ZAGREB, April 25, 2019 – A conference marking the tenth anniversary of the Anti-Discrimination Act heard in Zagreb on Thursday that the law had helped make the constitutional principle of equality a reality but warned that more work was needed to prevent discrimination because its presence in society was much greater than was reported to relevant institutions.
The conference, organised by Ombudswoman Lora Vidović and the House of Human Rights, warned that there were many areas where human rights violations and discrimination were reported.
Vidović said that the most prevalent form of discrimination was the one based on ethnicity, discrimination in the area of work and employment, and discrimination based on gender and disability. “The system established under the law is broad, it has made the constitutional principle of equality a reality and has introduced European principles of equal treatment,” Vidović said, adding that there was a large number of institutions in charge of preventing discrimination.
Even though citizens may seek protection against discriminatory practices, surveys show that the presence of discrimination is much greater than it is reported, she warned.
She said that two of three respondents said that they did not report discrimination because they did not think that it would change anything, because they were afraid the situation might get worse, did not know who to report it to, or believed court proceedings would be complicated, long and expensive.
Speaking of irregularities in police conduct in cases concerning the public use of the Ustasha salute “For the homeland ready”, Vidović said that she had requested information from police on such conduct in a number of cases.
In that context, she cited the case of singer Marko Perković Thompson, who, she said, had not been prosecuted for chanting the salute while youths who wore T-shirts with that slogan had.
Another example was a recent commemoration in Split for members of a unit named after an Ustasha commander that fought in the Homeland War, Vidović said, adding that it was worrying the event was attended by representatives of the Veterans Affairs Ministry.
She said that in the case of the commemoration no criminal report had been filed, which she said was uneven practice and was contrary to the practice of the High Misdemeanour and Administrative Courts.
The director of the House of Human Rights, Ivan Novosel, called for introducing appropriate content on human rights in civics and for stepping up activity at local level. He said slow courts and inadequate application of legal provisions was a major problem in preventing discrimination.
“Two years ago, we witnessed controversies regarding the adoption of the national plan for the prevention of discrimination. The then foreign minister Davor Ivo Stier and his associates tried to have ethnic minorities and LGBTQ persons removed from the national plan,” said Novosel, adding that citizens did not trust state institutions sufficiently, with a 2016 survey showing that one in five said they had experienced discrimination once or more times in the last five years.
Recalling the process of adoption of the Anti-Discrimination Act, former prime minister Jadranka Kosor, during whose term in office the law was adopted, said that nongovernmental organisations, too, had been involved in drawing up the law.
The adoption of the law promoted a number of negative comments, notably from the Church, individual NGOs as well as individual politicians, Kosor recalled.
She added that she was not sure such a law could be adopted in today’s Croatia given social stakeholders who maintained that the Anti-Discrimination Act stated that only couples with children constituted family.
Kosor called for discussing prevention of discrimination more often, notably on the political scene.
More news about human rights in Croatia can be found in the Politics section.
