Odbor za ljudska prava

Committee for Human Rights

SERBIA

16 000 Leskovac

office: Svetozara Markovica 37

tel/fax: + 381 16 215 922

www.humarightsle.org

e-mail: nesic@eunet.yu

Leskovac, 20 January, 2007

COMMITTEE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS LESKOVAC ‘S ANNUAL REPORT ON HUMAN RIGHTS CONDITIONS ON THE TERRITORY OF JABLNICA AND PCINJA DISTRICTS BASED ON THE UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY DECLARATION ON HUMAN RIGHTS, FOR THE PERIOD FROM 1 JANUARY 2006 UNTIL 31 DECEMBER 2006 AND COMMITTEE’S WORK ON PROTECTION AND AFFIRMATION OF THE RIGHTS

Statistics

During the reporting period, starting from 1 January until 31 December 2006, 834 people or average 69 each month contacted Committee for Human Rights asking for legal help and advice. Those people found out about the work of the Committee from media, current and former users of our services and through our website. From that number 820 people or 68 per month personally came to our office, 10 people contacted us by phone or 0.8 per month, 4 people by fax or 0.3 per month.

From the total number, the cases of 759 people or more than 60 per month were within

the area of our work, whereas 74 people or about 6 a month were not.

In 2006, 705 people or 58 each month asked for and got legal help from the area of our expertise, whereas 30 people or more than 2 per month asked legal help in cases which are not within the area of our work and interest.

In 2006, 753 people or more than 62 people per month asked for and got legal advice from the area of our interests, whereas legal advice in cases that are not the object of our interests asked and got 63 people or more than 5 per month.

During the reporting period in consideration for representation we took cases of 45 people or more than 3 per month, whereas we represented 111 people or more than 9 each month.

For the needs of our users, during the reporting period, we wrote 25 charges or 2 each month on average, 1 objection to indictment, 1 complaint suggestion, 2 demands for conducting an investigation, 13 criminal charges, 64 complaints, 33 complaints or more than 2 each months, 6 demands for access on information of public interest, 2 objections, 27 petition requests of different kinds, 5 claims for repetition of court proceedings, 2 revisions, 2 complaints to the Serbia and Montenegro court, 11 requests to the European court for human rights in Strasbourg.

In 2006, Committee for Human Rights’ lawyer represented our users in 292 appearances in court or on average 24 appearances per month, and in 137 appearances in court or 11 times a month in criminal subjects.

National structure of the people who asked our help in 2006 is: Serbs 669 or 55 per month, Romas 137 or 11 a month, Albanians 11 or less than 1 a month, Bulgarians 9 or less than one a month, Croats 4 or less than 1 a month, Montenegrin 1 and Palestinian 1.

The structure of rights for which violation or endangerment people asked our help and advice in 2006, from the aspect of UN General Assembly Declaration is the following:

§ article 3, the right to life, freedom and personal security - 13 cases

§ article 5, prohibition of torture, cruel, inhuman humiliating actions and punishments - 44 cases

§ article 7, the right to equal law protection and protection from discrimination - 24 cases

§ article 8, the right to be protected by the national courts efficiently from the violation of rights acknowledged by law and Constitution - 145 cases

§ article 10, the right to fair trial before impartial and independent court - 398 cases

§ article 12, prohibition of arbitrary interference in personal and family life of a person, house, family and correspondence - 5 cases

§ article 16, the right to marry without limitation to race, faith, citizenship - 1 case

§ article 17, the right to free possession of property, and prohibition of freewill deprivation of property - 42 cases

§ article 19, the right to freedom of opinion and expression - 244 cases

§ article 20, the right to freedom of peaceful associating - 240 cases

§ article 23, the right to work and satisfactory working conditions - 69 cases

§ article 25, the right to satisfactory living standard that provide health and basic needs - 144 cases

Narrative report

Analyzing the statistic data presented and working on the concrete cases, it is evident that in 2006, on the territory of our interest, the right to efficient court protection and the right to a righteous trial before impartial and independent court were most often violated. What is worrying is the fact that those rights were mostly violated by court employees, people who work in administration of justice and judicial organs, the same people who are supposed to work on human rights implementation in practice. This points to a dramatic situation in administration of justice on the territory of Jablanica and one part of Pcinja and Pirot districts. It is characterized by bureaucratization both in working with people and in acting on dossiers. Their lack of willingness to educate and accept and in practice use the instruments of international humanitarian law makes them “handicapped lawyers” who partially know domestic law and whereas the legal rules of the international humanitarian law which has a primate over our law (according to the former State Union of Serbia and Montenegro’s Constitutional Charter and also stated in our new Constitution of Serbia) know little or no at all, so in practice they do not use them. This, in the legal situation of Serbia, creates a funny situation that the authorities normatively and declaratively proclaim human rights acknowledged by the instruments of the international humanitarian law, whereas in practice, the carriers of judicial functions who are in charge of their implementation do not use them but violate them even consciously, and are being paid by the state. So there is a gap between normatively and declaratively proclaimed “legal state” and “ the rule of law” and “the state without laws” that we see in practice, and this compromises the present authorities as demagogical, the one that ”says one thing and in practice does another”.

We are worried that the present authorities, because of the relations between political forces, are not able to solve such a situation, but also that they are not willing to give one part of the job to the non-governmental sector, which would be working on prosecutions of corrupted, resourceless carriers of judicial functions who protect criminals in the administration of justice.

Where the administration of justice in the south of Serbia is, can be seen in the fact that the President of the Municipal court in Surdulica for three years has not conducted the verdict of the Supreme Court of Serbia, by which a police officer is sentenced to 18 months effective imprisonment. For doing (or not doing) so this President does not suffer any consequences but is regularly being paid by the state. In Vranje, a judge of the Municipal Court, who against the article 13 of the UN Convention against torture sentenced a victim of police torture for denouncing a person who took active participation in his torture, was elected a President of the Municipal court. Courts in Pirot both, Municipal and District, must not summon as a witness a director of a monopoly company “Tigar” to testify about credibility of the Decision by the Managing Board of the company “TIGAR MH” he signed although there were TWO DECISIONS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, and because of which 260 employees lost their right to work and satisfactory working conditions from article 23 of the UN Declaration, and based on which the company cancelled nonexistent Working Contracts, which shows that courts in Pirot are under direct control, not by the state that finances them but by a monopoly company such as “Tigar”.

As the most tragic situation in the administration of justice in Jablanica District we notify the situation in which the District Court is “privatized” and works under control and in the interest of an oligarchy group on the local level. Since it is functioning and manages to survive it obviously has support in the higher ranks of the justice system. On the First regular session of the Parliament of Serbia on 27the March, 2006, parliamentary representative Zivojin Stefanovic pointed to this. Such a situation lead us to the current one where you can “order” a verdict according to your wishes if you have enough money and connections, and thus, the administration of justice in Jablanica District lost any sense. In conception to this, we feel, we should stress, that the Republic of Serbia from 2001 until 30 January 2004 had a legal case number 2021/2001 at the Municipal court in Leskovac against present president of the District court in Leskovac, Jovica Ilic for not returning professional literature. Then the Municipal Court in Leskovac by decision number 2021/2001 from 30 January 2004 suspended the proceedings, because the deputy of the Republican public defender during 4 years both did not schedule any proceedings neither the suit was given to the president of the District court, believing probably, that the president of the District court has no obligation to compensate for the damage, so he withdrew the suit by petition from 19 January, 2004 stating as a reason that a peaceful solution is about to happen, although we cannot know whether the president returned the books or not.

Such a situation in the administration of justice creates doubts that courts in Leskovac will have an important role in economy as they had during Milosevic and directly influence the work and existence of the economic subjects by helping companies that “are in scheme” quickly and efficiently whereas the companies that are not “in scheme” will be artificially brought into insolvency state and their decay, the scheme we saw during Milosevic when our economy was ruined.

Our research showed that on the territory of our interest, 30 % of the carriers of judicial functions and other employees in the administration of justice are professional criminals who use their function and position for personal gain and in the function of interest groups and individuals on the local and republican level, 30 % are latent criminals who abuse their function and 40 % are honorable people who know and love justice, and their jobs in the administration of justice understand as an honorable position. Unfortunately they are minority and are held back by active and latent criminals

Such a condition in the administration of justice on one hand demands urgent replacement of the worst personnel and their replacement with young personnel willing to prove themselves in the administration of justice , and on the other calls for urgent and general education of the judicial personnel and especially about the international instruments of the humanitarian law. The character of the new Serbian government , democratic and human or not, will be determined by its willingness to change the present condition of the judicial organs which makes our country “decay from the inside”.

In 2006, as excess cases in March we notified violation of the right to freedom of opinion and freedom of associating, which relates to the cases when the Commercial court in Leskovac and Higher commercial court in Belgrade incapacitated 240 employees from the firm “Ratex” to practice their rights from the Law on social organization and citizens associations and Law on economic association and small shareholders.

Further analyzing would lead to the conclusion that in the reporting period, on the territory of our interest, the prohibition of torture and other cruel and inhumane deeds was violated on a relatively low scale until December 2006, when the victims of torture from the Penitentiary Prison Nis contacted us for help in order to prosecute the members of gendarmerie and prison officers who tortured them in the prison on 24 November 2006, on the occasion that was proclaimed as “rebellion”. However, working on 36 such cases, we have got the impression that the event did not develop as it was said in public, but that the members of the gendarmerie and prison clerks used excessive force frequently on prisoners who were in their pajamas or in beds, that over 100 people asked for medical help, that not all were given adequate medical help, that some of the prisoners lost their fingernails from excessive beatings – which was an unfamiliar technique of torture in our country so far, that some of the prisoners are still being inadequately cured from the torture injuries and bad medical treatment , whereas a lot of them were transferred to other prisons. This case has proven what we already knew that in Penitentiary Prison in Nis no one is familiar with the UN Convention against torture and other cruel and inhumane proceedings and punishments, and prison doctors are not familiar with the Tokyo Convention and Resolution on human rights of the World prison Association about the prohibition of torture and participating in such acts, which shows that the state of Serbia has not done her obligation from the article 10 of the UN Convention against torture.

The difficulty of the situation is further depicted by the fact that prison authorities even after several days did not allow the Committee’s lawyer to visit the prisoners even though he had all the necessary papers and Proxy signed by the prisoners’ families; also prison wards especially maltreat Albanian prisoners Cerim Binaj from Prizren and Ljtifi Ramadan for talking to the Committee’s lawyer and reporting torture done on them and passive attitude of the Management of the Prison and prison Warden.

In 2006, the worrying level was reached in violating the right to work and have satisfactory working conditions from the article 23 of the Declaration. The private employers and directors of non-privatized companies, use illegal “dismissials as technological surplus”, do not give wages and social contributions for retirement and handicapped insurance for the employees. 2006 was especially characterized by deprivation of people’s property by the stately owned monopoly companies like public companies, from the area of Elecropower supplies, who through “blown” accounts deprived people from their money by charging them for services they had not provided under threat to suspend further providing of real services.

Also we should point out to cases in which Municipals deprived people of their right to use the ground on which they had built houses, by taking the ground from the position of state power by the help of the police forces, without any compensation, which again proves that in 2006 people in Serbia had no property legal security, bearing in mind the fact that courts “blessed” such robbery giving it legitimacy opposed to the article 1 of the protocol 1 with the European Convention for human rights protection and basic freedoms.

In 2006 we notify ultimate carelessness of the state for people who during “transition” were brought to the state of social need, and the Centers for Social work showed they are not ready to fight such situation because of the bureaucratic way of work and lack of humanity in them. We should stress a case of 106 Romas from the village Vinarce who during the night were deprived of their right to material help.

In this year, on 10 December, 2006, The Committee for Human Rights Leskovac celebrated 10 years of its existence and work, in mostly hostile environment which is characterized by effort of the local director of the monopoly Electropower supplies, Leskovac, Josif Spiric to take away our money and charge us for demands his company has from the party of the Former Minister Dusan Mihajlovic. Also the campaign of the local Police against the Committee’s lawyer Dragutin Vidosavljevic who in 2001 was given Certificate that on the address he lives he possesses a hunting gun and in 2006 they started tort proceedings for allegedly not reporting to the police he possesses the hunting gun at his address. The complete story is missing only the moustaches of Josif Visarionovic Staljin and “glasses” of his friend Lavrentije Berije and then we could feel we are living in their age. Another contribution to this story is supported by a high police official at the Head of the Ministry of Police in Belgrade, Ljiljana Dimitrijevic, who never responded to numerous demands for questioning police decisions legislation, but “covers” their actions and thus, proves that the events and time have long time overcome her and that if Serbian police really wants to change the mentality from the Milosevic’s time they should urgently replace such personnel and stop paying them.

All these cases clearly confirm that 2006, from the aspect of human rights was characterised by legal and property insecurity and lack of proper protection of human rights as acknowledged by the Constitution and laws. So new government will have to pass the exam, in case politicians are aware - since they seem to live in an imaginary world, which they proved in the pre-election campaigns by promising everything, as well as the inability of the authorities to use the co-operative NGOs dealing with human rights and treat them as cooperative and constructive factor, which the fact that there is no new NGO law but is used Milosevic’s also shows.

President of the Committee for human rights, Leskovac]

Dobrosav Nesic