On May 12, 2014, the Zagreb Human Rights House organized a round table "The State of Human Rights in 2013", at which it presented its Report on the state of human rights in the Republic of Croatia for 2013.
The report of the House of Human Rights, which was created as part of the activities of the Knowledge Center for Social Development in the area of promotion and protection of human rights, was presented by the editors at the press conference. Then the authors and associates from civil society organizations debated on a panel dedicated to violations of economic and social rights in 2013 with an emphasis on the position of vulnerable groups - youth, women, national minorities and the homeless, and a panel on violations of human rights in psychiatric institutions in 2013.
The Round Table was attended by citizens, representatives of civil society organizations, the Ombudsman Lora Vidović and her deputies, as well as representatives of the Ombudsman's Office, a representative of the National Foundation for the Development of Civil Society, the Office for Human Rights and the Rights of National Minorities of the Government of the Republic of Croatia, a representative of the City Assembly of the City of Zagreb, a member of the Committee for Human Rights and the Rights of National Minorities of the Croatian Parliament, the media and numerous others.
President of the House of Human Rights and President of BaBa Sanja Sarnavka During the Round Table, she pointed out that the human rights situation in Croatia is poor and that next year will be even worse because we still do not have politicians who deal with and live with the citizens whose interests they are supposed to represent, but rather political parties who live in a virtual world where they are relatively well off.
"In December last year, 363,411 unemployed people were registered at the Employment Service, but that number is higher because a large number of people do not even go to the Service and no longer register there," Sarnavka pointed out, adding that in the context of the economic power of its citizens, Croatia is at the very bottom of the European Union.
"The social picture of Croatia is catastrophic, and this is evidenced by the fact that in the last thirteen years only one homeless person in Split has received a social apartment. We do not have enough accommodation for the homeless, we do not have enough soup kitchens, and the scariest thing is that if you do not live in Zagreb or in a part of Istria, you are discriminated against from the start, because the services that exist in Zagreb are not available in smaller communities," she emphasized.
She cited the Free Legal Aid Act as a positive example, but its implementation is not possible because the Ministry of Justice has not yet announced a tender for the distribution of funds to start distributing legal aid, which consequently means that a large number of citizens cannot exercise their rights because they do not have access to justice.
She also highlighted the adoption of the harmful Labor Law, which aims to make the market more flexible, and which turns workers into commodities that need to be bought at the cheapest possible price and exploited as much as possible.
Sarnavka finds it particularly worrying that psychiatry is now being used as a threat to people expressing their views and opinions. "That is a characteristic of totalitarian regimes, but today we have countless such cases," she said.
He also finds the referendum on marriage very worrying. On behalf of the family, where the majority used its right to diminish the rights of the minority, instead of caring for minorities and their rights. He also considers the referendum on the Cyrillic alphabet problematic, because it completely negates the already achieved high level of rights of national minorities, and finds the culprits in the political elite who did not react and sent the referendum question for a constitutional review.
"It's not good, very little attention is paid to human rights, we are very dissatisfied. Unfortunately, human rights are the last of the topics that are publicly discussed and we will very rarely hear them discussed at the top of politics. The situation will get worse and worse and we all have to do something together to change the situation," Sarnavka concluded.
Report on the state of human rights in the Republic of Croatia for 2013 can be downloaded at the end of this text.
report_kljp_2013.pdf