Preface
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2006
Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
March 6, 2007
Across the globe, men and women are pushing for greater personal and political freedom and for the adoption of democratic institutions. They are striving to secure what President Bush calls "the non-negotiable demands of human dignity."
Despite personal risk and against great odds, courageous individuals and nongovernmental groups expose human rights abuses. They seek to protect the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, workers, and women, and to stop the trafficking in human beings. They work to build vibrant civil societies, ensure free and fair elections, and establish accountable, law-based democracies.
These impatient patriots are redefining the limitations of what was previously thought to be possible. Indeed, in the span of a few generations freedom has spread across the developing world, communist dictatorships have collapsed, and new democracies have risen. The rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are protected more fully and by more countries than ever before.
This noble work continues - but it is not yet complete and it faces determined opponents. Not surprisingly, those who feel threatened by democratic change resist those who advocate and act for reform. Over the past year, we have seen attempts to harass and intimidate human rights defenders and civil society organizations and to restrict or shut down their activities. Unjust laws have been wielded as political weapons against those with independent views. There also have been attempts to silence dissenting voices by extralegal means.
Whenever non-governmental organizations and other human rights defenders are under siege, freedom and democracy are undermined. The world's democracies must defend the defenders. That is one of the primary missions of our diplomacy today, and we hope that the Department of State's County Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2006 will help to further this effort. With these thoughts, I hereby submit these reports to the United States Congress.
Condoleezza Rice
Secretary of State
Introduction
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2006
Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
March 6, 2007
These reports describe the performance of governments in putting into practice their international commitments on human rights. These fundamental rights, reflected in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, constitute what President Bush calls the "non-negotiable demands of human dignity." As Secretary Rice has said, the full promise of the UN Universal Declaration cannot be realized overnight, but it is urgent work that cannot be delayed.
The Universal Declaration calls upon "every individual and every organ of society … to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance..."
The United States takes its human rights commitments seriously. We recognize that we are writing this report at a time when our own record, and actions we have taken to respond to the terrorist attacks against us, have been questioned. The United States will continue to respond forthrightly to the good faith concerns of others, including by means of the reports we submit periodically in accordance with our obligations under various human rights treaties to which we are a party. We are also committed to continual improvement. US laws, policies, and practices governing the detention, treatment, and trial of terrorist suspects have evolved considerably over the last five years. Our democratic system of government is not infallible, but it is accountable--our robust civil society, our vibrant free media, our independent branches of government, and a well established rule of law work as correctives.
The congressionally mandated country reports on human rights practices that follow are an essential element of the United States' effort to promote respect for human rights worldwide. For three decades, these annual reports have been used widely here and abroad as a reference document for assessing the progress made and the challenges that remain. They also have served as a foundation for cooperative action among governments, organizations, and individuals seeking to end abuses and strengthen the capacity of countries to protect the fundamental rights of all.
The reports review each country's performance in 2006. Each report speaks for itself. Yet, broad patterns are discernible and are described below, supported by country-specific examples. The examples we cite are illustrative, not exhaustive.
Hopeful Trends, Yet Sobering Realities
As a review of these reports shows, across the globe in 2006, men and women continued to press for their rights to be respected and their governments to be responsive, for their voices to be heard and their votes to count, for just laws and justice for all. There also was a growing recognition that democracy is the form of government that can best meet the demands of citizens for dignity, liberty, and equality. These are hopeful trends indeed, yet the reports also reflect sobering realities:
First, the advances made in human rights and democracy were hard won and challenging to sustain. While some countries made significant progress, some lagged and others regressed.
As the range of examples below demonstrates, the performance of countries varied greatly, depending on factors such as the degree of governmental commitment, institutional capacity, the extent of corruption, and the strength of civil society.
In January 2006 Liberia's democratically elected Unity Party government, led by Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the first female head of state in Africa, replaced the National Transitional Government of Liberia, which had served as the interim government since the end of a ruinous 14-year civil war in 2003. The government took significant steps to correct past human rights deficiencies, including working with international partners to rehabilitate the country's justice sector and establishing a public defender's office in the capital. The president dismissed or suspended a number of corrupt government officials. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established in 2005 to investigate human rights violations and war crimes committed during the civil war, began taking statements from witnesses. Despite this progress, Liberia continued to face serious human rights challenges, including a still weak judiciary, official corruption and impunity, gender-based violence, and extreme poverty that led to child labor.
Substantial reductions in killings by the armed forces and the police in politically sensitive areas of Indonesia continued during the year. Fifty-four generally free and fair elections were held at the provincial, regency, district, and municipal levels, most notably in December in Aceh, where a former rebel field commander won the governorship. Although inter-communal religious violence generally abated, it nonetheless persisted in some areas. The government and the courts were unable to confront past human rights abuses and atrocities both in Indonesia and in East Timor.
Morocco's human rights record showed notable progress, although problems remained. The government began to address past human rights abuses by providing compensation through the Consultative Council on Human Rights for specific cases of arrest, disappearance, and abuse during the period between 1956 and 1999. In March the government enacted an antitorture law, although reports of torture by various branches of the security forces persisted. There was extensive and largely open debate in public and in the press, despite continuing restrictions on freedom of the press and speech. During the year the government punished some journalists who violated limitations on free speech, and many journalists practiced self-censorship. Trafficking in persons, particularly for sexual exploitation, and child labor remained issues of concern; however, both the government and civil society were increasingly active in addressing them.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo held its first democratic presidential and legislative elections in more than 45 years, putting an end to a three-year post-civil war transitional period. A new constitution went into force. Yet, the human rights record remained poor. In addition to simmering conflict in the east, where government control remained weak and armed groups continued to commit serious abuses, government security forces across the country also committed serious abuses with impunity.
In Haiti, citizens demonstrated their commitment to democracy by going to the polls three times in 2006. More than 3.5 million citizens registered to vote, and an impressive turnout estimated at more than 70 percent of registered voters participated in the first round of presidential and parliamentary elections in February. After a relatively stable and violence-free election process, voters selected President Rene Preval and filled 129 parliamentary seats. In December, Haiti held its first municipal elections in more than a decade. Yet much remains to be done to restore fully the rule of law, including an overhaul of Haiti's dysfunctional judicial system and the continued retraining and vetting of the Haitian National Police.
In Ukraine, notable post-Orange Revolution progress in human rights performance continued to be made. The March 2006 parliamentary elections were the freest in 15 years of independence. The country continued to make improvements in press freedom, freedom of association, and the development of civil society. Despite these gains, a number of serious problems remained, including corruption in all branches of government.
Although Kyrgyzstan's human rights record had improved considerably following the change to democratically elected leadership in 2005, during 2006 a week of mass yet peaceful protests culminated in the hasty adoption of an amended constitution that offered the possibility for genuine checks and balances. At the end of December, however, parliament passed another constitution negating many key checks and balances. The government also harassed foreign-funded nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
Despite President Musharraf's stated commitment to democratic transition and "enlightened moderation," Pakistan's human rights record continued to be poor. Restrictions remained on freedom of movement, expression, association, and religion. Disappearances of provincial activists and political opponents continued, especially in provinces experiencing internal turmoil and insurgencies. The security forces continued to commit extrajudicial killings. Arbitrary arrest and torture remained common. Corruption was pervasive throughout the government and police forces. On a positive note, in December the National Assembly passed and President Musharraf signed the Women's Protection Bill - marking the first time in three decades that a Pakistan government successfully rolled back laws detrimental to women's rights. The law amends the 1979 rape and adultery provision of the Hudood Ordinance by transferring the offense of rape from Pakistan Sharia law to the Pakistan Penal Code. The law also eliminates the requirement for rape victims to present four male witnesses to press charges.
Though Egypt held a first-ever, multi-party presidential election in 2005, in 2006 public calls for greater democratization and accountability sometimes met with strong government reaction. The continued imprisonment of former presidential candidate Ayman Nour raised serious concerns about the path of political reform and democracy in the country. Continuing a trend begun in 2005, the government arrested and detained hundreds of activists affiliated with the banned-but-tolerated Muslim Brotherhood, generally for periods lasting several weeks. Two senior judges were brought in for questioning in February for publicly calling for an independent judiciary. Egyptian police arrested and detained over 500 activists for participating in demonstrations in support of judicial independence. In addition, severe cases of torture by authorities were documented. The government also arrested, detained, and abused several Internet bloggers.
In Kazakhstan, the government restricted the functioning of the political opposition by enforcing onerous registration requirements and hindering or denying political party registration. The merging of progovernment parties consolidated the firm leadership of President Nazarbayev's Otan Party and left less political space to express alternative views and advocate for reform. The government harassed the political opposition via politically motivated charges and restrictions on freedom of assembly, passed laws restricting press freedom, and harassed NGOs.
Russia experienced continuing centralization of power in the executive branch, including amendments to election laws and new legislation for political parties that grants the government broad powers to regulate, investigate, limit, and even close down parties. Taken together with a compliant State Duma, corruption and selectivity in law enforcement, political pressure on the judiciary, and restrictions on the NGOs and the media, these trends resulted in the further erosion of government accountability. In Chechnya and other areas of the North Caucasus, serious human rights violations continued, including unlawful killings and abuses of civilians by both federal and Chechen Republic security forces. Rebel fighters committed terrorist bombings and politically motivated disappearances in the region. In a growing number of cases, the European Court of Human Rights held Russia responsible for these abuses.
In Venezuela, the Chavez government continued to consolidate power in the executive branch. The government continued to harass the opposition and NGOs and to weaken judicial independence. International observers judged generally free and fair the December presidential elections, in which President Chavez won re-election with 63 percent of the vote. In his inaugural address, President Chavez asked the National Assembly, in which his parties control 100 percent of the seats, to grant him power to rule by executive decree.
In Fiji and Thailand, militaries overthrew democratically elected governments.
A second sobering reality is that insecurity due to internal and/or cross-border conflict can threaten or thwart advancements in human rights and democratic government.
Despite the Iraqi government's continuing commitment to foster national reconciliation and reconstruction, keep to an electoral course, and establish the rule of law, both deepening sectarian violence and acts of terrorism seriously undercut human rights and democratic progress during 2006. Although the Iraqi constitution and law provide a strong framework for the protection of human rights, armed groups attacked human rights from two different directions: those proclaiming their hostility to the government--Al-Qa'ida terrorists, irreconcilable remnants of the Ba'athist regime, and insurgents waging guerrilla warfare; and members of Shi'a militias and individual ministries' security forces--nominally allied with the government--who committed torture and other abuses.
Although Afghanistan made important human rights progress since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, its human rights record remained poor. This was mainly due to weak central institutions and a deadly insurgency: the Taliban, Al-Qa'ida, and other extremist groups stepped up attacks against government officials, security forces, NGOs and other aid personnel, and unarmed civilians; and the number of suicide bombings rose dramatically during the year, as did attacks on schools and teachers. There were continued reports of cases of arbitrary arrests and detention, extrajudicial killings, torture, and poor prison conditions. In December President Karzai launched a Transitional Justice Action Plan designed to address past violations of human rights and improve the institutional capacity of the justice system.
Lebanon's significant steps toward reform following the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and the subsequent withdrawal of Syrian troops after nearly three decades of occupation have been hampered since the July-August 2006 conflict between Hizballah and Israel. Before the conflict, the Lebanese government had started to remove many of the obstacles that barred political associations and parties. After Hizballah entered Israel from Lebanese territory and kidnapped and killed several Israeli soldiers, Israeli military forces responded by entering Lebanese territory. The conflict ended with an UN-sponsored cessation of hostilities. Despite the cessation of hostilities and the deployment of the Lebanon Armed Forces and UN Interim Forces in the south, Lebanese militias and Hizballah retained significant influence over parts of the country.
In East Timor, a series of deadly clashes between the national defense force and a variety of dissident military, police, and civilian forces led to widespread mob and gang violence in the capital. At the request of the government, forces from Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Portugal assumed responsibility for security in the capital. On August 25, the UN Integrated Mission for East Timor took over policing responsibilities. This internal conflict resulted in the displacement of approximately 150,000 people, more than 15 percent of the country's population.
Third, despite gains for human rights and democratic principles in every region of the world, much of humanity still lives in fear yet dreams of freedom.
Countries in which power remained concentrated in the hands of unaccountable rulers--whether totalitarian or authoritarian--continued to be the world's most systematic human rights violators.
In 2006 North Korea remained one of the world's most isolated and repressive regimes. The regime controls almost all aspects of citizens' lives, denying freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association, and restricts freedom of movement and worker rights. The constitution provides for "freedom of religious belief," but genuine religious freedom does not exist. An estimated 150,000 to 200,000 people, including political prisoners, were held in detention camps, and many prisoners died from torture, starvation, disease, and exposure.
The military government in Burma extensively used executions, rape, torture, arbitrary detention, and forced relocation of entire villages, particularly of ethnic minorities, to maintain its grip on power. Prisoners and detainees were subjected to abuse and held in harsh, life-threatening conditions. Surveillance, harassment, and imprisonment of political activists continued; Nobel Laureate and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi remained incommunicado under house arrest, and over 1,100 political prisoners languished in prison. The use of forced labor, trafficking in persons, conscription of child soldiers, and religious discrimination remained widespread. The government reconvened the sham National Convention, handpicking delegates and prohibiting free debate. Touted as part of a "democracy road map", the convention was designed to nullify the results of the 1990 election and adopt a new, regime-friendly constitution. The regime's cruel and destructive misrule also resulted in refugee outflows, the spread of infectious diseases, and the trafficking of drugs and human beings into neighboring countries.
The Iranian government flagrantly violated freedom of speech and assembly, intensifying its crackdown against dissidents, journalists, and reformers - a crackdown characterized by arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture, disappearances, the use of excessive force, and the widespread denial of fair public trials. The government continued to detain and abuse Baha'is and other religious minorities and hosted a widely condemned conference denying the existence of the Holocaust. In the lead-up to the December 15 Assembly of Experts elections in Iran, more than two-thirds of those who had applied to run - including all female candidates - were disqualified, leaving many seats uncontested. Hundreds of candidates in nationwide municipal elections also were disqualified. The government continued to flout domestic and international calls for responsible government in 2006 by supporting terrorist movements in Syria and Lebanon as well as calling for the destruction of a UN member state.
In Zimbabwe, the Mugabe government continued across-the-board violations of human rights. Official corruption and impunity were widespread. The 2002 Official Secrets Act and Public Order and Security Act remained in effect, severely restricting civil liberties. In the 2006 parliamentary by-elections and rural district council elections, the government's manipulation of the electoral process disenfranchised voters and skewed elections in favor of ruling party candidates. The ruling party's dominance permitted constitutional changes without wide consultation. Security forces harassed, beat, and arbitrarily arrested critics and opposition supporters. Disruptions at farms and seizures of property continued and were sometimes violent. The campaign of forced evictions, which left 700,000 people homeless during Operation Restore Order in 2005, continued on a lesser scale. The government interfered with humanitarian organizations' efforts to provide assistance. In December Mugabe and his loyalists proposed extending his term for two years by deferring presidential elections to 2010.
In Cuba, the government, temporarily headed by Raul Castro due to Fidel Castro's illness, continued to violate virtually all the rights of its citizens, including the fundamental right to change their government peacefully or criticize the revolution or its leaders. In 2006 the government increased its harassment of dissidents and other citizens viewed as threats to the government, often through mob actions called "acts of repudiation" involving verbal abuse and physical attacks. Beatings and abuse of detainees and prisoners also were carried out with impunity. Although token releases of prisoners occurred during the year, at least 283 political prisoners and detainees were held at year's end, including 59 of 75 prodemocracy and human rights activists imprisoned in a March 2003 crackdown.
The Chinese government's human rights record deteriorated in some areas in 2006. There was an increased number of high-profile cases involving the monitoring, harassment, detention, and imprisonment of political and religious activists, journalists, and writers as well as defense lawyers seeking to exercise their rights under the law. Some of their family members also were harassed and detained. Large numbers of mass demonstrations and protests calling for redress of grievances continued and in some cases were violently suppressed. New government controls were imposed on: NGOs; the media, including the Internet; and courts and judges. Repression of unregistered religious groups and of minority groups, in particular Uighurs and Tibetans, remained a serious concern.
In Belarus, the Lukashenko government continued and intensified its repressive policies. The March presidential election was severely flawed. Up to 1,000 people were arrested in an ensuing crackdown on public protests against the results and many were sentenced to short jail terms. More activists and opposition members, including Aleksander Kozulin, who ran against Lukashenko in the presidential race, were sentenced to jail terms ranging from 2 to 5 ˝ years.
The Eritrean government continued to be one of the most repressive in Sub-Saharan Africa, and its human rights record worsened in 2006. Government security forces committed extrajudicial killings; there were credible reports that security forces shot on sight individuals trying to cross the border into Ethiopia. The government escalated its campaign of arresting national service evaders as well as their relatives, and there also were credible reports indicating that some of those arrested were tortured. As it did in 2005, the government ordered several international humanitarian NGOs to leave the country, despite a severe drought in the Horn of Africa. There were continued severe restrictions on religious freedom.
The fourth sobering reality is that as the worldwide push for greater personal and political freedom grows stronger, it is being met with increasing resistance from those who feel threatened by political and societal change.
Human rights defenders and nongovernmental organizations are essential to a nation's success. In today's world, the problems confronting states are too complex even for the most powerful to tackle alone. The contributions of civil society and the free flow of ideas and information are crucial in addressing a host of domestic and international challenges. Restricting the political space of NGOs and public debate only limits a society's own growth.
In every region of the globe in 2006, there were governments that responded to the growing demands for personal and political freedom not by accepting their obligations to their people but by oppressing those who advocated for human rights and who exposed abuses, such as nongovernmental organizations and independent media, including the Internet. A disturbing number of countries passed or selectively applied laws and regulations against NGOs and journalists. NGOs and journalists also were subjected to extralegal measures, often by unknown assailants. For example:
In Russia in 2006, a new NGO law entered into force in April imposing more stringent registration requirements for NGOs, strict monitoring of organizations, extensive and onerous reporting requirements on programming and activities, and empowering the Federal Registration Service to deny registration or to shut down an organization based on vague and subjective criteria. Freedom of expression and media independence declined due to government pressure and restrictions. In October unknown persons murdered human rights defender Anna Politkovskaya, a prominent journalist known for her critical writing on human rights abuses in Chechnya. The government used its controlling ownership of all national television and radio stations, as well as of the majority of influential regional ones, to restrict access to information deemed sensitive.
In Belarus, onerous tax inspections and NGO registration requirements made it difficult for civil society organizations to operate, and attacks against members of the independent media continued. In November prodemocracy activist Dmitriy Dashkevich was sentenced to 18 months in prison for operating an unregistered NGO.
The government of Kazakhstan registered the opposition True Ak Zhol party after one of its co-chairmen, Sarsenbaiuly, was killed and restrictively interpreted Article 5 of the constitution to suspend foreign-funded, nonpartisan political party training activities, asserting that providing information is tantamount to financing political parties. In July President Nazarbayev signed into law restrictive media amendments deemed a step backward by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Freedom of Media Representative. The government continued to use restrictive libel laws to fine, convict, and suspend media outlets, journalists, and critics. In April a member of a suspended media outlet was brutally beaten.
Freedom of expression, association and assembly are tightly restricted in Turkmenistan, and the government sought to control all NGO activity. Foreign-origin satellite television is accessible throughout the country, but the government controlled all domestic media, and local journalists were prohibited from all contact with foreigners unless specifically permitted. Very limited Internet access was provided through government-owned Turkmen Telecom; no new accounts were allowed in the capital since September 2002. In August the government arrested journalists Ogulspapar Myradova, Annakurban Amanklichev, and Sapardurdy Hajiyev and sentenced them to six to seven years of imprisonment for weapons possession in a closed, summary trial. In September Myradova, a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty correspondent, died in prison under suspicious circumstances. NGOs have reported that she and her two colleagues were tortured during detention in the summer to extract confessions of weapons possession. On December 21, President Saparmurat Niyazov died.
The Government of Uzbekistan sought to control most NGO activity and closed down over 200 civil society organizations, including international NGOs operating in the country, citing alleged violations of the law. Independent journalists and human rights activists continued to be persecuted.
The Syrian government strictly controlled the dissemination of information and prohibited criticism of the government and discussion of sectarian issues, including religious and minority rights. There were detentions and beatings for individual expressions of opinion that violated these restrictions, for example the February arrest of journalist Adel Mahfouz after he called for interfaith dialogue following the controversy surrounding the depiction of the Prophet Muhammed in cartoons. The government relied on its press and publication laws, the penal code, and the Emergency Law to censor access to the Internet, and it restricted electronic media. Harassment of domestic human rights activists also occurred, including regular close surveillance and the imposition of travel bans when they sought to attend workshops and conferences outside the country.
Press freedom was at an all-time low in Iran, as the government closed independent newspapers Shargh and Iran, blocked access to Internet news sites--including the New York Times and BBC Farsi--and jailed journalists and bloggers. The authorities used bans against leaving the country as a weapon against journalists.
In Burundi, there was an increase in the arrest, detention, and intimidation of journalists and human rights activists by the government; among many other individuals, police arrested and detained for several months the president of the country's leading anticorruption NGO. A governor of one province reportedly called the country's leading human rights NGO, League Iteka, an enemy of peace, and in November a government official announced that 32 registered international NGOs in the country could face expulsion for failure to submit mandatory annual reports to the government.
In Rwanda, there was a restrictive atmosphere for the functioning of civil society. Domestic and international NGOs are required by law to register each year and to provide reports to the government on their activities. Authorities reportedly required some NGOs to obtain government authorization for some projects before being allowed to access international donor funds. In addition, all NGOs were expected to join a collective intended to manage their activities.
The Venezuelan government continued to harass and intimidate civil society groups, most notably the leaders of the electoral watchdog NGO Sumate, whose trial for conspiracy and treason for accepting a foreign grant was indefinitely postponed but continues to hang over their heads. At year's end a draft law was under consideration in the National Assembly which, if implemented, would increase government control over NGOs' financing and restrict NGOs from working in the areas of human rights or democracy promotion. Amendments to the penal code that impose prison sentences for insulting public officials and violent attacks on journalists contributed to a climate of self-censorship. The government stepped up its harassment of independent and opposition news outlets. In December President Chavez announced that the government would not renew the broadcast license of Radio Caracas Television, the country's oldest commercial television network. The government accused the network owners of being "coup-mongers" and of violating the public trust.
In China, NGOs, both domestic and international, continued to face increased scrutiny and restrictions. By the end of 2006, Reporters without Borders reported that 31 journalists and 52 Internet writers were in jail. While the government encouraged use of the Internet, it also took steps to monitor its use, control content, restrict information, and punish those who violated regulations. The government imposed stricter website registration requirements, enhanced official control of online content, and expanded the definition of illegal online content. The government consistently blocked access to sites it deemed controversial, and the authorities reportedly began to employ more sophisticated technology enabling the selective blocking of specific content rather than entire websites.
Vietnam continued to monitor and restrict the Internet, blocking international human rights and news websites. Laws allow citizens to complain openly about inefficient government and corruption, but the government continued to prohibit the press from drafting articles that questioned the role of the Communist Party, promoted pluralism or multiparty democracy, or questioned human rights policy. The government forbids direct access to the Internet through Independent Service Providers and requires cybercafé owners to register the personal information of their customers and the sites visited. The government released several high-profile political and religious dissidents, including Dr. Pham Hong Son, who was imprisoned for translating articles on democracy and disseminating them over the Internet.
Genocide was the most sobering reality of all.
Almost 60 years after the adoption of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights--an expression of the outraged conscience of mankind to the enormity of the Holocaust and the cataclysm of the Second World War--genocide continued to ravage the Darfur region of Sudan.
Despite the January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement ending the 22-year civil war between the north and south, and the establishment of a unity government that year, ethnic conflict continued in Sudan, most catastrophically in Darfur. The Sudanese government andgovernment-backed janjaweed militia bear responsibility for the genocide in Darfur, and all parties to the conflagration committed serious abuses, including the widespread killing of civilians, rape as a tool of war, systematic torture, robbery, and recruitment of child soldiers. By the end of 2006, the Darfur conflict had resulted in at least 200,000 civilian deaths and two million displaced by the fighting. Over 234,000 refugees had fled to neighboring Chad, and both Chad and the Central African Republic experienced violent ethnic conflict along their borders with Sudan.
In spite of indicating its support for the Addis Ababa framework, the Sudanese government publicly rejected international forces for Darfur and renewed its military offensive during the latter half of 2006. The deteriorating security conditions forced some international NGOs and humanitarian organizations to scale back or suspend operations.
Defend the Defenders
If the great promise of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights is to be fulfilled, the international community--and especially the world's democracies--cannot accept that today's sobering realities are impervious to change. Indeed, they compel us to align ourselves with those who work for human dignity and political reform.
In 2006 the courageous efforts of human rights defenders were highlighted by democratic governments:
Country resolutions passed by the United Nations General Assembly in 2006 emphasized the need to protect human rights defenders in Iran, Belarus, North Korea, and Burma.
The UN Democracy Fund, growing out of an idea presented to the General Assembly by President Bush in 2004 and established in 2005, completed its first year successfully. Its board agreed to fund 125 projects out of more than 1,300 proposals submitted by over 100 countries--a disbursal of more than $35 million in grants mostly to prodemocracy civil society organizations.
At the regional level, in June 2006 the General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) adopted the Declaration of Santo Domingo, a groundbreaking multilateral commitment by the countries of the region to "guarantee the liberty of every person to enjoy freedom of expression, including access to uncensored political debate and the free exchange of ideas through all forms of mass media, including the Internet." The Foreign Ministers also declared their resolve to develop and encourage strategies and best practices to that effect.
The OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights' Unit for Human Rights Defenders issued a report on the serious problems they face in some countries, emphasizing the need for governments to support their work.
In advance of the July African Union Assembly of the Heads of State, civil society organizations from 19 African countries met in Banjul, The Gambia, to develop recommendations for summit leaders regarding civil society's role in the African Peer Review Mechanism on countries' compliance with treaty obligations, ways to improve access to information by civil society, and citizenship laws that entrench discrimination. These recommendations were adopted at the summit.
In the Broader Middle East and North Africa region the Forum for the Future brought together government officials and civil society representatives from the region, along with G-8 partners, at the Dead Sea in Jordan. Nearly 50 civil society leaders representing hundreds of organizations from 16 countries of the region participated in discussions on the rule of law, transparency, women's and youth empowerment, and the legal environment for civil society organizations. They also discussed how to strengthen reform by establishing mechanisms to follow up on recommendations. Though the hardest part lies ahead--adoption and implementation of recommendations put forward by civil society--the Forum helped to open political space that did not before exist for civil society organizations to form and interact with governments in the region.
Marking International Human Rights Day in December 2006, Secretary Rice launched two important U.S. initiatives in support of human rights and democracy defenders:
She announced the creation of a Human Rights Defenders Fund to be administered by the State Department that will quickly disburse small grants to help human rights defenders facing extraordinary needs as a result of government repression. This funding could go to cover legal defense, medical costs, or the pressing needs of activists' families.
Secretary Rice also issued ten guiding NGO Principles regarding the treatment by governments of nongovernmental organizations. These core principles will guide U.S. treatment of NGOs, and we also will use them to assess the actions of other governments. The principles are meant to complement lengthier, more detailed United Nations and other international documents addressing human rights defenders and can help to rally worldwide support for embattled NGOs by serving as a handy resource for governments, international organizations, civil society groups, and journalists.
When democracies support the work of human rights advocates and civil society organizations, we are helping men and women in countries across the globe shape their own destinies in freedom. And by so doing, we are helping to build a safer, better world for all.
We must defend the defenders, for they are the agents of peaceful, democratic change
Serbia (includes Kosovo)
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2006
Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
March 6, 2007
(The Report on Kosovo is appended at the end of this Report.)
The Republic of Serbia is a parliamentary democracy with approximately 7.5 million inhabitants.* Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica has led Serbia's multiparty government since March 2004. Boris Tadic was elected president in June 2004 elections that observers deemed essentially in line with international standards. Following Montenegro's May 21 referendum in which 55.5 percent of voters supported independence, authorities began the work of dissolving the state union of Serbia and Montenegro and reassigning responsibilities to the republic level. In a referendum on October 29 and 30, voters in Serbia approved a new constitution. According to the election commission, turnout was nearly 55 percent, and 53 percent of voters supported the new constitution, although some human rights groups dispute the results. Civilian authorities generally maintained effective control of the security forces, and there were fewer reports of members of the security forces acting independently of government authority.
The government generally respected the human rights of its citizens and continued efforts to address human rights violations; however, numerous problems persisted. The following human rights problems were reported: widespread corruption in the police and the judiciary; impunity; inefficient and lengthy trials; government failure to cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in apprehending war crimes suspects; government failure to initiate new domestic investigations and prosecutions of war crimes from the 1990s; harassment of journalists, human rights workers and others critical of the government; arbitrary arrest and selective enforcement of the law for political purposes; limitations on freedom of speech and religion, including a problematic new law on religion; societal intolerance and discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities; the presence of large numbers of internally displaced persons; violence against women and children; and trafficking in persons.
The government's increased efforts in addressing human rights violations brought notable improvements. The Belgrade District Court, through its specialized organ, continued to make progress in several war crimes and organized crimes cases despite some political pressure and threats from criminal groups. The government also uncovered several international trafficking rings, protected victims of trafficking, and steadily prosecuted traffickers. The government's reaction to the Montenegro referendum on independence, and the subsequent dissolution of the state union, was peaceful. National minorities reported fewer incidents of attacks than in recent years.
RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Section 1 Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom from:
a. Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life
Unlike in previous years, there were no reports that the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings.
The trial of Kikinda police officer Sasa Mijin was under way at the end of the year. Authorities charged Mijin with fatally beating a Kikinda resident in October 2005.
The Belgrade special court for organized crime encountered several difficulties during the trial of three dozen suspects, including former secret police commander Milorad Ulemek and his deputy Zvezdan Jovanovic-Zveki, in the 2003 assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic. On June 3, key witness Zoran Vukojevic was murdered. Presiding Judge Marko Kljajevic submitted his resignation September 1, citing personal reasons. Media and human rights organizations speculated that political pressure may have sparked his departure. A new judge was appointed in September, and the trial continued at year's end.
In June the Supreme Court upheld the Belgrade special court's ruling in the case of Ulemek and others indicted for the 2000 killing of former Serbian President Ivan Stambolic. In July 2005 the Belgrade special court for organized crime sentenced Ulemek and three persons under his command to 40 years in prison, two others to 15 years in prison, and one person to four years in prison.
The government continued its investigation into the disappearance and subsequent killing of Yili, Mehmet, and Agron Bytyqi, three US citizen brothers who were executed in 1999. The bodies of the three were discovered in 2001 in a mass grave in rural Petrovo Selo, near a Serbian police facility. The bodies were found with their hands bound and gunshot wounds to their heads. On August 23, the special war crimes court issued its first indictments in the case against Sreten Popovic and Milos Stojanovic, two former members of a special police unit. The indictments were based on charges of unlawful detention of the Bytyqi brothers. The trial for Popovic and Stojanovic began November 11. No murder charges were filed against any suspects, although the government investigation remained ongoing.
Domestic courts and the ICTY continued to try cases arising from crimes committed during the 1991-99 conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo (see sections 1.e. and 4).
There was no further development in the deaths of several military conscripts in 2005. These conscripts died while on guard duty in remote areas and their families challenged the military's determination that the deaths were suicides. On October 5, human rights organizations and families of the conscripts marked the two-year anniversary of the deaths of Dragan Jakovljevic and Drazen Milovanovic in Topcider, Belgrade, noting that the case remained unresolved. The families initiated a civil suit against the government, which was pending at year's end.
On September 10, Ruzdija Djurovic, a city council candidate from the List for Sandzak party, was killed during elections in Novi Pazar. Police arrested Estan Gegic and Ismet Derdemet, and were searching for a third suspect, Sead Papic; the case remained in the investigative stage at year's end. While the suspects were members of the rival Sandzak Democratic Party, party leader Rasim Ljajic decried the incident and denied any involvement. Due to security concerns, he declared a boycott of the assembly election and withdrew his party from the assembly.
b. Disappearance
There were no reports of politically motivated disappearances.
The government made modest progress in cooperating with neighboring countries, the International Commission on Missing Persons, and other international organizations to identify missing persons from the Kosovo conflict. On June 30, the government repatriated to Kosovo 829 sets of remains found in mass graves in Serbia. Following this return, all bodies uncovered to date in Serbia had been returned to Kosovo. However, progress remained slow in locating additional gravesites and in sharing information with the public. In September, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which has chaired the Working Group on Missing Persons since 2004, halted further working group meetings, citing a lack of commitment from authorities in both Serbia and Kosovo. According to the ICRC, 2,284 missing persons cases remained unsolved.
c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
The constitution and law prohibit such practices; however, police at times beat detainees and harassed persons, usually during arrest or initial detention for petty crimes.
On March 15, the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia (HCS) reported that police beat 28-year-old Kikinda resident Mihalj Koloncaj. Koloncaj sustained critical injuries, which resulted in the removal of his spleen. Authorities suspended several policemen from the Kikinda police station on charges of misconduct and initiated criminal proceedings.
The Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR) reported that, on several occasions between May and September, Subotica police inspector Tomislav Lendvai and three unknown associates beat, tortured, and sexually assaulted two citizens of Subotica, while also invoking ethnic slurs and threatening their families. The two victims, Erne Ceh and Marinko Varnjas, were of mixed ethnic descent. An investigation was underway year's end, and inspector Lendvai was suspended from his post.
The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) reported that, on June 15, Mileta Novakovic, a member of the gendarmerie special unit, ordered his unit to use force on rowdy fans during a basketball game. According to the Ministry of Interior, 27 people, including 9 officers, were injured, and 30 people were arrested. The Ministry of Interior defended the action as lawful, but later admitted that some officers had exceeded their authority in injuring the fans. Novakovic was transferred to a post outside of Belgrade, but no other disciplinary action was taken.
In the February 2005 case reported by HLC in which police allegedly abused a 17-year-old girl while in custody at a Belgrade police station, the victim gave her testimony to an investigative judge in October, and the investigation continued at year's end. The suspects in the case were Belgrade officers Jovica Pecaranin and Nebojsa Milenkovic.
In the June 2005 case reported by HCS in which traffic police in a village near Nis allegedly harassed and beat a family in their home and subsequently at a police station, the family declined to press charges for fear of reprisals.
Neither the victim nor the police pursued any charges in the case of Aleksandar Petrovic, a Belgrade man who was allegedly beaten by police in his apartment in July 2005. HLC issued a press release following the alleged attack but did not file a criminal complaint. The attackers in this case remained unknown.
There was no information on whether further action was taken on the July 2005 case of a Leskovac police officer who allegedly beat a lawyer for the Leskovac Committee for Human Rights.
Prison and Detention Center Conditions
Prison conditions varied greatly between facilities, and there were reports that some guards abused prisoners.
In some prisons, inmates complained of dirty and inhumane conditions. Several times during the year, prisoners carried out hunger strikes to protest the poor conditions of the facilities. The quality of food varied from poor to minimally acceptable, and health care was often inadequate. Guards were inadequately trained in the proper handling of prisoners. Juveniles were supposed to be held separately from adults; however, this did not always occur in practice.
The government permitted the ICRC and local independent human rights monitors, including HCS, to visit prisons and to speak with prisoners without the presence of a warden.
In January HCS released a report of its findings after visits to eight detention facilities in May 2005. The report found that facilities lacked appropriate procedures to deal with allegations of ill-treatment by prisoners against prison authorities. The report also cited other problems, including corruption, overcrowding, lack of natural light and fresh air, poor toilet facilities, and dirty food preparation areas in some of the prisons visited.
In May the Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) published a report on its September 2004 visit to Serbia and Montenegro. During the visit CPT received numerous allegations of physical ill-treatment of prisoners and detainees, and recommended that the government increase professional training, more diligently investigate allegations of abuse, and severely sanction perpetrators of abuse against inmates. The CPT also found that violence among prisoners was a serious problem. The CPT complained of the use of chains and padlocks to restrain patients in the Belgrade prison hospital; in response, authorities reportedly discontinued this practice. The CPT further recommended that authorities increase medical staffing levels at the prison hospital.
In November prison riots broke out over unfulfilled demands for the parliament to pass an amnesty law. In Pozarevac, approximately 30 inmates climbed onto a roof and threatened to jump; in Nis, inmates barricaded themselves in their cells. Hundreds of riot police brought the protests under control, but 55 inmates were injured during the operation. Justice Minister Zoran Stojkovic said the police action was necessary to restore order and to prevent the inmates from hurting themselves.
d. Arbitrary Arrest or Detention
The constitution and law prohibit arbitrary arrest and detention, and the government generally observed these prohibitions, with some exceptions.
Police in Nis detained and interrogated four human rights activists from YIHR for more than four hours on July 12 and for more than three hours on July 13. The police called this an "information meeting," and accused them of drawing graffiti depicting ICTY indictee Ratko Mladic during a demonstration two days earlier. The police released the activists without charges.
Role of the Police and Security Apparatus
The approximately 43,000 police officers in Serbia are part of the Ministry of the Interior. The police are divided into 33 regional secretariats that report to the republic government. During the year the Serbian government took over control of the armed forces after the dissolution of the state union of Serbia and Montenegro.
The effectiveness of the police was uneven and generally limited. While most officers were Serbs, the force included Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), ethnic Hungarians, a small number of ethnic Albanians, and other ethnic minorities. The multiethnic police force in southern Serbia was composed primarily of ethnic Albanians and Serbs.
Corruption and impunity in the police force were problems, and there were only limited institutional means of overseeing and controlling police behavior. The interior ministry inspector general's office, created in 2003, had increasingly limited authority, and the office had no autonomy to investigate and redress abuses. While the office recommended numerous disciplinary proceedings against interior ministry employees since its establishment, it had no means of following up on proceedings, and some secretariats completely ignored its recommendations.
Since 2005 the inspector general's office initiated disciplinary measures against 5,722 members of the police for transgressions, and charges were brought against 587 members of the police force.
During the year the government, together with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and other foreign governments, trained police, security, and border officials on combating terrorism, corruption, money laundering and trafficking.
Arrest and Detention
Arrests were generally based on warrants, although police were authorized to make arrests without a warrant in limited circumstances, including if there was a well-founded suspicion that a person had committed a capital crime. The law requires an investigating judge to approve any detention over 48 hours, and authorities respected this requirement in practice. Bail was allowed but rarely used; detainees facing charges that carried possible sentences of less than five years were often released on their own recognizance.
The law provides that the police must inform arrested persons immediately of their rights. Unlike in previous years, no abuses of this provision were reported.
The law provides access for detainees to counsel, at government expense if necessary, and this right was generally respected in practice. Family members were normally allowed to visit detainees. Suspects can be detained for up to six months without being charged.
The law prohibits police use of force, threats, deception, and coercion to obtain evidence, as well as use in court of evidence acquired by such means; however, police sometimes used these means to obtain statements.
Authorities were accused of using arbitrary arrest and selective enforcement of the law for political purposes. Some political analysts speculated that the arrest of commercial court president Goran Kljajevic was an example of selective prosecution, in order to put additional pressure on his brother, Marko Kljajevic, who resigned as presiding judge in the Djindjic trial soon after the arrest (see sections 1.a. and 3). Some analysts also argued that the timing of the government's indictment for corruption and money laundering against tycoon Bogoljub Karic was also politically motivated (see section 3).
The law limits the length of pretrial detention from indictment to the conclusion of a trial to two years for most cases, but allows detention for up to four years for crimes that carry up to the maximum penalty (40 years in prison). The law sets two years as the maximum detention permitted after an appellate court vacates the judgment of a trial court. Nonetheless, prolonged pretrial detention was a problem. The law prohibits excessive delays by authorities in filing formal charges against suspects and in opening investigations; however, such delays continued regularly. Due to the inefficiency of the courts, cases often took an excessively long time to come to trial, and once started, trials often took an excessively long time to complete (see section 1.e.).
The law allows persons detained in connection with serious crimes to be held for up to six months before charges must be filed. Authorities frequently held such persons for the full six-month period before filing charges.
e. Denial of Fair Public Trial
The law provides for an independent judiciary; however, the courts remained susceptible to corruption and political influence. The newly enacted constitution drew criticism for its provisions on the judiciary that make the appointment of judges and prosecutors subject to political screening. Corruption in the judiciary remained a problem. There were reports that government officials attempted to undermine politically sensitive prosecutions, including by applying pressure on prosecutors and judges.
During the year former Supreme Court judge Slavoljub Vuckovic, arrested in September 2005, stood trial on charges of accepting a bribe in the Jotka organized crime case; on July 7, the court sentenced him to eight years in prison. Vuckovic appealed the verdict, and his appeal remained pending at year's end.
During the year the trial of former deputy public prosecutor Milan Sarajlic resumed. Sarajlic had been charged with accepting payments from the Zemun organized crime clan in 2004; the trial was suspended in 2004 due to Sarajlic's poor health. The trial remained ongoing at year's end.
The private sector considered corruption in the commercial courts to be widespread. In addition land transfers often were extremely difficult, leading many in the private sector to allege administrative corruption.
The courts were highly inefficient, and cases could take years to be resolved.
The Serbian judicial system consists of municipal courts, district courts, a Supreme Court, and a Constitutional Court. In addition, the law provides for special courts for war crimes and organized crime; these were operational during the year within the Belgrade District Court. The Constitutional Court rules on the constitutionality of laws and regulations. While the law provides for an administrative appeals court and a second instance appeals court to reduce the Supreme Court's caseload, the National Assembly postponed the establishment of the courts until 2007.
Since 2005, a special branch in each district court maintained responsibility for military cases.
Trial Procedures
Trials are generally public, but they are closed during testimony of a state-protected witness. There are no juries. The law provides that defendants are presumed innocent; have the right to have an attorney represent them at public expense, if needed; and to be present at their trials. Defendants have the right to access government evidence and question witnesses. Both the defense and the prosecution have the right to appeal a verdict. These rights were generally respected in practice.
The special war crimes court continued trying war crimes cases. On May 18, the Supreme Court upheld the Belgrade district court's July 2005 verdict in the Sjeverin war crimes case involving the torture and killing of 16 Muslims in 1992. The court confirmed the original conviction and sentencing of Dragutin Dragicevic, Oliver Krsmanovic, and ICTY indictee Milan Lukic to 20 years in prison, and Djordje Sevic to 15 years in prison.
On July 5, the Belgrade special war crimes court began the main hearing in the case of five Scorpions members indicted for involvement in the 1995 execution of six Bosnian Muslim civilians from Srebrenica. The case was ongoing at year's end.
On September 18, the special war crimes court convicted Anton Lekaj of war crimes and sentenced him to 13 years in prison for the 1999 murder and torture of Roma in Kosovo during a wedding procession.
The Supreme Court upheld the special war crimes court's March 2004 conviction of Aleksandar Cvjetan, sentenced to 20 years in prison for the 1999 killing of 14 ethnic Albanians in Podujevo, Kosovo.
The special war crimes court also continued the trial for the Zvornik case involving the 1992 eviction and killing of Bosnian Muslims.
There were new developments in the Ovcara case (also known as the Vukovar massacre). On December 14, the Supreme Court ordered a retrial of 14 former members of Serb militias who had been convicted in December 2005 for murder, torture, and inhumane treatment of more than 200 Croatian prisoners of war in 1991. Many in the international and NGO community criticized this decision as politically motivated, noting that every major war crimes conviction (e.g., Podujevo, Sjeverin, Ovcara) in a first-instance court had been overturned by the Supreme Court upon first review.
In April the Belgrade district court dismissed the case of Dejan Demirovic after his extradition from Canada. Demirovic had been charged and tried in absentia for the Podujevo killings; however, the court found insufficient evidence to support his conviction.
Political Prisoners and Detainees
There were no reports of political prisoners or detainees.
Civil Judicial Procedures and Remedies
The country has an independent and impartial judiciary in civil matters where citizens can bring lawsuits seeking damages for, or cessation of, a human rights violation. The remedies generally involved monetary awards.
Property Restitution
During the year a government commission began preparing a register of claims for private property seized since 1945, but it made no progress on enacting a private property restitution law or returning property. The government enacted a law on restitution of communal property, but took no significant action to register claims or return communal property.
f. Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or Correspondence
The constitution and law prohibit such actions; however, the government interfered with privacy and correspondence. While the law requires the interior ministry to obtain a court order before monitoring potential criminal activity and police to obtain a warrant before entering property except to save people or possessions, police occasionally did not respect these provisions in practice.
Most observers believed that authorities selectively monitored communications, eavesdropped on conversations, read mail and e-mail, and tapped telephones. Human rights leaders frequently reported that their communications were being monitored.
Section 2 Respect for Civil Liberties, Including:
a. Freedom of Speech and the Press
The law provides for freedom of speech and of the press; however, there were reports of government interference in these freedoms and carried out reprisals against persons who criticized the government. In general, independent media organizations were active and expressed a wide range of views; however, some media organizations experienced threats or reprisals for publishing views critical of the government. Many reporters lacked professionalism in citing sources and achieving accuracy.
The media sector was mostly independent and privately owned. The oldest nationwide daily, Politika, was co-owned by a German company and the government, but it was operated by several shareholding companies. During the year this daily took on an increasingly pro-government slant to its reporting and editorial policy. Other major newspapers include Blic, Glas Javnosti, Vecernje Novosti, Kurir, and Danas.
Government-controlled Radio-Television Serbia (RTS) was a major presence, operating three television channels as well as a radio service. The government had considerable influence, although not formal control, over other major television stations, including TV Politika and TV Novi Sad, as well as Radio Belgrade's three stations. In addition, many television stations relied on the state-owned news agency Tanjug for news information. While RTS's coverage was generally objective, there occasionally appeared to be a bias toward the government.
On October 11, controversial amendments to the broadcast law went into effect despite opposition from media groups and the OSCE. The law grants the government the power to approve the budget of the independent broadcast council, gives this council broad authority to strip radio and television stations of their licenses without right of appeal, and sets higher fees for broadcasters.
Media organizations, particularly the radio station B92, were victims of vandalism, bomb threats, and intimidation for coverage of views unpopular with the government. The South East European Media Organization (SEEMO) reported a number of such incidents during the year. On July 25, Jahja Fehratovic, editor of the weekly Glas Sandjaka, received anonymous death threats over the phone. On August 13, Nikola Rumenic, correspondent for the weekly Svet, was physically assaulted and injured by two unidentified persons outside the Hotel Jugoslavija in Belgrade. On August 17, Dragan Zaric, journalist for Radio Stari Milanovac, was attacked by a knife-wielding masked man while moderating a radio program. On August 18, Slavica Jovanovic, a journalist from Macvanski Prnjavor, received a telephone death threat. Local police reportedly refused to allow Jovanovic to file an official complaint until the Journalists' Association of Serbia (UNS) intervened on her behalf.
On April 26, police shut down the republic's first private television station, BK Television, following a decision by the government's broadcasting agency to temporarily suspend BK Television's license. The attorney for BK Television described the forceful entrance and shutdown of the station as illegal. The UNS and the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) described the move as arbitrary and constituting a threat to democracy and media freedom.
On July 13, SEEMO reported that Jelena Antic, correspondent for the daily Dnevnik, was blocked by security officers from attending a press conference at the Ruma city hall, allegedly on the orders of municipality president Srdjan Nikolic.
Libel is a criminal offense; those convicted of libel face imprisonment or fines of $552 to $13,800 (460 euros to 11,500 euros).
On August 10, the municipal court in Prokuplje sentenced RTV Kursumlija senior editor Slavko Savic to four months' imprisonment for libel. The court found Savic guilty of broadcasting text messages written and sent in by viewers alleging that Slavko Ilic, a municipal official, had stolen a bottle of brandy from a store. ANEM and the Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the verdict as a violation of freedom of speech.
Journalists sometimes practiced self-censorship due to possible libel suits and fear of offending public opinion, particularly on subjects relating to wars in the former Yugoslavia, on the Montenegrin referendum for independence, and on the UN-led negotiations on the future status of Kosovo. Human rights activists charged that they were subjects of smear campaigns in pro-government publications and tabloids for expressing critical views of the government.
Internet Freedom
There were no government restrictions on access to the Internet. Individuals and groups could engage in the peaceful expression of views via the Internet, including by electronic email. However, there were reports that the government selectively monitored Internet communications.
Academic Freedom and Cultural Events
The government generally respected academic freedom; although there were some reports of censorship of cultural events.
In September police stopped an outdoor theater performance in Novi Sad when a Serbian Orthodox bishop complained that the actors were wearing priests' robes, and called the performance "the work of the devil." A group of neo-Nazis from Zrenjanin disrupted the performance the next night.
On November 28, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a request to organizers of a film festival that the film "Summer Palace" be "removed from the festival program bearing in mind our good bilateral relations [with China]." The Chinese government had opposed the screening of this film, which featured footage of the 1989 events in Tiananmen Square. The festival organizers removed the film from the program. However, on December 1, Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic suspended Danica Bajic, the MFA employee who issued the request, saying that Bajic acted outside of her authority.
b. Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association
The law provides for freedom of assembly and association, and the government usually respected it in practice. Unlike in previous years, there were no reports that authorities impeded public protests.
c. Freedom of Religion
The law provides for freedom of religion, and the government generally respected this right in practice; however, the Serbian government adopted a discriminatory law on religion and maintained a discriminatory property tax.
While there is no state religion, the majority Serbian Orthodox Church received some preferential treatment. For example, the military continued to offer only Serbian Orthodox services, although it allowed members of other faiths to attend religious services outside their posts. There were also complaints that the Serbian government continued to fund construction of a large Serbian Orthodox Church. The Serbian government subsidized salaries of Serbian Orthodox clergy in regions outside Serbia.
In April the government adopted a problematic law on religion.
It recognizes seven "traditional" religious communities: the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Slovak Evangelical Church, the Reformed Christian Church, the Evangelical Christian Church, the Islamic community, and the Jewish community. The law requires all other religious groups to reregister with the Ministry of Religion, which has the discretion to decide whether to grant approval. Many of these minority groups had been recognized officially as religions in Serbia for over 50 years, and were present in the republic for as long as 150 years.
The registration requirements, deemed invasive by the Council of Europe and the OSCE, include submitting names, identity numbers, and signatures of members; showing proof that the group meets the threshold of 0.001 percent of adult citizens of Serbia (roughly 65 persons); providing a description of the group's religious texts and a summary of its religious teachings, ceremonies, religious goals, and basic activities; and information on its sources of funding.
Serbian tax law exempts property owned by the seven recognized traditional religious groups, although a challenge to the law was pending in the Constitutional Court at the end of the reporting period. The complaint was filed on July 21 on behalf of the Union of Protestant-Evangelical Churches in Serbia.
Non-Serbian Orthodox religious organizations continued to report difficulty obtaining permission from local authorities in Serbia to build new worship facilities. The Belgrade Islamic community reported continued difficulties in acquiring land and government approval for an Islamic cemetery in the city. In August Minister of Religion Milan Radulovic stated that the Montenegrin Orthodox Church could not build churches in Serbia.
Serbian law requires students in primary and secondary schools either to attend classes of one of the seven traditional religious communities or, alternatively, to take a class in civic education. Leaders of religions groups excluded from the program continued to express their dissatisfaction at the government's narrow definition of religion.
The government enacted a law on restitution of communal property in Serbia, including religious sites seized since 1945, but took no significant action to register claims or return church property.
Societal Abuses and Discrimination
Minority religious communities reported continuing problems with vandalism of buildings, cemeteries, and other religious sites, although the number of such incidents declined from previous years. There were a few cases of verbal and physical attacks against religious minorities. The police response was often inadequate, and civil society groups criticized the lack of commitment by the government to addressing problems of discrimination.
Unknown attackers broke stained glass windows of Catholic churches in Smederevo, Kragujevac, and Bor several times during the year. The Seventh-day Adventists reported that vandalism and arson attacks on their churches were too frequent to count. Vandals damaged tombstones in the Slovak Evangelical-Lutheran graveyard in Dobanovci and in the Catholic graveyard in Temerin. In all of these cases, police were unable to identify the attackers.
On February 15, a man in Mladenovac locked two members of Jehovah's Witnesses inside a building, destroyed their literature, and tried to drag them into a cellar. One of them escaped and called the police, who rescued the other and arrested the man. On February 20, in the Zemun district of Belgrade, a member of Jehovah's Witnesses was beaten on the head by a third party while sharing his beliefs with a family. Police arrested the attacker, and the family testified as witnesses in the court case.
On June 17, a Hare Krishna devotee from Jagodina, Zivota Milanovic, was attacked in the doorway of his home. Jagodina hospital treated him for knife wounds and a cross carved on his head. Milanovic had been attacked previously in July 2005; authorities made no arrests for either attack.
In October the Nis mosque was attacked and vandalized for the fourth time. Local police arrested four suspects, but refused a request to post a permanent police presence in front of the mosque to prevent future attacks.
In March the district court in Sabac began hearing a case against four men who tried to blackmail a member of Jehovah's Witnesses in Loznica in 2004. On May 8, frustrated by officials' failure to take action after an arson attack in 1999, the Jehovah's Witnesses filed suit against the government.
On November 9, a Novi Sad court found members of the nationalist, far-right hate group National Front guilty of inciting ethnic, racial, and religious hatred and intolerance for disrupting an anti-Fascist seminar at Novi Sad University in 2004, harassing and slapping participants. The organization's leader, Goran Davidovic, was sentenced to one year in prison, and member Miodrag Stefanovic was sentenced to six months. Two other members were sentenced to three and four months in prison, while 11 others received suspended sentences of four months for the criminal act of endangering the safety of others.
During the span of three days from December 16 to 19, unidentified attackers threw Molotov cocktails at the offices of the Evangelical church in Kraljevo, and threw stones at the Baptist church and the Holy Spirit Catholic church in Novi Sad. President Tadic publicly condemned the attacks and called on authorities to find the perpetrators; the investigations were ongoing at year's end.
The Jewish community had between 2,000 and 3,000 persons. Jewish leaders in Serbia reported continued incidents of anti-Semitism, including anti-Semitic graffiti, vandalism, small circulation anti-Semitic books, and Internet postings. HCS reported in November that anti-Semitism had grown in intensity in recent years. HCS noted that in recent years, Serbia's publishing sector published various anti-Semitic books, with titles such as Jewish Ritual Murder, The Jewish Conspiracy, and Why I Admire Adolf Hitler. According to Jewish community members, the release of such publications often led to an increase in hate mail and other expressions of anti-Semitism. Several nationalist, far-right organizations identified themselves with anti-Semitic rhetoric, displaying swastikas and using hate speech. The National Front was one of the most active of these groups during the past few years, mixing anti-Semitic rhetoric with anti-Western messages. HCS noted in November that the government's response to such hate speech was often inadequate.
On February 12, graffiti appeared on a monument in Nis saying "Holocaust--the Jewish lie that governs the world," along with nationalistic slogans such as "Serbia for the Serbs."
In late August a group of skinheads reportedly wearing Nazi symbols beat two Israeli tourists. One victim reported that the group was chanting "Auschwitz, Auschwitz." At year's end, no one had been charged in connection with this beating.
In 2005 the Federation of Jewish Communities in Serbia reported receiving increased levels of hate mail saying that, "Jews should leave Serbia." In addition, a list of prominent Serbian Jews was posted on the website of a neo-Nazi organization alongside messages posted by site visitors calling for them to be killed.
Teaching of the Holocaust is incorporated into the Serbian school curriculum, and the role of the Serbian government during that period is also discussed. However, there was a tendency among some commentators to minimize and reinterpret the role of Serbian leaders during the Holocaust, casting them as victims of foreign occupiers when in fact many leaders of that time collaborated with the Nazis and began campaigns against the Jewish population even before the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia.
While government leaders publicly condemned incidents of anti-Semitism, there was no significant government effort in 2006 to prevent such intolerance and hate speech.
For a more detailed discussion, see the 2006 International Religious Freedom Report.
d. Freedom of Movement Within the Country, Foreign Travel, Emigration, and Repatriation
The law provides for these rights, and the government generally respected them in practice. The law prohibits forced exile, and the government did not employ it.
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)
According to official figures of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), approximately 207,000 IDPs resided in Serbia, mainly Serbs, Roma, and Bosniaks who left Kosovo as a result of the events of 1999. Approximately 6,700 IDPs remained in collective centers. Although the government closed several of the collective centers that were least habitable, many IDPs remained in minimally habitable facilities that were constructed as temporary accommodations, rather than for long-term occupancy.
The government continued to pay salaries to IDPs who were in the Kosovar government and state-owned enterprises before June 1999. By law, to obtain permanent resident status in Serbia, IDPs from Kosovo must deregister from their previous address in Kosovo. Without registering at a permanent address in Serbia, IDPs were unable to acquire local identification documents and are thus unable to obtain access to health insurance, social welfare, and public schools.
During the year the government signed and parliament ratified 15 bilateral readmission agreements to accept the return of failed asylum seekers, unsuccessful migrants, and persons without legal residency (primarily, Roma). Estimates of the number of unsuccessful asylum seekers and illegal immigrants from Serbia residing in the countries covered under the agreements ranged from 30,000 to 200,000, with an additional 120,000 asylum seekers originally from Kosovo. The government agreed to accept the forced returnees without stipulating a timetable for their return. The ICRC, piloting a project to assist repatriated returnees, opened an office in the Belgrade airport, but the office closed after about three months due to lack of funding.
The UNHCR estimated that there were 40,000 to 45,000 displaced Roma living in Serbia proper; half of those were not registered due to lack of documents. Many Kosovar Roma were perceived to be Serb collaborators during the conflict in Kosovo and could not safely return there. Living conditions for Roma in Serbia were extremely poor. Local municipalities often were reluctant to accommodate them, hoping that, if they failed to provide shelter, the Roma would leave the community (see section 5). If Roma did settle, it was often in official collective centers with minimum amenities or, more often, in makeshift camps in or near major cities or towns.
There were sporadic incidents of attacks and vandalism against IDPs, particularly members of Romani communities (see section 5).
Protection of Refugees
The law does not provide for the granting of asylum or refugee status in accordance with the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 protocol, despite the fact that Serbia is a signatory to both. The government has not passed legislation or established a system for providing protection to refugees. The law does not protect individuals from forcible return to a country where they have a credible fear of persecution, and there was no information available on whether authorities, in fact, turned such individuals away at borders.
UNHCR maintained an office at the airport to receive third-country asylum seekers, including those who entered the country via other ports of entry. UNHCR conducted refugee status determinations in accordance with the UN Convention and the organization's mandate. By tacit agreement, the government tolerated UNHCR status determinations, neither expelling individuals whom UNHCR determined to be refugees, nor according them any opportunity for integration. UNHCR opened 42 cases for third-country nationals over the course of the year. Of these, 25 Iraqis received temporary UNHCR protection, without full refugee status determinations. The UNHCR rejected 12 applicants and closed five cases without completing the determination (in most instances because the applicants departed Serbia). Fifty-five individuals remained under UNHCR protection at year's end.
UNHCR, with consent of the government, completed construction of an asylum center for receiving and sheltering asylum seekers, but the facility was not in use at year's end.
The government cooperated with the UNHCR and other humanitarian organizations in assisting refugees and asylum seekers. Under the 1992 Decree on Refugees, the government provided temporary protection to individuals from former republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) who may not qualify as refugees under the 1951 convention and its 1967 protocol. The government and UNHCR estimated that 104,000 refugees from Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina resided in Serbia.
The government, with UNHCR support, closed several collective centers, in a few cases transferring individuals in need of special care to other appropriate institutions. Approximately 3,600 refugees remained in 125 collective centers, either official or unrecognized, in the country at year's end.
Section 3 Respect for Political Rights: The Right of Citizens to Change Their Government
The law provides citizens with the right to change their government peacefully, and citizens exercised this right in practice through periodic elections held on the basis of universal suffrage.
In a May 21 referendum in Montenegro, 55.5 percent of voters supported independence from the state union of Serbia and Montenegro. International monitors deemed the referendum in line with OSCE and Council of Europe commitments and other international standards for democratic electoral process, and the Serbian government accepted the results. Following the referendum, Serbian authorities began working on the dissolution of the state union and reassigning state union responsibilities to the republic level.
Elections and Political Participation
At year's end, political parties were preparing for parliamentary elections to be held in January 2007.
The country held a referendum on a constitution on October 28-29. Several human rights groups criticized the parliament for passing the draft without adequate public debate, and some called for a boycott of the referendum. Many also criticized the substance of the document in several areas: it claims Kosovo as a part of the country's territory, although Kosovo Albanians were excluded from voting in the referendum; it does not clarify or enhance Vojvodina's regional autonomy; and it leaves the appointment of judges and prosecutors subject to political screening.
According to the election commission, turnout at the referendum was 54.91 percent, and 53.04 percent of voters supported the new constitution. Turnout was particularly low in Vojvodina (45.9 percent), and the Center for Free Elections and Democracy estimated ethnic Hungarian turnout was only 14 percent. Several human rights groups charged that there were irregularities in the referendum results, including lax control of voting lists and inconsistent identification checks.
Parliament approved the constitution and it entered into legal effect on November 13.
An OSCE and Council of Europe election observation mission reported that the June 2004 Serbian republic presidential elections were peaceful and conducted essentially in line with international standards. Problems noted by the mission included lack of a central voter register, lack of facilities for eligible voters living in Montenegro, and evidence of some degree of disenfranchisement in the Romani community. Voting took place in Kosovo, where 97,000 voters were registered; however, restrictions on movement hindered the ability of ethnic Serbs to vote, while the ethnic Albanian population, with very few exceptions, did not participate in the election, even in areas where some were on the voter lists.
There were 24 women in the 250-seat parliament and a female deputy prime minister. There were no women in the 16-member cabinet. In September the government amended the law on elections of members of parliament to require parties' election lists to include at least 30 percent women.
There were 11 members of minorities in the 250-seat parliament and no members of minorities in the 16-member cabinet.
The constitution and law exempts ethnically based parties from the 5 percent threshold required for a political party to enter parliament. Roma continued their historical pattern of low voter turnout. Local ethnic Albanian leaders in southern Serbia boycotted national elections notwithstanding their active involvement in local governance.
Government Corruption and Transparency
There was a widespread public perception of government corruption at all levels. Recent polls indicated that a majority of citizens believed that government corruption was a major problem.
Government authorities were inconsistent in their approach to official corruption. Investigations often appeared to be politically motivated, and there were numerous examples of authorities failing to act in response to detailed reports of suspected corruption involving a wide range of officials. Media reporting of corruption was often sensationalist.
On January 11, police arrested Dejan Simic, former vice governor of the National Bank of Serbia, and Vladimir Zagradjanin, director of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), and charged them with involvement in bribery. Simic allegedly accepted a suitcase containing the equivalent of $125,000 cash in his apartment in exchange for agreeing to register the Credit Export Bank.
In February Serbian police issued a warrant for Bogoljub Karic, head of the Power of Serbia Movement party, after he failed to appear in court for questioning. Karic faced charges of tax evasion, mismanagement of millions of dollars, and money laundering while he was owner of the telecommunications company Mobtel. Some political commentators speculated that, while the charges against Karic appeared justified, the timing of this crackdown on Karic's business dealings may have been politically motivated. The warrant came shortly after Karic's party formed a new parliamentary caucus that many believed would shake the delicate balance of the governing coalition and spark a parliamentary crisis.
On April 15, police arrested nine persons suspected of operating a lucrative scam in which the commercial court would declare enterprises bankrupt, and the Postal Savings Bank would then provide cheap loans to favored businessmen to buy the enterprise's assets at a below-market price. Several public officials were among the nine arrested, including Goran Kljajevic, president of the commercial court in Belgrade; the directors of the Postal Savings Bank and Kreditna Eksportna Banka; businessmen; and an official from the interior ministry. The suspects remained in pre-trial detention at year's end.
On October 7, police arrested deputy public prosecutor Milorad Cvijovic under suspicion of unauthorized appropriation of a court document from the archives of the state prosecutor's office in 2005 in order to influence proceedings in a specific commercial case.
The trial of former minister of defense Prvoslav Davinic, charged with facilitating apartment leases for his bodyguards, was under way at year's end.
The government's implementation of the November 2004 access to information law continued to be slow, and the government generally did not provide access in practice. The law provides for public access to information of "legitimate public importance" (with many exceptions) and establishes an independent commissioner, selected by the Serbian parliament, to handle appeals when government agencies reject requests for information. According to a September 2005 report by Transparency International, about 60 percent of local institutions, and approximately one-third of national institutions, were failing to fulfill their obligations under the access to information law. NGOs reported that their requests for information from the government frequently went unanswered.
Section 4 Governmental Attitude Regarding International and Nongovernmental Investigation of Alleged Violations of Human Rights
A variety of independent domestic and international human rights groups generally operated without government restriction, investigating and publishing their findings on human rights cases. However, these groups were often subjects of harassment, threats, and libel suits for expressing views critical of the government. Prominent human rights groups included HCS, HLC, the Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights (YUCOM), the Fund for an Open Society, YIHR, and the Belgrade Center for Human Rights.
Some NGO workers were threatened and attacked, primarily through media campaigns demonizing them and publication of personal information, such as their ethnic backgrounds and addresses. On September 3, HLC Director Natasa Kandic was exiting TV B92's studio when witnesses heard several shots. Police determined that the sounds were caused by firecrackers, but human rights groups asserted they were meant to intimidate Kandic. Several publications, including Politika, NIN, and Kurir, attacked Kandic as well as YUCOM director Biljana Kovacevic-Vuco and HCS Director Sonja Biserko for their outspoken views on Kosovo and Serbian responsibility for war crimes of the 1990s.
In March HCS issued a report on the targeting of human rights defenders in Serbia. While praising some positive legal developments, the report criticized the government's failure to denounce more forcefully verbal and physical attacks against human rights defenders, as well as continued media campaigns aimed at discrediting local human rights advocates. This report followed a November 2005 report by Amnesty International, which found that NGOs had been subjected to repeated and apparently systematic intimidation. The report also found that prominent human rights advocates, including Natasa Kandic, Biljana Kovacevic-Vuco, Sonja Biserko, and Stasa Zajovic of the Women in Black antiwar organization, were targets of a media campaign aimed at discrediting human rights defenders.
In 2005 the government announced that it would establish a new ombudsman's office in Belgrade; however, it failed to do so by the legislated deadline of March 2006. The city of Kragujevac's ombudsman, Milan Petkovic, announced his resignation in May, citing political pressure and harassment from city assembly officials. Vojvodina Province had an ombudsman, who operated independently during the year.
During the year the government made little progress in cooperating with the ICTY to apprehend and bring to justice the six remaining fugitives indicted by ICTY. Two of ICTY's most wanted war crimes suspects with links to Serbia, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, remained at large. In July, the government announced a six-point action plan for ICTY cooperation and appointed special war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic and the head of Serbia's National Council for Co-operation with ICTY, Rasim Ljajic, to oversee the plan's implementation. In October, following a visit to Belgrade, ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte stated publicly that government authorities had made little or no progress in implementing the action plan.
While the constitution prohibits the extradition of any person with Serbian citizenship, and this prohibition was applied in practice, the law allows for an exception in cases of extradition of citizens to the ICTY. During the year there were no such extraditions conducted.
Section 5 Discrimination, Societal Abuses, and Trafficking in Persons
The constitution and law prohibit discrimination based on race, gender, disability, language, or social status; however, discrimination against women and ethnic minorities as well as trafficking in persons and violence against women and children were problems.
Women
Violence against women was a problem, and high levels of domestic violence persisted. The Serbian Victimology Society reported in July that one-third of women have been victims of physical violence, and half of women have been victims of psychological violence.
Domestic violence is a crime punishable by a prison sentence of six months to 10 years, depending on the seriousness of the offense, and a minimum of 10 years if death results. Such cases were difficult to prosecute due to lack of witnesses and evidence, as well as unwillingness of witnesses or victims to come forward. In a World Health Organization study of Serbian women released during the year, two-thirds of physically abused women reported that they did not seek help because they thought such abuse was normal or not serious. The few official agencies dedicated to coping with family violence had inadequate resources.
In 2003 there were approximately 6,000 reported cases of domestic violence in Serbia. According to the Magistrates Association of Serbia (MAS), however, domestic violence was significantly underreported, and the problem was widespread and usually long-lasting. Violence frequently became a way of life in a country where contributing factors such as financial dependence, cramped living quarters (multi-family living arrangements were common), and the lack of support from extended family were prevalent. During the year, MAS participated in a series of seminars and training sessions for magistrates to adjudicate domestic violence cases.
Rape, including spousal rape, is punishable by one year to the legal maximum sentence (40 years' imprisonment) for a simple case, a minimum of three years for an aggravated case, and a minimum of five years if death results or the victim is a minor. Only a small proportion of rapes were reported because victims feared that they would not be protected, that their attackers would take revenge, or that they would be humiliated in court. Few spousal rape victims filed complaints with authorities. Women's groups reported that sentences were often too lenient.
The Center for Autonomous Women's Rights in Belgrade offered a rape and spousal abuse hotline, and sponsored a number of self help groups. The center also offered assistance to refugee women (mostly Serb), many of whom experienced extreme abuse or rape during the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. The Counseling Center Against Family Violence operated a domestic violence shelter partly funded by the government.
Prostitution is illegal, although being a client of a prostitute is not a criminal offense.
Trafficking in women for the purpose of sexual exploitation remained a problem (see section 5, Trafficking).
Sexual harassment was a common problem, but public awareness of it remained low and few complaints were filed during the year. The law provides that sexual harassment is a crime punishable by up to six months' imprisonment for a simple case and up to one year's imprisonment for abuse of a subordinate or dependent.
Women have the same legal rights as men, including under family law, property law, and in the judicial system and these rights were generally enforced in practice. The government has a council for gender equality, which worked during the year with NGOs in raising public awareness of gender equality issues. The Vojvodina government also has a secretariat for labor, employment, and gender equality. The OSCE mission to Serbia helped to establish bodies in charge of gender equality in more than 30 municipalities.
Traditional views of gender roles, particularly in rural areas, resulted in discrimination against women. In remote rural areas, particularly among some minority communities, women could not effectively exercise their right to control property. In rural areas and some minority communities, it was common for husbands to direct the voting of wives.
The social status of women was generally considered inferior to that of men, and women were not well represented in commerce. Women were legally entitled to equal pay for equal work; however, according to the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, women's average wage was 11 percent lower than that of men.
Children
The government was committed to the rights and welfare of children. The educational system provided nine years of free, mandatory schooling. However, ethnic prejudice, cultural norms, and economic distress discouraged some children, particularly Roma, from attending school. One government survey found that approximately 99.8 percent of children attended school; however, the government acknowledged that the survey missed many transient Roma.
Romani education remained a problem. Many Romani children did not attend primary school, either for family reasons, because they were judged by school administrators to be unqualified, or because of societal prejudice. Due to the lack of primary schooling, many Romani children did not learn to speak Serbian. Some Romani children were placed mistakenly in schools for children with emotional disabilities because the Romani language and cultural norms made it difficult for them to succeed on standardized tests in Serbian. The UNHCR, with government support, conducted health education programs for Roma and pre-school programs for Romani children.
Free medical care was available in government clinics, including free medicines from a limited list of covered drugs. Boys and girls had equal access to medical care.
Child abuse was a problem. While teachers were instructed to report suspected child abuse cases, they often did not do so. Police generally responded to complaints, and prosecutions of child abuse cases occurred during the year. Psychological and legal assistance was available for victims, and there was an incest trauma center.
Child marriage was a problem in some communities, particularly among Roma and in rural areas of southern and eastern Serbia. In the Romani community, boys and girls generally married between the ages of 14 and 18, with 16 as the average, and boys generally married a few years later than girls. Child marriage was most common among Muslim Roma, most of whom came from Kosovo and were living in other parts of the country as IDPs.
Trafficking of children for the purpose of sexual exploitation remained a problem (see section 5, Trafficking). Some Romani children were trafficked within the Romani community and to Roma abroad for exploitation in begging and theft rings.
Trafficking in Persons
The law prohibits trafficking in persons; however, trafficking in persons through and, to a lesser extent, to and from the country (excluding Kosovo) remained a problem.
Serbia was a transit point, and to a lesser extent a point of origin and destination, for trafficking in women and minors for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Serbia was primarily a transit point for internationally trafficked women going to other Balkan countries and Western Europe. Eastern European countries were the primary source countries for persons trafficked to and through Serbia. NGOs reported an increase in minor victims and male victims.
While Serbia was not traditionally a major source for trafficked women, the number of Serbian victims increased compared to foreign nationals. In March the Ministry of Labor, Employment and Social Policy and the NGO Children's Rights Center released results of a survey that showed Roma children, children from poor, rural communities and foster families were at the highest risk for child labor abuse, including begging, theft, prostitution, dealing narcotics and hard physical labor.
Traffickers recruited victims through enticements including advertisements for escorts, marriage offers, and offers of employment. Some women went to work as prostitutes knowingly and only later became trafficking victims. In many cases international organized crime networks recruited, transported, sold, and controlled victims. Authorities reported increased use of the Internet as a method of recruiting victims.
The new criminal code, which took effect January 1, differentiates between trafficking and smuggling. The penalty for trafficking in persons is two to 10 years in prison; for trafficking minors, the penalty is a minimum of three years; if the act of trafficking resulted in death, the penalty is a minimum of 10 years; if it involved serious physical injury, the penalty is three to 15 years; if there were multiple acts of trafficking or if perpetrated by an organized group, the penalty is a minimum of five years.
Authorities uncovered several international trafficking rings, including those with connections to China, Turkey, Italy, Albania, and Bulgaria. The government's prosecution of some trafficking cases became more effective, particularly in cases of organized crime. On March 2, the Supreme Court ruled on the high-profile "Zarubica" case, sentencing Stanko Savanovic to five years in prison, Milivoje Zarubica to four and a half years, Milovan Miletic to three years, Zvezdan Stankovic to two years, and three others to eight to ten months. The verdict reflected increased sentences from the 2004 ruling and ordered the defendants to cover the trial costs. While some major trafficking cases proceeded quickly, others languished in Serbian courts.
During the year authorities filed 34 criminal charges against 77 persons for trafficking. Antitrafficking groups worked with 56 trafficking victims and received 1,775 telephone calls on an assistance hotline for victims.
Government antitrafficking efforts were led by an antitrafficking coordinator who was the chief of the border police and incorporated government agencies, NGOs, and international organizations. The government assisted in international investigations of human trafficking and participated in regional antitrafficking operations.
The government offered temporary resident visas and shelter to victims who agreed to testify against their traffickers, provided victim and witness protection, and did not prosecute victims.
The government's agency for coordination of protection to victims worked to ensure that trafficking victims were correctly identified and referred to assistance providers. Separate shelters for domestic and foreign trafficking victims operated during the year. The NGO Astra operated a hotline for trafficking victims. NGOs and volunteers provided legal, medical, psychological, and other assistance to victims. In August the NGO Atina launched a reintegration program for victims of sexual exploitation.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) managed repatriation of foreign victims and assisted in the reintegration of local victims. The IOM also ran a regional clearing center for information on trafficking victims. There were numerous training programs, including training for hotline volunteers, shelters, social welfare officers, and police.
Government and NGO public awareness efforts to combat trafficking included conferences on trafficking, documentary films and public service announcements shown across Serbia, and school outreach programs. NGOs continued to organize and fund the majority of Serbia's public information campaigns.
Persons with Disabilities
The constitution and law prohibit discrimination against persons with disabilities in employment, education, access to health care, or in the provision of other state services, and the government generally enforced the law. There were no reports of discrimination against persons with physical or mental disabilities; however, facilities for their education and care were nonexistent or inadequate, and the government did not address the problem. A high unemployment rate and lack of accommodations made it difficult for persons with disabilities to obtain employment.
The law mandates access for persons with disabilities to new public buildings, and the government generally enforced this provision in practice.
During the year, several government and municipal authorities took steps to increase access to public facilities for persons with disabilities. In July the Belgrade public transport system adopted a policy to allow guide dogs on all public transportation.
Unemployment remained a serious problem for persons with disabilities. A study released by the Center for Development of Inclusion and the Center for Study of Alternatives found that 87 percent of persons with disabilities were unemployed, while 70 percent lived in poverty. The study also found that a greater percentage of women with disabilities were dependent on public assistance compared to men with disabilities.
National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Minorities constituted 25 to 30 percent of Serbia's population and included Hungarians, Bosniaks, Roma, Slovaks, Romanians, Vlachs, Bulgarians, Croats, Albanians, and others.
Although not widespread, there continued to be incidents of vandalism and some physical attacks against minorities. The number of incidents against ethnic Hungarians in Vojvodina decreased compared with 2004 and 2005, and minority leaders there reported that the situation was calm. Vojvodina and Serbian government officials continued implementation of a 10-point strategy, agreed upon in 2005, for improving ethnic relations in the province, including education programs, public awareness campaigns, and greater representation of minorities in the police and judiciary.
Many voters in Vojvodina objected to the new constitution, and some Vojvodina leaders called for a boycott on the referendum. While the constitution ostensibly gives Vojvodina a larger portion of its tax revenue than the province previously received, it also further limits its autonomy. Only 48 percent of the Vojvodina electorate voted in the referendum on the constitution, and only 14 percent of ethnic Hungarians participated.
Ethnic Albanian leaders of the southern municipalities of Presevo, Bujanovac, and Medvedja continued to complain about the under-representation of ethnic Albanians in government structures, and lobbied for greater political autonomy for predominantly ethnic Albanian areas. In October leaders of the Party for Democratic Action, one of the largest ethnic Albanian political parties, called on members to boycott the constitutional referendum.
In August the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Nedzat Beljuli, an ethnic Albanian who had alleged that the Ministry of Economy and Privatization had disqualified his 2004 bid on a public company on ethnic grounds.
Roma continued to be targets of numerous incidents of police violence, verbal and physical harassment from ordinary citizens, and societal discrimination. The UN Development Program's social vulnerability report, released in July, found that the Romani population continued to live in conditions of extreme poverty with limited access to education and healthcare. The report noted that the situation of Roma in the country remained largely unchanged since aid efforts began.
On February 24, a dozen men attacked the Romani settlement of Beograd Mahala in Nis, breaking windows, throwing stones, and shouting, "Gypsies, you are dead." Police arrested nine people but released them without charges since they were minors. The Minority Rights Center filed criminal charges against the perpetrators for inciting ethnic, racial and religious hatred and intolerance.
In June the Minority Rights Center filed criminal charges against police officers Toncika Jeres, Goran Kukuska, and Mirko Kecman in the Municipal Court Novi Knezevac for abusing a Roma man, Mladen Mikluc on several occasions between May 15 and June 2. Mikluc said the officers refused to come to his aid when he tried to report that a man (Stevica Brzak) was beating him with a baseball bat; when Mikluc went to the police station, the officers and Brzak beat him again.
On November 15, two underage suspects allegedly harassed an 18-year-old Roma youth, pushed him off a public bus and then beat him. Police charged the two suspects with inciting ethnic, racial, and religious hatred and intolerance.
The HLC reported that on August 31, Kosta Brzak, Slobodan Pantelic, and several unidentified persons physically and verbally assaulted three Romani men (Seljatim, Besim, and Ljumni Kolovati) at a Novi Sad flea market. At year's end misdemeanor criminal charges were pending against Brzak and Pantelic.
On July 7, the Belgrade district court upheld a February 28 municipal court judgment ordering the government to pay approximately $8,100 (485,000 dinars) compensation to Masimo Marinkovic, a 30-year-old Romani man who was shot by Vladimir Bonifacic, an off-duty employee of the Ministry of Interior in 1998. The municipal court held the government responsible in the case because Bonifacic was a government employee who had used his service weapon while off duty.
On March 8, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) adopted a decision regarding a 2000 incident in which a Romani man was denied entry to a Belgrade discotheque. CERD found that the government failed to adequately investigate the petitioner's claim and recommended that the government provide compensation to the petitioner and take measures to ensure that the police, public prosecutors, and courts properly investigate future complaints of racial discrimination.
Many Roma, including IDPs from Kosovo, lived illegally in squatter settlements that lacked basic services such as schools, medical care, water, and sewage facilities. Some settlements were located on valuable industrial or commercial sites where private owners wanted to resume control; others were on the premises of state-owned enterprises due to be privatized. During the year Belgrade authorities continued to suspend demolition of one settlement on privatized land until they could locate alternative housing for Roma living there.
During the year the City of Belgrade abandoned plans to construct an apartment complex for Roma in New Belgrade due to protests by residents near the prospective site. Residents of Block 45 in New Belgrade blocked traffic for several days and shouted slogans such as "we don't want the Gypsies."
Rivalries between Bosniak political parties in the predominantly Bosniak city of Novi Pazar led to at least one outbreak of low level violence during the year. On April 7, Minister for Local Administration Zoran Loncar dissolved Novi Pazar's democratically elected assembly, sparking fights and some reported assaults.
To address concerns of minorities, the government operated a hotline for minorities and others concerned about human rights problems. The government also sponsored school programs to educate children about minority cultures and to promote tolerance.
Other Societal Abuses and Discrimination
Violence and discrimination against homosexuals was a problem. Some NGOs reported that homosexuals were denied equal opportunities in education and employment. A survey by the Youth Initiatives for Human Rights indicated that lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender persons experienced widespread threats, hate speech, verbal assault, and physical violence.
Although the broadcasting law prohibits discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, the media carried slurs against homosexuals. On February 26, a high ranking official of the SPS called homosexuality a "social pathology" and "something especially decadent," and indicated that gays and lesbians should not be allowed in the diplomatic service.
In a poll released during the year by lesbian rights organization Labris, 65 percent of homosexual respondents claimed they had experienced violence due to their sexual orientation. Only ten percent of respondents had reported this violence to the police.
The new criminal code, which entered into force on January 1, included a provision equalizing the age of consent for all types of sexual contact. The previous law maintained a higher age of consent for homosexual sex (18) than for heterosexual sex (14). Under the new law, the age of consent for all types of sexual contact is 14. Activists had complained that the old law unfairly discriminated against the homosexual community.
Section 6 Worker Rights
a. The Right of Association
The law and constitution provide the right for workers, except military and police personnel, to join or form unions of their choosing, subject to restrictions, including approval by the Ministry of Labor and a statement from the employer that the union leader is a full-time employee, which reportedly was tantamount to an employer approval requirement. A state-affiliated trade union federation dominated organized labor, due to preference for unions belonging to it by the managements of the state-owned industries that dominated the economy. Smaller federations of independent trade unions competed with the government-affiliated federation, but were successful in doing so primarily in the relatively small proportion of the formal nonagricultural economy that is not state-owned. In the state-owned sector, 60 to 70 percent of workers belonged to unions. In the private sector, only four to six percent were unionized, and in agriculture approximately three percent.
The law does not prohibit antiunion discrimination, but it was not a significant problem during the year.
b. The Right to Organize and Bargain Collectively
The law and constitution allow unions to conduct their activities without interference, and the government protected this right in practice. The law protects the right to organize and bargain collectively, and it was exercised freely in practice. The new labor law implemented in March 2005 requires collective bargaining agreements for any company with more than 10 employees. However, in order to negotiate with an employer, a union must have 15 percent of company employees as members. In order to negotiate with the government, a union must have 10 percent of all workforce employees as members. Wage arrears were reported to be substantial and widespread. Approximately 27 percent of the workforce was covered by collective bargaining agreements.
The law and constitution provide for the right to strike except by persons providing essential services such as education, electric power, and postal service. These employees constitute approximately 50 percent of the workforce and must announce planned strikes at least 15 days in advance and ensure that a "minimum level of work" is provided. Workers exercised the right to strike.
Serbia continued to lack a general collective agreement since the previous agreement expired in September 2005. Two representative trade unions (Independence and the Confederation of the Autonomous Trade Union | 
