Amnesty International Annual Report 2006
Europe & Central Asia Regional Overview
Covering events from January to December 2005
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The legacy of previous conflicts, including impunity for crimes committed during them, persisted. Cyprus continued to be a divided island and no significant progress was made in resolving the status of the region’s internationally unrecognized entities, situated within the borders of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Moldova but remaining outside of those states’ de facto control. However, steps were taken to open talks on the final status of Kosovo.
Many countries in the region were a magnet for those attempting to escape poverty, violence or persecution. The fact that asylum is principally a human rights issue continued to be all but lost in the face of political pressure to control “illegal immigration” or to prioritize “security concerns”. In breach of their international obligations, some states unlawfully detained asylum-seekers and conducted expulsions without due process, including to countries where those seeking protection were at further risk of violations. Asylum-seekers, migrants and minorities remained among those continuing to face racism and discrimination across the region.
While the process of accession to the European Union (EU) continued to encourage human rights progress in some states, institutionally the EU continued to have a minimalist concept of its domestic human rights role. Adoption of the EU’s constitutional treaty, incorporating its Charter of Fundamental Rights, stalled after rejection by voters in two member states. The EU’s proposed new Agency for Fundamental Rights, while potentially a significant step forward in overcoming EU complacency towards observance and fulfilment of human rights within its own borders, showed a limited and ad hoc approach to human rights policy – with abuses by member states largely excluded from its remit.
Security and human rights
Security continued to eclipse observance of fundamental human rights, to the detriment of both issues. In the UK, new measures purportedly to counter terrorism were enacted even though the country had some of the toughest anti-terrorism laws in the region. The enactment of other measures, including provisions that would undermine the rights to freedom of expression, association, liberty and fair trial, was pending at the end of the year. People previously held without charge or trial, labelled “terrorist suspects” on the basis of secret intelligence they were not allowed to know and therefore could not refute, were placed under restrictive “control orders” after their detention had, in 2004, been ruled incompatible with their human rights. Most of them were subsequently reimprisoned under immigration powers pending deportation on national security grounds: many of the men and their families suffered serious deterioration in their mental and physical health as a result of their ordeals.
The UK government also continued to undermine the universal and absolute ban on torture by trying to deport people they deemed to be terror suspects to countries with a history of torture or other ill-treatment. The authorities sought to rely on inherently unreliable and ineffective “diplomatic assurances” featured in Memorandums of Understanding agreed with states with a well-documented record of torture. In December the highest court in the UK delivered a landmark judgment upholding the absolute inadmissibility as evidence in legal proceedings of information extracted under torture. However, earlier in the year a German court ruled that evidence possibly obtained under torture or other ill-treatment was admissible in legal proceedings. In France, a draft anti-terrorism law would allow longer periods of incommunicado detention and so would remove safeguards against torture and other ill-treatment.
Disclosures at the end of the year suggested the involvement of a number of European states in illegal and secret transfers (“renditions”) by the USA of individuals to countries where torture was rife, or to US custody in military bases and secret locations around the world. Both the Council of Europe and the European Parliament launched inquiries into allegations of secret US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) detention centres in Europe and of CIA-chartered aeroplanes making flights in or out of European airspace said to have been used in abductions and unlawful transfers of prisoners.
In Uzbekistan, the authorities responded brutally when a group of armed men seized various buildings in the city of Andizhan in May. Witnesses reported that hundreds of people were killed when security forces fired recklessly and without warning on a mostly unarmed and peaceful crowd of demonstrators that included children.
In a disturbing development in Turkey, against a background of increasing violence between the security services and the armed opposition Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), there were reports of direct official involvement in the November bombing of a bookshop in the D4emdinli district of HakkE2ri in which one man was killed.
Refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants
There was a consistent pattern of human rights violations linked to the interception, detention and expulsion by states of foreign nationals, including those seeking international protection. At least 13 people were killed when trying to enter the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla from Morocco, allegedly as a result of Spanish and Moroccan law enforcement officers using disproportionate and lethal force to prevent them entering the enclaves.
Men, women and children continued to face obstacles in accessing asylum procedures. In Greece, Italy, Spain and the UK, some were unlawfully detained and others were denied necessary guidance and legal support. Many were unlawfully expelled before their claims could be heard, including from Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Kazakstan, Malta, Russia and Spain. Some were sent to countries where they were at risk of human rights violations. The fact that EU member states were among those doing this illustrated the EU’s failure to acknowledge that it faced a crisis of protection, rather than of asylum. Elsewhere, intense international pressure was placed on Kyrgyzstan to honour its obligation to offer protection to those fleeing the Andizhan events in Uzbekistan.
Racism and discrimination
Continuing racism, discrimination and intolerance were often identity-based. In many countries in the region, Jews and Muslims were among those targeted by individuals and organizations for hate crimes.
In Russia, there were hundreds of racially motivated physical assaults; at least 28 of them resulted in deaths. In France, migrants and French nationals of North African and sub-Saharan extraction, apparently enraged by discriminatory practices in employment and other areas, and the often racist and aggressive conduct of the police, began rioting in cities and towns across the country in October after the deaths of two boys in disputed circumstances. A state of emergency was declared.
Across the region Roma remained severely disadvantaged in key areas of public and private life such as housing, employment, education and health services. They were also frequently the targets of racism by law enforcement officials.
In some countries of the former Yugoslavia, discrimination on ethnic grounds in areas such as employment and housing continued to block a durable and dignified return for many people displaced by the conflict.
Others faced discrimination around issues of their legal status. Meskhetians in the Krasnodar Territory in Russia continued to be refused recognition of their citizenship on ethnic grounds, and so were unable to access a wide range of basic rights. In Greece, the authorities still refused to reissue citizenship documents to members of the Muslim population in western Thrace, with those affected thereby denied access to state benefits and institutions. In Slovenia, thousands of people unlawfully “erased”in 1992 from the registry of permanent residents, mainly people from other Yugoslav republics (many of them Roma), were still waiting for their status to be resolved. As a result of the “erasure” many were denied full access to their economic and social rights.
A climate of intolerance against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities in Latvia, Poland and Romania saw local authorities actively obstructing public events organized by LGBT groups amid openly homophobic language used by some highly placed politicians. However, in Spain and the UK new laws recognized partnerships for same sex couples.
Violence against women
Domestic violence against women and girls remained widespread across the region, affecting all ages and social groups. Positive attempts to tackle it included provisions in the new Turkish Penal Code offering greater protection for women against violence in the family, and special courts established for women victims of domestic violence in Spain. However, the law in Spain – as in other places – continued to leave the onus on the victim, not the state, to lodge a formal complaint or take the initiative in organizing protection.
Other gaps in legal protection included no specific criminalization of domestic violence in countries such as Albania and Russia. Too often, initiatives such as the opening of a shelter, the establishment of a helpline or provision of other services happened through the efforts of individuals and NGOs struggling with inadequate funding. Moscow, the capital of Russia and a city of 10 million people, remained without a single shelter for women who were victims of violence.
Poverty, lack of education, family breakdown and crime networks contributed to the continuing problem of trafficking of human beings, including of women and girls for enforced prostitution. Protection for the survivors and prosecution of the perpetrators were hindered by issues such as a failure to provide trafficked people with an automatic right to protection and assistance; the lack, or inadequate implementation of, witness protection law; failure to criminalize internal trafficking; and threats and fears of reprisals. One potentially positive step was the opening for signature in May of the Council of Europe’s Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings.
Abuses by officials and impunity
Torture and ill-treatment, often race-related, were reported across the region. Victims described a catalogue of abuses, including being beaten, stripped naked and threatened with death; deprivation of food, water and sleep; having plastic bags placed over their heads; and threats against their family. In some cases, detainees reportedly died as a result of such abuse or excessive use of force, including in Bulgaria, Russia and Spain.
Although there were some positive developments, including moves by new administrations in Georgia and Ukraine to tackle torture and ill-treatment, there were still obstacles in these and other countries that prevented the eradication of such abuses. The obstacles included police cover-ups, victims’ fear of repercussions, lack of prompt access to a lawyer, and the lack of an effective, properly resourced and independent system to investigate complaints. Failure to conduct prompt, thorough and impartial investigations led to an overwhelming climate of impunity in Turkey, Uzbekistan and elsewhere in the region. In Russia, impunity remained the norm for serious human rights abuses in the context of the Chechen conflict.
In many countries, conditions in prisons, as well as in detention centres for asylum-seekers and irregular migrants, were inhuman and degrading.
Intense international pressure on some countries in the western Balkans produced improved cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia early in the year, with the capture or apparently voluntary surrender of a number of suspects accused of crimes, including war crimes and crimes against humanity. Among those held was former Croatian Army General Ante Gotovina, although other suspects continued to evade arrest. Lack of full cooperation with the Tribunal together with insufficient efforts by domestic courts remained an obstacle to justice.
Death penalty
There was further progress towards total abolition of the death penalty in the region. Legal amendments in Moldova removed the last provisions for the death penalty from the Constitution. Similar draft constitutional amendments were proposed in Kyrgyzstan.
Uzbekistan announced that capital punishment would be abolished from 2008, but this was little comfort for all those affected by the death penalty. Dozens of people were believed to have been sentenced to death and executed during 2005 in a criminal justice system flawed throughout by corruption and which consistently failed to investigate allegations of torture. Relatives, tormented by uncertainty, were not told in advance the date of executions and were denied the bodies of their executed relatives and knowledge of where they were buried. Uzbekistan also flouted its international legal obligations by executing at least one person whose case was under consideration by the UN Human Rights Committee, at one point even assuring the Committee that the man remained alive when the death certificate indicated that he had been executed three weeks earlier. Belarus and Uzbekistan remained the region’s last executioners.
Repression of dissent
Civil, political and religious dissent remained systematically and often brutally repressed in Belarus, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. In Uzbekistan, official attempts to block alternative reports of the many deaths in Andizhan involved widespread intimidation, beatings and detentions, including of witnesses, demonstrators, journalists and human rights defenders. In Belarus, opposition activists were imprisoned on false criminal charges. In Turkmenistan, political dissidents and members of religious minority groups were among those harassed, arbitrarily detained and tortured.
In Russia, the climate of hostility towards human rights defenders intensified and some individuals were prosecuted for exercising their right to freedom of expression. A new law affecting NGOs, requiring stricter registration rules and increased state scrutiny, threatened to further compromise the independence of civil society.
In Serbia, increasing attacks by non-state actors on human rights defenders, with the tacit support of the state, were reminiscent of the period under former President Slobodan Milo9AeviBB. In Turkey a wide range of critical opinions remained open to criminalization, with writers, publishers, human rights defenders and academics among those prosecuted under a law which penalized “denigration” of Turkishness, the state and its institutions.
In spite of threats, intimidation and detention, however, human rights defenders across the region remained resolute in continuing their work, inspiring others to join them in aiming for lasting change and respect for the human rights of all.