entered into force on 26 June 1987. Yugoslavia ratified it on 10 October 1991.
[68] Article 22 of the Convention against Torture: ‘1. A State Party to this Convention may at any time declare under this Article that it recognizes the competence of the Committee [against Torture] to receive and consider communications from or on behalf of individuals subject to its jurisdiction who claim to be victims of a violation by a State Party of the provisions of the Convention. No communication shall be received by the Committee if it concerns a State Party which had not made such a declaration. 2. The Committee shall consider inadmissible any communication under this Article which is anonymous or which it considers to be an abuse of the right of submission of such communications or to be incompatible with the provisions of this Convention. 3. Subject to the provisions of paragraph 2, the Committee shall bring any communications submitted to it under this Article to the attention of the State Party to this Convention which has made a declaration under paragraph 1 and is alleged to be violating any provisions of the Convention. Within six months, the receiving State shall submit to the Committee written explanations or statements clarifying the matter and the remedy, if any, that may have been taken by that State. 4. The Committee shall consider communications received under this Article in the light of all information made available to it by or on behalf of the individual and by the State Party concerned. 5. The Committee shall not consider any communications from an individual under this Article unless it had ascertained that: (a) The same matter has not been, and is not being, examined under another procedure of international investigation or settlement; (b) The individual has exhausted all available domestic remedies; this shall not be the rule where the application of the remedies is unreasonably prolonged or is unlikely to bring effective relief to the person who is the victim of the violation of this Convention. 6. The Committee shall hold closed meetings when examining communications under this Article. 7. The Committee shall forward its views to the State Party concerned and to the individual. 8. The provisions of this Article shall come into force when five States Parties to this Convention have made declarations under paragraph 1 of this Article. Such declarations shall be deposited by the State Parties with the Secretary General of the United Nations, who shall transmit copies thereof to the other State Parties. A declaration may be withdrawn at any time by notification to the Secretary General. Such a withdrawal shall not prejudice the consideration of any matter which is the subject of a communication already transmitted under this Article; no further communication by or on behalf of an individual shall be received under this Article after the notification of withdrawal of the declaration had been received by the Secretary General, unless the State Party had made a new declaration.’
[69] Article 19 of the Convention against Torture: ‘1. The States Parties shall submit to the Committee, through the Secretary General of the United Nations, reports on the measures they have taken to give effect to their undertakings under this Convention, within one year after the entry into force of the Convention for the State Party concerned. Thereafter the States Parties shall submit supplementary reports every four years on any new measures taken and such other reports as the Committee may request. 2. The Secretary General of the United Nations shall transmit the reports to all State Parties. 3. Each report shall be considered by the Committee which may make such general comments on the report as it may consider appropriate and shall forward these to the State Party concerned. That State Party may respond with any observations it chooses to the Committee. 4. The Committee may, at its discretion, decide to include any comments made by it in accordance with paragraph 3 of this Article, together with the observations thereon received from the State Party concerned, in its annual report made in accordance with Article 24. If so requested by the State Party concerned, the Committee may also include a copy of the report submitted under paragraph 1 of this Article.’
[70] Concluding observations of the Committee against Torture: Yugoslavia (concluding observations), 21st Session, 9-20 November 1998.
[71] Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
[72] Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
[73] Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners adopted by General Assembly resolution UN 45/111 of 14 December 1990.
[74] HLC files, statement by Dragan Dimitrijević, 17 December 2000.
[75] HLC files, statement by Veroljub Dimitrijević, 17 December 2000.
[76] Blic, ‘Čistači Romi na meti skinhedsa’ (Roma sweepers targeted by skinheads), 16 November 2000.
[77] Ibid.
[78] HLC files, statement by Slobodan Stanković, 9 November 1999.
[79] HLC files, statement by Jasin Meleči, 9 November 1999.
[80] HLC files, statement by Dragiša Ajdarević, 28 April 2000.
[81] Ibid.
[82] Article 134 of the FRY Penal Code: ‘1. A person who incites to or excites national, racial or religious hatred, dissension or intolerance among the nations and national minorities living in the FRY shall be punished by imprisonment from one year to five years. 2. A person who commits an offence referred to in paragraph of this Article by coercing or harassing others, threatening their security, holding up to ridicule national, ethnic or religious symbols, damaging other people’s possessions, desecrating monuments, memorials or graves, shall be punished with imprisonment from one year to eight years. 3. A person who commits an offence referred to in paragraphs 1 and 2 by abusing his office and powers and thereby provokes disturbances, violence or other grave consequences for the life together of the nations and national minorities living in the FRY shall be punished by imprisonment from one year to eight years in respect to paragraph 1 and by imprisonment from one year to ten years in respect to paragraph 2.’
[83] HLC files, statement by Gordana Jovanović, 12 May 2000.
[84] HLC files, statement by Ištvan Žiga, 28 November 2002.
[85] Article 134 of the FRY Penal Code.
[86] HLC files, statement by Fidan Gaši, 26 November 2002.
[87] HLC files, statement by Gzin Hasani, 26 November 2002.
[88] HLC files, statement by Dragan Petrović, 30 November 1999.
[89] HLC files, statement by Danijela Vujičić, 30 November 1999.
[90] HLC files, statement by Ljiljana Petrović, 30 November 1999.
[91] HLC files, statement by Jakup Haziri, 30 November 1999.
[92] HLC files, statement by Milorad Jeftić, 30 November 1999.
[93] HLC files, statement by Irvan Useinović, 14 March 2000.
[94] HLC files, statements by Blagoje Mustafić, Dragan Dimić, Trajko Mustafić, Milentije Stevanović, and Imer Etemi, 17 August 2000.
[95] HLC files, statement by Muharem Diljaj, 8 February 2002.
[96] HLC files, statement by E.D., 8 February 2002.
[97] HLC files, statement by Hamdija Sabedin, 8 February 2002.
[98] HLC files, statement by Milivoje Petrović, 3 February 2003.
[99] Article 134 of the FRY Penal Code.
[100] HLC files, statement by Milesa Mitrović, 15 August 2002.
[101] Glas javnosti, ‘Kao da ih je pisao Milošević’ (The textbooks might have been written by Milošević), 1 April 2001.
[102] HLC files, statement by Safet Beriša, 8 September 2000.
[103] The surname Beriša indicates an Albanian origin or adherence to Islam.
[104] HLC files, statements by Anđelka and Ljiljana Burić, 12 July 2000.
[105] HLC files, statement by Kristina Stanojević, 27 September 2000.
[106] Article 51 of the Charter on Human and Minority Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
[107] Since criminal legislation lies outside the competence of the new state-union of Serbia and Montenegro, the FRY Penal Code continues to be applied by each member state as a statute until it is abolished.
[108] Article 134 of the FRY Penal Code: ‘1. A person who incites to or excites national, racial or religious hatred, dissension or intolerance among the nations and national minorities living in the FRY shall be punished by imprisonment from one year to five years. 2. A person who commits an offence referred to in paragraph of this Article by coercing or harassing others, threatening their security, holding up to ridicule national, ethnic or religious symbols, damaging other people’s possessions, desecrating monuments, memorials or graves, shall be punished by imprisonment from one year to eight years. 3. A person who commits an offence referred to in paragraphs 1 and 2 by abusing his office and powers and thereby provokes disturbances, violence or other grave consequences for the life together of the nations and national minorities living in the FRY shall be punished by imprisonment from one year to eight years in respect to paragraph 1 and by imprisonment from one year to ten years in respect to paragraph 2.’
[109] Article 67 of the Serbian Penal Code: ‘1. A person who endangers the security of another person by making a serious threat to the life or body of that person, or of a person close to that person, shall be fined or punished by imprisonment up to six months. 2. If the offence referred to in paragraph 1 of this Article is committed against several persons, or if the offence disturbs the public tranquility, or if the offence causes grave consequences, the perpetrator shall be punished by imprisonment from three months to five years. 3. The offence referred to in paragraph 1 of this Article is prosecuted on the basis of a civil action.’
[110] The UN Human Rights Committee acts under the First Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and is the authentic interpreter of its provisions. The Committee interprets the Covenant by a) making general comments; b) reviewing periodical reports by state parties; c) deciding on individual submissions filed with it under the First Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Committee adopts its general comments by consensus. The comments are not binding and have the force of recommendations.
[111] UN Human Rights Committee, general comment, 46th session, 1992, Article 7.
[112] UN Human Rights Committee, ibid.
[113] See Delgado Paez v. Colombia, No. 195/1985.
[114] Article 25 of the Law on Primary School.
[115] Article 85 of the Law on Primary School.
[116] HLC files, statement by psychologist Dragana Đakić, 24 February 1999.
[117] HLC files, statement by neuropsychiatrist Dr Smiljka Polomčić, 1 March 1999.
[118] HLC files, statement by special education teacher Tatjana Trajković, 25 February 1999.
[119] HLC files, statement by Nada Todorović, 28 November 2001.
[120] HLC files, statement by Rajko Jovanović, 11 October 2002.
[121] Optional curricula are provided under Article 5 (5) of the Law on Primary School: ‘Where instruction is given in the Serbian language, members of nationalities shall also be taught their own language and elements of their national culture.’ Serbian Official Gazette, Nos. 50/92, 53/93, 67/93, 48/94 and 22/02.
[122] HLC files, statement by Jelena Veljković, 16 October 2002.
[123] HLC files, statement by Mića Uzelac, 16 October 2002.
[124] HLC files, statement by Mihajlo Kočić, 16 October 2002.
[125] HLC files, statement by Balaž Piri Ištvan, 17 October 2002.
[126] HLC files, statement by Vesna Reljin, 17 October 2002.
[127] HLC files, statement by Ragib Azirović, 10 April 2002.
[128] Eviction order by the Property Rights and Housing Department of the Municipality of Čukarica of 3 October 2002.
[129] Application to the Executive Committee of the Assembly of the Municipality of Čukarica, 16 September 2002.
[130] ‘Manjine u Srbiji’ (Minorities in Serbia), Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, Belgrade, 2000, p. 96.
[131] HLC files, statement by Stanka Marinković, 7 November 1999.
[132] HLC files, statement by Nataša Stević, 20 November 2001.
[133] Serbian Official Gazette, Nos. 36/91, 33/93, 53/93, 67/93, 46/94, 48/94, 52/96.
Article 62 of the Law on Social Welfare and Social Security of Citizens: ‘The finding and opinion of a social work centre regarding facts which are not filed as official records and serve to assess missed earnings, serve as evidence of entitlements under this Law.’
[134] Decision of the Social Work Centre in Zrenjanin, No. 553-384/2002, 9 April 2002.
[135] Decision of the Social Work Centre in Leskovac, No. 5457, entry No. 1702.
[136] Ruling of the Serbian Ministry of Labour and Veteran and Social Affairs, No. 553-02-582/2002-06 of 31 May 2002.
[137] Article 2 of the EU Racial Equality Directive defines direct discrimination/facial discrimination and indirect discrimination/disparate treatment as follows: ‘(a) direct discrimination shall be taken to occur where one person is treated less favourably than another is, has been or would be treated in a comparable situation on ground of racial or ethnic origin. (b) indirect discrimination shall be taken to occur where an apparently neutral provision, criterion or practice would put persons of a racial or ethnic origin at a particular disadvantage compared with other persons, unless that provision, criterion or practice is objectively justified by a legitimate aim and the means of achieving that aim are appropriate and necessary.’
[138] Article 60 of the Serbian Penal Code: ‘A person who denies or limits the rights of citizens established by the Constitution, statute, another rule or general enactment, or by a ratified international treaty, on grounds of nationality, race, religion, political or other beliefs, ethnicity, sex, language, education or social status, or extends benefits or privileges to citizens on the same grounds, shall be punished by imprisonment from three months to five years.
[139] Article 239 of the Criminal Procedure Code: ‘1. When the perpetrator of a criminal offense is unknown, the State Attorney may propose that the investigating judge undertake certain investigative actions if, regarding the circumstances of the case, it would be necessary or expedient to undertake such actions before the commencement of the investigation. If the investigating judge disagrees with this motion he shall refer it to the panel for disposition (Article 24 paragraph 6). 2. The records on the investigative actions undertaken shall be submitted to the State Attorney.’
[140] The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination was set up under Article 8 of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The Committee has the competence to consider reports of state parties on legislative and other measures they have adopted and which give effect to the provisions of the Convention. Under Article 14 of the Convention, the Committee has the competence to receive and consider communications from individuals or groups of individuals claiming to be victims of any of the rights set forth in the Convention. However, the Committee will consider such communications only if the state party in question has declared that it recognizes this competence of the Committee and if all domestic remedies have been exhausted. Under Article 14 of the Convention, the FRY Government at the middle of 2001 made such a declaration and designated the Federal Constitutional Court as the last-instance domestic authority competent to consider petitions from citizens alleging a violation of the Convention.
[141] HLC files, statement by Milica Simić, 25 January 2001.
[142] Article 3 of the Charter on Human and Minority Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
[143] Article 13 of the Serbian Constitution: ‘Citizens are equal in their rights and duties and have equal protection between the State and other authorities, irrespective of their race, sex, birth, language, nationality, religion, political or other belief, level of education, social origin, property status, or any other personal attribute.’
[144] Article 3 of the Charter on Human and Minority Rights and Fundamental Freedoms: ‘4. Temporary imposition is permitted of special measures required for the exercise of equality, special protection and prosperity for persons or groups of persons in unequal position, in order to enable them to fully enjoy human and minority rights under equal conditions. 5. Special measures referred to in paragraph of this Article may only be applied until the achievement of the aims for which they are undertaken.’
[145] Article 60 of the Serbian Penal Code, see footnote 138.
[146] Article 154 of the FRY Penal Code: ‘1. A person who violates on grounds of race, colour, national or ethnic origin the fundamental human rights recognized by the international community shall be punished by imprisonment from six months to five years. 2. A penalty referred to in paragraph 1 of this Article shall be imposed on a person who persecutes organizations or individuals for their commitment to the equality of people. 3. A person who disseminates ideas about the superiority of one race over another, or propagates racial hatred, or instigates racial discrimination, shall be punished by imprisonment from three months to three years.’
[147] Article 200 of the Law on Obligations, see footnote 6.
[148] Slobodan Perović, ‘Komentar Zakona o obligacionim odnosima’ (Commentary on the Law of Obligations), Savremena administracija, 1995, p. 466.
[149] Article 200 (1) of the Law on Obligations: ‘The court shall award just indemnity in money to a person who has suffered physical pain, mental suffering due to impairment of faculties, disfigurement, injury to reputation or honour, infringement of liberty or personal rights, death of a close person, and fear, if it finds that the circumstances of the case, and especially the intensity of pain and fear and their duration, so warrant, irrespective of any material compensation or absence thereof.’
[150] Article 157 of the Law on Obligations: ‘1. Any person has the right to request a court of law or another competent authority to order the cessation of an action violating his integrity as a person, his personal and family life, and his other personal rights. 2. The court of law or other competent authority may order the cessation of the action on pain of payment to the injured party of a lump sum or sums per unit of time.’
[151] Article 199 of the Law on Obligations: ‘If a right belonging to a person has been violated, the court may order the publication of the judgement or a correction at the expense of the person who caused the damage, or order that person to withdraw the damaging statement, or order him to do anything else necessary to fulfil the purpose of the compensation.’
[152] Article 154 of the Law on Obligations.
[153] Article 1 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Adopted and opened for signature and ratification by General Assembly resolution 2106 A (XX) of 21 December 1965. Entered into force on 4 January 1969 in accordance with Article 19. SFRY Official Gazette, (International treaties), No. 6/1967. See also Article 1 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.
[154] Vojin Dimitrijević, Milan Paunović, Ljudska prava (Human rights), Belgrade Human Rights Centre, 1997, p. 187.
[155] Article 1, paragraph 2, of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
[156] The international Convention Concerning Discrimination in Respect of Employment and Occupation adopted by the ILO conference in 1958. See also ILO recommendations regarding discrimination and the choice of occupation of 1958.
[157] Article 2 (1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly resolution 2200 A (XXI) of 16 December 1966. Entered into force on 3 January 1976, in accordance with article 27. SFRY Official Gazette (International treaties), No. 7/1971.
[158] UN Human Rights Committee, 37th Session (1989), General Commentary No. 18 Non-discrimination.
[159] The law was published in the FRY Official Gazette No. 11/02 of 27 February 2002.
[160] Article 4 (2) of the Law on the Protection of National Rights and Liberties of National Minorities.
[161] FRY Official Gazette (International treaties), No. 4/01.
[162] Article 46 of the Constitutional Charter of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro.
[163] The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, 58th Session, General Recommendation XXVII on anti-Roma discrimination (measures in the domain of education, chapter 3), 2000.
[164] Human Rights Watch analysis of controversial issues of human rights in the FRY, 11 July 2002; Amnesty International, ‘Amnesty International’s concerns in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the proposed accession of the FRY to the Council of Europe’, 20 September 2002.
[165] European Roma Rights Center, Press Release to European Council, 23 September 2002.
[166] Race Equality Directive, 2000/43/EC, June 2000.
[167] See footnote 70.
[168] The Council of Europe recommendation on education of Roma children, adopted by the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers on 3 February 2000. See the Hague recommendations on national minority education rights adopted at the proposal of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities by the international expert non-governmental organization Foundation for Inter-ethnic Relations in 1995.
[169] See: Memorandum prepared by the Secretariat of the Council of Europe on problems facing Roma/Gypsies in the field of housing, 2002.