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Submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Committee in Advance of its Review of the Second Periodic Report of Croatia

September 2009

This memorandum, submitted by Human Rights Watch in advance of the United Nations Human Rights Committee’s (“the Committee”) review of Croatia’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (“the Covenant”), addresses several areas of concern raised by the Committee in its List of Issues to be Taken up in Conjunction with the Consideration of the Second Periodic Report of Croatia (“List of Issues”): the situation of Serb returnees, the slow pace and perceived lack of fairness of domestic war crimes trials, and attacks against and intimidation of journalists. In our contribution we aim to elaborate and provide updated information on developments in these three areas, and put forward measures the Croatian government should be encouraged to take to address them.

In addition, this submission also highlights a further area of concern not specifically addressed in the List of Issues, and which we wish to bring to the Committee's attention: the situation of persons with disabilities, especially in mental health institutions.

We hope the information provided will inform the Committee's upcoming consideration of Croatia's report.

Situation of Serb returnees (arts. 2, 26 and 27)

Paragraph 6 of the List of Issues queries the Croatian government about measures taken to prevent discrimination against members of the Serbian minority, including in the area of housing and property rights.

Instances of Croatian Serbs continuing to experience difficulties to repossess occupied homes persist, even with court judgments in their favor. Currently, 25 cases remain pending before Croatian courts. Some of these cases have been delayed in lengthy court proceedings.

In a positive development, some progress has been made towards resolving the issue of occupied agricultural land. Seventeen Croatian Serbs have re-gained their occupied plots on the basis of a tripartite (the state, the owners and the occupants) out-of-court settlements, whereby the state compensated the occupants for the costs of planted crops and the occupants agreed to stop using the land.

At this writing, only 55% of 17,586 requests for reconstruction had been processed, and only 52% of cases processed were resolved positively, a situation which continues to compromise the financial security of returnees and other elderly Serbs. Problems also remain with administrative bodies in charge of processing the requests refusing to accept legally admissible evidence.

Croatian Serbs also continue to experience discrimination in access to employment and face obstacles to return having lost their rights to socially-owned apartments.

In some cases, those who had formerly lived in private accommodation and who had formally repossessed their homes could not return because their homes had been looted and destroyed. At present, 8,200 previously rejected requests for reconstruction are pending at the appeal instance. Only 35% of a total of 145, 000 reconstructed family houses belong to Croatian Serbs.

To date, the government has made some progress towards returning occupied private properties to their rightful owners. Nevertheless, property law has in practice favored ethnic Croats over ethnic Serbs, by giving precedence to the right of temporary occupants, who are mainly ethnic Croats, over original owners, who are predominantly ethnic Serbs since repossession orders cannot be implemented before an alternative housing is made available to occupants.

  • We encourage the Committee to ask the Croatian government about the status of its current efforts to simplify and expedite procedures for applications for reconstruction assistance and social housing by ethnic Serbs; and to provide remedies for the remaining persons seeking return of agricultural land.

War crimes trials (arts. 2 and 14)

In paragraph 12 of the List of Issues, the Committee queries the Croatian government about measures taken to ensure that "allegations of war crimes have been investigated with a view to prosecution, irrespective of the ethnic identity of those suspected." It also asks the Croatian government to comment on "reports according to which the prosecution of war crimes continues to be dealt with in a discriminatory manner," and "on the allegations that many trials have taken place in absentia."

Croatian Serbs continue to make up the majority of defendants in war crimes trials, a disproportion so large that it raises concern about ethnic bias. There were 20 active trials during the first eight months of 2009, involving 61 defendants (37 Serbs, 17 Croats, while the rest represented other minorities) across ten county courts.

War crimes trials in absentia against Serbs continued during 2009, despite opposition from the State Attorney's Office. Fifty-four percent of Croatian Serb defendants (20 out of 37) were tried in absentia, primarily due to two large, mainly in absentia, trials in the Vukovar County Court.  The State Attorney's Office is opposed to such trials, and the Supreme Court has overturned guilty convictions against Serbs in a number of trials, citing insufficient evidence or poorly reasoned judgments.

During the first eight months of 2009, 14 war crimes trials involving 41 individuals (20 Serbs, 13 Croats, 6 Ruthenians, 1 Roma, and 1 Bosniak) were completed. Four of these trials were in fact re-trials after the Supreme Court reversed the previous first instance verdicts.

  • We encourage the Committee to ask the Croatian government to cease war crimes trials in absentia.

Attacks against and intimidation of journalists (art. 19)

In paragraph 23 of the List of Issues, the Committee queries the Croatian government about the government response to "physical attacks, death threats and other instances of intimidation against journalists, particularly those involved in research on war crimes." In July 2008 the Association of Croatian Journalists threatened a general strike to protest pressure and intimidation of journalists reporting on war crimes and other sensitive topics. The protest followed threats in February 2008 against Drago Hedl, a reporter with the Feral Tribune newspaper, apparently in relation to his coverage of wartime abuses in Osijek, and a violent assault in June 2008 on Dusan Miljus, a well-known journalist covering organized crime and corruption. At this writing, the police have yet to identify and bring to justice Miljus's assailants. The government condemned both incidents.

On October 28, 2008 Ivo Pukanic, a well-known editor of the prominent political weekly Nacional, and his marketing director Niko Franjic, were killed by a car bomb in Zagreb. The Croatian government has offered rewards for any information regarding fugitives suspected of being involved in the killings. Three suspects were arrested in Zagreb in late October 2008. Two are now being held in Zagreb, although no formal charges have yet been brought against them, and one is being held in Belgrade.  Police have yet to track down the person who ordered the murders, and the investigation is currently stalled.

On February 1, 2009, Zeljko Peratovic, an independent journalist investigating war crimes, was accused of "disseminating information likely to upset the population." The case was brought at the behest of Tomislav Karamarko, Croatia's interior minister. Peratovic had accused Karamarko of obstructing the investigation into the death of Milan Levar, a witness protected by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), who was killed in a bomb blast in the village of Gospic in 2000. The charge brought carries a maximum sentence of one year in prison, as well as a fine. The case was still at the preliminary stage in the Community Criminal Court in Zagreb at time of this writing.

  • We encourage the Committee to ask the Croatian government to publicly and unequivocally condemn all instances of violence, intimidation, and other offenses against independent journalists.

Situation of persons with disabilities (arts. 2, 7, 9, 10, 26 )

Although the Committee did not specifically request information on the situation of people with disabilities in Croatia, Human Rights Watch has received disturbing reports that reveal significant shortcomings in this area, raising concerns under the Covenant. 

While Croatia is party to all major international human rights conventions, including the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and works towards harmonizing its laws and regulations with the EU standards, there are gaps in legal provisions, policy making and service delivery for the disabled, particularly those with mental disabilities.  In a November 2008 report, the European Commission noted that Croatia had made "no progress" in the area of mental health, citing in particular the lack of community-based alternatives to institutionalization for people with mental health issues and the scarcity of resources the state had devoted to improving mental health treatment options.  Croatia has made little progress since that time in implementing its obligations towards people with disabilities, and particularly mental disabilities.

In December 2008, the European Court of Human Rights found in X v. Croatia that Croatia had violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights by depriving a mentally disabled woman of her right to family life. The Croatian courts had stripped the woman, a diagnosed schizophrenic and occasional drug addict, of all of her legal capacity and then later adopted out her daughter without the woman's consent or involvement.  The court determined that such actions were not proportionate to the woman's mental illness and thus went beyond what the state could deem "necessary in a democratic society" with regards to the mentally ill. 

Croatian NGOs dealing with disability issues have sought Croatian government clarification in relation to the official Croatian translation of articles 12 and 19 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which erroneously allows for residential institutions to be described as "community living options." Local disability rights organizations have expressed concern that this error serves to justify excessive institutionalization of patients under the cover of more comprehensive care.

Indeed, Croatian NGOs working on mental health issues point to excessive institutionalization of mental health patients, including those experiencing very mild forms of disability who could be easily integrated into society, or people who experience no disability at all. One recent case illustrating the problem of wrongful institutionalization concerns Ana Dragicevic, who was placed in a psychiatric hospital by her parents at age 16 in 2004, after they had found out that she was engaged in a romantic relationship with another girl. When she turned 18, the institution continued to detain her, despite her refusal to voluntarily submit to such detention.  She was finally released from the institution in 2008 after an intervention by the State Attorney's Office, following a five-year campaign by the local media and an organization that defends the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people.

The treatment of people in mental health institutions is also of significant concern, with frequent reports of abuse and neglect that have an adverse effect on the mental health of patients. In one recent incident on May 30, 2009, a young man at the Center for Autism in Zagreb was apparently inflicted with life-threatening burns from hot water when members of the staff at the Center showered him. Although police initiated an investigation following this incident, no official action has been taken against the Center or its staff members to date. 

  • We encourage the Committee to ask the Croatian government to create community-based systems of care for people with mental disabilities, ensure that its laws on legal capacity for people with mental disabilities are non-discriminatory, and strengthen its oversight of mental health residential facilities to ensure that those with mental disabilities are not subject to inhuman, and degrading treatment, or arbitrary detention, and are otherwise treated with the dignity they deserve.

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