Consideration of reports, comments and information submitted by States parties under article 9 of the Convention (continued)
CONSIDERATION OF REPORTS, COMMENTS AND INFORMATION SUBMITTED BY STATES PARTIES UNDER ARTICLE 9 OF THE CONVENTION (agenda item 4) (continued)
Croatia: information requested under article 9, paragraph 1, of the Convention
1. The CHAIRMAN said that the initial report of Croatia, as well as the core document concerning that country, which had not yet been given symbols because of shortage of time, had been submitted to the Committee and would be distributed later as official documents of the Committee. The Croatian delegation consisted of Mr. Budislav Vukas, Professor at the Faculty of Law, Zagreb, Mr. Branko Smerdel, Professor at the Faculty of Law, Zagreb, Ms. Narcisa Becirevic, Adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Mr. Tomislav Thuer, Attaché at the Permanent Mission of Croatia.
2. At the invitation of the Chairman, Mr. Vukas, Mr. Smerdel, Ms. Becirevic, and Mr. Thuer (Croatia) took places at the Committee table.
3. Mr. VUKAS (Croatia) said that he was very pleased to introduce, for the first time, a report on behalf of his country to a United Nations human rights body. The document submitted was the first complete report prepared by the Republic of Croatia pursuant to its treaty obligations, since the report transmitted to the Human Rights Committee in the autumn of 1992 had been very brief. The present document, drawn up in a very short period of time, had been prepared by a number of competent departments of the Croatian Government under the supervision of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
4. As far as the implementation of the Convention in domestic law was concerned, the Croatian Constitution adopted in December 1990 contained many articles concerning human rights. Mr. Smerdel, who had helped to draft it, had indicated that he himself and the other experts responsible for the task had been instructed by the President of the Republic to base all the human rights provisions of the Constitution on existing international instruments. Thus the constitutional norms which had been adopted by Parliament were never less strict, but whenever possible more demanding, than the European and international norms on the subject.
5. The text of the Constitution was commented on at length in the report and was annexed to it. The equality of all persons before the law and non-discrimination as the basis of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms were among its primary principles. Violations of the rights of persons on account of their race, colour, language, religion or national origin were punished, and the only derogations authorized were those provided for by the Convention itself.
6. When taking its first steps towards independence, Croatia had experienced a few problems with certain minorities; that was why, at the Conference on the Former Yugoslavia held at The Hague, London and Geneva, Croatia had been advised to adopt more precise rules for the treatment of national or ethnic minorities. In December 1990 Croatia had therefore adopted a Constitutional Law on the Human Rights and Freedoms and the Rights of National and Ethnic Communities or Minorities; a law that was generally recognized as being the most explicit of all existing instruments concerning the rights of minorities, at both the European and the world level. It protected minorities in areas where they represented a fairly substantial part of the population and it granted them a special status in areas where they constituted the majority of the population.
7. Other laws were mentioned in the report. Croatia had undertaken to recast its domestic legislation, including legislation in the field of human rights, on the basis of the traditional rules of law which had been in force before 1945 and which were related to European, German and Austrian law in particular. The usual mechanisms for protecting human rights, such as ordinary courts, a Constitutional Court and, an ombudsman, had been established.
8. At the international level Croatia had notified the Secretary-General, in October 1992, that it intended, as a successor State, to comply with all the obligations entered into by the former Yugoslavia under international human rights instruments; Croatia had therefore been a party to those instruments since 8 October 1991, the date of its accession to independence. The same applied to all other international instruments ratified by the former Yugoslavia, including those accepted within the framework of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). Anxious to fulfil all its commitments in human rights matters, Croatia had incorporated the provisions of all relevant instruments in its domestic law. In that regard, of the countries that had been created out of the Former Yugoslavia, it was the only one to have complied with the recommendations made at The Hague by the Conference on the Former Yugoslavia. Croatia would continue to cooperate with neighbouring countries with a view to adopting new provisions for the protection of minorities; it had already concluded several bilateral agreements for that purpose and was negotiating others. Finally, together with other countries members of the Central European Initiative, it was preparing a new instrument on the protection of minorities.
9. Croatia had always displayed its readiness to receive international observers wishing to verify the way in which it was complying with its obligations under international instruments, and it was scrupulously reporting to international bodies in accordance with its commitments. It was planning to accede to the first Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and it welcomed the initiatives taken by States members of the Council of Europe to invite other States to participate in joint bodies to monitor the situation in the former Yugoslavia, on which jurists and judges from different countries would serve. The draft instrument drawn up at The Hague also provided for the establishment of an international tribunal having competence over the whole territory of the former Yugoslavia. However, since the other Republics concerned had not accepted the provisions envisaged at The Hague, Croatia planned to set up a mixed tribunal consisting of two Croatian judges and three judges appointed by the European Community, whose task would be to verify the implementation of the provisions of the Constitutional Law concerning human rights and freedoms and the rights of minorities.
10. With regard to the prosecution of war criminals, Croatia had been cooperating since the beginning with the international commission of experts created for that purpose; on several occasions it had received the commission in its territory and had supplied it with all the information at its disposal; a mission had just been sent to Zagreb and to other parts of Croatia in order to meet members of the paramilitary forces who were due to be exchanged for Croatian prisoners of war and to gather their testimony. Finally, the Croatian authorities had already notified the Secretary-General of the names of the two candidates whom Croatia proposed to appoint as members of the international tribunal to be set up to try war criminals.
11. As far as the specific situation in Croatia was concerned, it should be borne in mind that one quarter of Croatian territory was not under the effective control of the Government. Croatia had been the victim of aggression by the Yugoslav army assisted by paramilitary troops from Serbia and from a few areas of Croatia where members of the Serbian minority had rebelled. The purpose of the aggression had been to oppose the creation of an independent Croatian State, whereas Croatia had already been a State under the Constitution of the former Yugoslavia, moreover, in an almost unanimous decision, in 1991 the inhabitants of Croatia had voted in favour of independence in a referendum in which 95 per cent of the population, including the minorities and in particular three quarters of the Serbian minority, had voted affirmatively.
12. In the areas which they did not control, the Croatian authorities were not in a position to enforce the provisions of the Convention; the United Nations forces present in four sectors of the territory had not been able to protect either the Croatian population or the Hungarian, Slovak and Czech minorities from what could only be described as genocide. Moreover, the aggression had harmed the Serbian minority in Croatia itself, since only one quarter of it lived in the areas occupied by the aggressor; the remainder, which lived in other areas of Croatia, was considered by the secessionist Serbian rebels to be a minority living in Croatia.
13. The situation was therefore deplorable; the Croatian economy was destroyed, communications were cut, part of the population of the occupied areas had been expelled, and in the buffer zone between those areas and the territory controlled by the Government people continued to live in permanent insecurity. In such circumstances, what were the Governments objectives? Its primary aim was to integrate all areas of the country, not by force but by economic development. On various occasions it had endeavoured to negotiate with the Serbian minority with a view to restoring communications, which were so important for both parties; it had promulgated an Amnesty Law, the text of which was annexed to the report; and it was continuing its attempts to negotiate with the Serbian rebels for the purpose of reintegrating the occupied areas into Croatia, of which they had formed part for centuries. In doing so, there would, of course, be no question of derogating in any way from the special status granted by the authorities to the two districts consisting of 11 municipalities where Serbs constituted the majority, a status which unfortunately existed only on paper for the moment. The Croatian Government hoped to find an early peaceful solution in conformity with the interests of all the peoples living in Croatia.
14. Mr. YUTZIS (Rapporteur for Croatia) welcomed the Croatian delegation, which the Committee was meeting for the first time, and thanked it for its initial report. Even if it did not follow completely the Committee's guidelines, the report contained positive elements and very useful information which, in conjunction with the oral statement made by the representative of Croatia, would make it possible to initiate a fruitful dialogue. Rather than examining the background to the painful conflict which was ravaging the whole of the former Yugoslavia, he would proceed immediately to analyse the report.
15. The first positive point to emerge from it was the fact that the Convention, like other international instruments, formed part of the domestic law of Croatia. Furthermore, the representative of Croatia had just indicated that his country was planning to accede to the first Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In that connection, however, a question arose at the outset: since Croatia had subscribed to all the provisions of the Convention and other relevant instruments, one aspect of the Constitution of the Republic was puzzling. The preamble to the Constitution defined Croatia as the national State of the Croatian nation, including members of other listed nations and minorities, who were also citizens and to whom equality was guaranteed. In the report, the authorities had not deemed it necessary to mention that paragraph of the preamble to the Constitution, which seemed to involve certain discriminatory connotations, since a distinction was made at the outset between certain citizens and others. It would therefore be desirable to have some explanations regarding the wording of that paragraph.
16. Paragraph 20 of the report, as drafted, seemed to place all responsibility for the current conflict on the Serbs, whereas the information available from other sources did not give that impression. Furthermore, paragraph 21 referred to the measures taken by Croatia in favour of "certain" ethnic groups: he had doubts about the apparently restrictive nature of that term and would like to have some explanations on the subject. He would also appreciate some further information on the specific results already obtained by the two organs mentioned in paragraphs 25 and 26 of the report - the Office For Inter-Ethnic Relations and its Council of Representatives of Ethnic and National Communities or Minorities.
17. In connection with article 3 of the Convention, he wondered why only the name of Mr. De Klerk was mentioned in paragraph 29 of the report, whereas other eminent persons were just as active in the campaign to eliminate racial segregation in South Africa.
18. Numerous sources indicated that the Croatian authorities were not demonstrating all the goodwill needed to set up effective and fair procedures for acquiring Croatian nationality. Some minority groups were being discriminated against in that their members were not able to acquire Croatian nationality, and even persons born in Croatia were encountering difficulties and delays. In his report, Mr. Mazowiecki, Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights, indicated that the Ministry of the Interior had told him that the delays were due to technical reasons and not to discriminatory practices. More information on that point would be useful. It was true that the Government had set up a commission to investigate whether there were any problems in the functioning of the services concerned and to find out why nationality applications were sometimes being turned down. None the less, the situation required an urgent solution, for it could have grave consequences. For example, people who were deprived of nationality and of valid identity cards risked losing their social benefits, including their right to a pension. Similarly, a rather large number of students not possessing the proper papers were obliged to pay for their studies themselves, whereas their Croatian colleagues attended university free of charge. In June 1993, 30,000 applications had been pending. Given the serious social and other consequences of not having a nationality, he hoped the situation would soon be remedied.
19. Mr. Mazowiecki's report, along with other documents, mentioned the existence of an ethnic list of citizens of non-Croatian origin, which had reportedly been printed by the armed forces and distributed widely in the Government-controlled areas. Whatever the original reasons had been for making such a list, its existence seemed to have given rise to quite blatant acts of discrimination, such as people losing their jobs. The Croatian delegation might wish to comment on those reports.
20. Article 62 of the Constitutional Law on the Human Rights and Freedoms and the Rights of National and Ethnic Communities or Minorities was indisputably intended to protect minorities. However, it was apparent from paragraph 33 of the report that the Croatian Criminal Code protected "certain" communities or minorities. He again wondered about an adjective which could be interpreted as meaning that some minorities were protected while others were not.
21. He also had knowledge of allegations of violations reportedly committed in various places under Croatian jurisdiction, as for example the innumerable atrocities said to have been perpetrated at Kašic and Smokovic. According to the authorities, those atrocities had been committed in response to Serbian exactions. Legal proceedings had been instituted, but nothing was known about the fate of those responsible. There was a public controversy between Amnesty International and the Croatian authorities on the subject; the situation was not clear and required further explanation.
22. Various reports referred to sick people who had died as a result of torture inflicted both by civilians and by Croatian soldiers. In Split, three people had allegedly died under torture, including Mr. Kastel Lusksik, who was said to have died in prison as a result of medically attested ill-treatment at the hands of five soldiers. It had also been learned that criminal proceedings had been instituted against four soldiers accused of the death of a Croat following his arrest in August 1992. In that case as well, sentence had reportedly still not been pronounced by the end of the year. He asked the Croatian delegation to provide more information on the subject. Furthermore, numerous deaths of Serbs, disappearances, cases of ill-treatment and unlawful detention had reportedly been noted during the cease-fire period. At Osijek, according to Amnesty International and other organizations, the military prosecutor who had subsequently been put in charge of the case had indicated that, at the start of the year, members of the Croatian armed forces had killed 72 people and that only 14 of the culprits had been sentenced. In August 1992, elderly people were said to have died at Markusica. The Croatian delegation should provide more information about those events.
23. He then turned to implementation of article 5 and equal treatment before the courts. Complaints had been submitted because of infringements of article 26 of the Constitution, which provided protection against the abuses he had just cited. However, it was known that arbitrary detention was practised in Croatia. According to some reports, there were undeclared places of detention run by private groups where people were detained with a view to being exchanged for Croatian prisoners. The very important issue of prisoner exchanges had been discussed several times by the Human Rights Committee. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination should also deal with it, as it was directly related to the Convention.
24. The Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights, Mr. Mazowiecki, had mentioned arbitrary detentions in Split. He had given the example of a Serb from that city, without any political connections, who had himself stated that he had been used as a prisoner for exchange, that his property had been confiscated and that he had not been authorized to return to Split. That sort of violation of constitutional rights demonstrated the importance of provisions concerning security of person.
25. Paragraph 54 of the report of Croatia gave the impression that it was only the Serbs who were guilty of atrocities. In reality, they were sometimes victims; the manner in which they were charged and tried under chapter 233 F of the Croatian Criminal Code had been severely criticized. Implementation of the provisions of the Criminal Code concerned with rebellion against the State had allegedly allowed the Croatian authorities to attack certain ethnic groups and/or political movements in ostensibly legal ways. That would constitute a clear case of discrimination, and the Croatian delegation should provide clarification.
26. Most of the information at his disposal also referred to a declining number of disappearances in 1992. None the less, someone had purportedly been kidnapped in Djakovo and there was still no news of the person abducted.
27. With regard to elections, the Croatian Government appeared anxious to ensure proportional representation, to which groups making more than 8 per cent of the population were entitled. During the latest elections, the Serbian minority had not obtained representation in accordance with its numbers, but through a judicious use of the provisions of the Constitution, it had successfully pressed its case, thereby paving the way for other minorities.
28. The question of the war in Croatia and the very difficult problem of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Croatia could not be left aside. More than 700,000 refugees had arrived in Croatia, of whom almost 430,000 were from Bosnia and Herzegovina, most of them certainly Muslims. What concerned him was that the Croatian authorities had decided not to accept any more refugees. In fact, Croatia, through a sort of tacit agreement, had become a place of transit, with incoming refugees simply passing through. That enormous influx of refugees was clearly not easy to deal with, but it should be possible to take decisions more rapidly which would enable the procedures to be expedited and a rapid solution to be reached.
29. As to forced resettlement, the reports mentioned housing, offices, cars and monuments which had been bombed or set fire to with the sole purpose of forcing the population to flee. In early 1992, 85 Serbian homes had been destroyed in a village in Sector West. He wondered whether the Government was prosecuting those responsible. On the island of Krk, houses belonging to Serbian and gypsy families had been damaged. If that was not a campaign of intimidation, he wondered what controls were being exercised to prevent the destruction and confiscations.
30. Forced deportations were also mentioned. Night-time raids on villages or camps drove the inhabitants towards border areas and sometimes forced them to cross the border or take part in the fighting in those areas. It had even been learned that, in violation of the principle of non-refoulement, the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) had sometimes collaborated in sending refugees back over the borders.
31. With regard to freedom of the press, the nationalist ideology was apparently becoming more widespread, and non-Croatian minorities as well as Croats who were critical of the system had been marginalized. Everyone knew that the Croatian Government had strict control over radio and television and that it had illegally sought to take control of the newspaper Sloboda Dalmatia, which had been privatized in 1992.
32. Nor did freedom of religion and conscience appear to be completely respected. In his report, Mr. Mazowiecki stated that property of the Serbian Orthodox Church had been destroyed. The Croatian Government acknowledged that such behaviour, occurring outside the war zones, constituted a criminal offence and should be dealt with as such. He wondered whether judicial action had been taken in those cases.
33. Mr. WOLFRUM said he wished to make several remarks of a legal nature. He noted that according to articles 14 and 35 of the Constitution, Croatian "citizens" enjoyed particular rights and protection, and that article 15 referred to "nations" and "minorities", while other texts and provisions mentioned "peoples" and "communities". Likewise, according to article 21, certain rights were guaranteed to "every human being", which was fully consistent with international standards, but article 26 referred simply to "all citizens and foreigners". Under the terms of article 33, foreign citizens and stateless persons could obtain asylum "in Yugoslavia"; in his opinion, the use of the term "Yugoslavia" was due to an error in translation. He asked for clarification of the different terms used to designate the persons enjoying rights guaranteed by the law and the Constitution. Since "citizens" were, in accordance with some provisions, the only ones able to enjoy certain rights, he would also like further information on the texts governing the acquisition of Croatian citizenship. Moreover, paragraph 46 of the report mentioned the Amnesty Law on Criminal Offences Committed during Armed Conflicts and War against the Republic of Croatia; the number of cases where proceedings had been suspended by virtue of that law was rather large. That piece of information was interesting, but somewhat brief; the Committee would like to know what follow-up there had been in those cases.
34. He further asked the Croatian delegation for a list of complaints regarding violations of human rights which suggested discrimination on the basis of membership of an ethnic group. Whatever that list was worth, the cases presented in it should be examined.
35. As everyone knew, Croatian militias were currently involved in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. That war, given the atrocities to which it had given rise and the ethnic cleansing which was one of its goals, had been called a violation of humanitarian law, and the crimes which had been committed during that conflict had been called crimes against humanity. Admittedly, the Government probably did not control the Croatian militias, but it was not without power. He wondered what it was doing to stop the participation of Croatian armed groups in the elimination of the Muslim population of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
36. Following all those criticisms, he then turned to the positive aspects of the report. He welcomed all of the truly progressive laws which, on paper, were very favourable to ethnic minorities, and expressed the hope that they were as favourable in practice.
37. Mr. DIACONU said that the Government of a country was responsible for the criminal acts of its agents, whether they were committed within its territory or outside its national borders. It was also responsible for incitement to commit such acts. Likewise, the fact that human rights violations were committed against the population of a State did not justify possible violations by that State against other populations.
38. He noted with interest the account given in the report of the Republic of Croatia on legislation adopted during the previous three years. That legislation was very progressive and a good beginning. There were, however, some questions. First of all - and that was a major problem - he wondered whether, apart from Krajina, a zone occupied by a Serbian minority which was now protected by United Nations forces, there was any collaboration between the Serbian communities and the Croatian majority. If so, it was to be hoped that those two peoples, who had lived side by side for so long, would once again be able to live in harmony and resolve their common problems.
39. Citing the ill-treatment referred to by Mr. Yutzis which had reportedly prompted many Serbs to leave the territory, cases in which civilians had apparently been detained solely on grounds of their ethnic origin, and violations of the human rights of the Serbian population reported in a CSCE document, he asked whether investigations had been conducted and sanctions applied and whether the Serbs could obtain redress.
40. In the light of what he had already said, if, as many factors suggested, Croatian forces were involved in the war in Bosnia, then the Croatian Government was responsible for the actions of those forces. According to some recent reports, refugees from Bosnia had been arrested and interned in order to be exchanged at a later date for Croatian prisoners in Bosnia. That demonstrated that there were armed Croatian agents in Bosnia. There had also been reports of detention camps in Bosnia run by members of the Croatian army. He called on the Croatian delegation to confirm or refute those claims.
41. Another cause of concern was information suggesting the existence of an extreme right-wing party which even had its own military wing, and the use of Nazi insignia by the Croatian army. If that information were correct, the lessons of the past should prompt the Croatian Government to do whatever was necessary to avoid any association with Nazism.
42. Finally, he asked about the fate of refugees who had left everything behind and now hoped to return to their homes, resume their jobs and so forth. Was the Croatian Government prepared to take action to restore their rights and property?
43. Mr. de GOUTTES said that the report of the Republic of Croatia, full though it was, left an impression of unreality since, with the exception of a few passages such as paragraphs 20, 36, 56 and 71, it was in essence a selection of texts of a highly juridical nature and gave the impression that Croatia was a very normal constitutional State which respected civil liberties and the rights of minorities.
44. However, that exemplary legislation appeared to be far removed from reality. Croatia was in fact both a victim and perpetrator of abuses. He based that claim, first, on the conclusions formulated by the Human Rights Committee in May 1993. That body had at the outset expressed concern at the preamble to the Constitution, according to which the Republic of Croatia was the national State of the Croatian nation and included members of other nations and minorities who were citizens of it. It had also voiced disquiet at the harassment experienced by Serbs living in Croatia, the wearing of Fascist insignia in public by the military, the dismissal of Serbs in some services such as the press, the limp reaction of the authorities to the risk that ethnic persecution might spill over onto Croatian territory, enforced or involuntary disappearances, frequent arbitrary detentions to obtain prisoners who could be handed over in exchange for Croatian prisoners, and the deplorable conditions of detention in the internment sites under the control of the Croatian army or local Croatian military factions in Bosnia and Herzegovina. While the Government of the Republic of Croatia had not had enough time to take those conclusions into account in the present report, he hoped that the Croatian delegation would be able to clarify all the points he had mentioned.
45. Other sources of information, disputed by certain people, included a report published by Amnesty International in 1993 and a report produced by the CSCE. Endorsing the conclusions of the CSCE, Amnesty International had drawn attention to three factors. Firstly, faced with the human rights violations unquestionably committed by the Serbian forces, the Croatian army had carried out reprisals. Indeed, the Croatian Government admitted as much by stating in paragraph 36 of the report that those responsible had been brought to justice. The same sources claimed that in the area controlled by the Croatian authorities there had been detention camps, houses had been destroyed, businesses had been attacked, officials had been dismissed, lists of Croatian nationals of Serbian origin had been circulated and hostages had been taken in Serbian villages. The Croatian Government also appeared to share a heavy burden of responsibility with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for the abuses committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina by reason of its material and political support to the forces which were active on the ground. Finally, faced with a heavy influx of refugees into its territory during the war, Croatia had initially adopted a liberal policy of welcoming them but had subsequently turned them away, often by force and in a manner inconsistent with the applicable international standards. What was the view of the Croatian delegation on the information he had cited, which had come from apparently reliable sources?
46. Mr. van BOVEN said that the report submitted by Croatia was of great interest from the juridical point of view but that the members of the Committee would have liked more information on the actual situation within the country.
47. He was pleased that Croatia, as a successor State, had agreed to assume all the international obligations of the former Yugoslavia in the area of human rights. He also welcomed Croatia's intention to sign the first Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and suggested that Croatia might consider making the declaration referred to in article 14 of the Convention.
48. With regard to the Amnesty Law on Criminal Offences Committed during Armed Conflicts and War against the Republic of Croatia of 25 September 1992 (para. 46 of the report), he hoped for confirmation that the statute in question did not apply to individuals responsible for war crimes.
49. It was also his understanding that a quarter of the territory belonging to Croatia was not under the control of the Croatian authorities. With regard to the territory under its jurisdiction, was Croatia taking steps to provide effective protection for the Serbs and other minority groups?
50. Reports published by other bodies such as the Human Rights Committee suggested that there were undeclared places of internment both in Croatia and in the areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina under Croatian control. Was that in fact the case?
51. Furthermore, it appeared that forced resettlement was still being practised. What were the Croatian authorities doing to stop the practice, encourage the victims to return and provide them with compensation?
52. Lastly, he associated himself with the views expressed by Mr. de Gouttes and Mr. Diaconu concerning the wearing of Fascist insignia by some members of the military. That might perhaps be a harmless practice, but public opinion was still sensitive to the events which had occurred 50 years previously. Such practices tarnished the country's image and could indicate a mentality which the Committee regarded as dangerous.
53. Mrs. SADIQ ALI, citing events which had occurred in the Baranja Triangle, recalled that between September and December 1991 between 30,000 and 35,000 people had left the area; among that number were 7,000 Hungarians, including 80 per cent of the Hungarian community's intellectuals. The number of people killed in military action had been put at between 900 and 1,000. Forty-five people had reportedly been abducted and 68 murdered by members of the Serbian army and Chetnik volunteers intent on establishing Greater Serbia. Was the Croatian delegation able to provide clarification on that subject?
54. In addition, during the 1991 Christmas holidays the Yugoslav army of occupation had stepped up its hostilities with the help of the Chetniks. All non-Serbs and their families had been offered the opportunity to leave the region if they agreed to sign a paper making over all their property to the Yugoslav authorities. In order to drive out those who did not wish to leave "voluntarily" the Serbs had carried out night-time shelling of houses belonging to ethnic Hungarians. As a result of such intimidation about 30 families had left the area. The Croatian families in that group had returned to other parts of Croatia via Hungary, while the ethnic Hungarians had headed for Austria or Germany. Did the Croatian delegation have any comments to make on the matter?
55. Mr. FERRERO COSTA congratulated the Croatian delegation on submitting a report which described in a manner in keeping with the Committee's guidelines the statutory measures which had been adopted in the new republic to establish racial equality and eliminate discrimination between the inhabitants. However, that initial report gave no indication as to how the statutes were actually applied.
56. What currently preoccupied the international community the most was the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the policy of ethnic cleansing currently practised there and the assaults on the fundamental liberties central to the Committee's mandate. He asked the Croatian delegation to inform the Committee of the official position of the Croatian Government and the measures it had adopted to put an end to the deplorable acts perpetrated in Bosnia by Croatian militias who were in one way or another connected with the Republic of Croatia.
57. He also proposed that the Committee should keep the situation in Croatia under review as had been done in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). The Croatian authorities for their part should provide additional information on the application of the Convention in Croatia and the views of the authorities regarding the Croatian militias operating in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
58. Mr. VUKAS (Croatia) said that Mr. Wolfrum's proposal to transmit to the Croatian authorities through the Croatian delegation a text setting out the Committee's views would prepare the way for a productive dialogue between the Committee and Croatia. To help the Croatian Government bring its legislation and practice more into line with the standards set out in the Convention, he suggested that the Committee should send a special rapporteur to Croatia in the person of Mr. Yutzis to enable him to form an accurate first-hand impression of the situation.
59. With regard to the question raised by Mr. Yutzis as to why the report had mentioned only certain ethnic groups (para. 21) and only a certain national or ethnic community or minority (para. 33), he said that it was not the intention to draw any distinctions between the different groups. It was simply the case that the actions and types of behaviour referred to in most cases concerned only a particular minority; there was no implication of unequal treatment.
60. With regard to the application of article 3 of the Convention, it was solely in the interests of brevity that the Croatian Government had mentioned only President De Klerk in connection with the struggle against apartheid. Croatia regarded President De Klerk as representing the positive trends within the white minority in South Africa, but his actions were obviously seen in the context of the actions of other politicians both of the minority and the majority.
61. With regard to the issue of Croatian citizenship, it was necessary to take into account the situation in different parts of Croatia during the war and acknowledge the point that from the outset all former Yugoslav citizens had had to acquire Croatian citizenship. However, the members of the Committee could rest assured that the competent authorities were doing their utmost to ensure that failure to meet the six-month deadline would not result in any loss of rights associated with Croatian citizenship.
62. The list of individuals of non-Croatian origin had been drawn up for malicious purposes by private individuals intent on vengeance rather than by any official State body, and the culprits had been brought to justice.
63. The authorities had also conducted an inquiry into the events which had occurred at Smokovic and Kašic. It had been established that the people living there had not been executed but transferred to an island, where they were still living.
64. It had not been possible to implement the electoral law as the Croatian authorities would have wished because of the inability of the Serbian minority to take part in the elections. It had accordingly been necessary to find a device in order to enable that minority to be properly represented in Parliament. Once all the regions currently occupied by different Serbian factions and militias had been brought under the control of Croatia, the law could be interpreted and implemented both in spirit and letter.
65. In reply to the question regarding the treatment of refugees, he said that Croatia, with a population of 4.5 million, had been confronted by the presence of hundreds of thousands of refugees and displaced persons. In a disastrous economic situation and in the face of aggression, it had not been possible to avoid the occasional maltreatment of refugees. Some had had to be removed from the hotels where they were staying so that tourists could be accommodated. Croatia had asked other countries to share the burden represented by the presence of the refugee population, but not all had replied positively. It had therefore been necessary to take a decision that, as from the beginning of 1993, only refugees in transit could be accepted. Nevertheless, the Croatian authorities had never violated the non-refoulement rule, nor had they threatened the life or freedom of those concerned.
66. Concerning freedom of expression, the State did indeed control a television channel, but the private channels were independent and there were numerous newspapers in the country which had adopted a very critical attitude towards the Government.
67. In regard to relations between the Croatian Government and Bosnia, it should be remembered that Croatia had not only given spontaneous recognition to Bosnia but had also helped it as a State. The Bosnian Croats had, moreover, helped the Muslims to survive and, without the resistance of the 17 to 18 per cent of Bosnian Croats, the Serbs would currently be on the shores of the Adriatic.
68. In connection with the Serbian aggression, he confirmed the facts and figures provided by Mrs. Sadiq Ali regarding the events which had taken place in the Baranja Triangle. That region which, up to August 1991, had belonged to Croatia and whose population comprised 40 per cent Hungarians, 26 per cent Croats and only 20 per cent Serbs, had been rid of its Hungarian population by the Serbs, assisted by the Yugoslav army.
69. Concerning measures taken for the protection of minorities, he said that Croatia respected the principle that all citizens were equal before the law. Citing the cases of the city of Zagreb and even the Croatian delegation to the Committee, he emphasized that the ethnic and religious origins of the population of Croatia were multiple; nevertheless, regardless of their origin, all inhabitants were treated as Croatian citizens. No minority was subjected to any form of discrimination and therefore none needed special protection. The only problems which could arise related to families of Serbs engaged in the conflict against Croats; such families lived in a difficult situation. That having been said, the Croats in no way incited racial hatred. On the contrary, they did everything that they could to restore peace in Bosnia so that the three nationalities living there would reach a solution which was fair to everybody. Croatia needed peace in order to reconstruct its economy and revert to a normal life. It had accepted all the peace plans which had been proposed, the successive rejections of which had resulted in the loss of territories and human lives and the arrival of new refugees from Bosnia.
70. The great majority of Croats rejected Fascist insignia and the army did not wear them. It should be pointed out, moreover, that the Party of the Historic Rights of Croatia was currently before the Constitutional Court because of its pro-Fascist tendencies. The public prosecutor had asked that that party as well as the Serbian Democratic Party should be prohibited as they had encouraged fascism and intervened in the affairs of Bosnia.
71. As member of a State commission responsible for disappeared persons and prisoners, he was in a position to confirm that the policy of Croatia was to exchange all prisoners, even those who were to be tried for war crimes, in order to save the lives of its own civil or military personnel detained in camps in Serbia. Croatian prisons holding prisoners of war were inspected regularly by representatives of the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations. War criminals would be judged by their national tribunals or by the international criminal tribunal expected to be created in the near future.
72. In reply to the question as to whether the Croatian authorities were maintaining a continuing dialogue with the Krajina authorities, he wished to point out that the leaders of the Serbian Party were in permanent contact with the Krajina Serbs. An agreement had been reached but it had not been possible to implement it because the extremists in the region were opposed to any dialogue. Nevertheless, the Croatian Government encouraged dialogue as it considered that it was the only means of achieving a situation in which Croats and Serbs could continue to live together.
73. Cooperation in Bosnia between Croatia and the State which continued to call itself Yugoslavia could only exist at the level of negotiations within the framework of the Conference on the Former Yugoslavia. Outside those talks, the two States maintained no bilateral contact. They occasionally exchanged views regarding proposals made at the Conference but in no way did they attempt to reach agreement at the expense of the Muslims in Bosnia who had suffered so terribly.
74. The Committee could be assured that he would invite the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to study the declaration provided for in article 14 of the Convention, as well as other optional declarations. He considered that a country facing ethnic problems should not only ratify the Convention but should permit its citizens to approach the Committee individually or in groups.
75. With a view to correcting an oversight, he wished to inform the members of the Committee that the documents before them, particularly the report of Croatia and the legal texts, contained numerous translation errors which had led to misinterpretation; a corrected version of those documents would be sent to the Secretariat.
76. In reply to a question concerning the amnesty law, he pointed out that it did not apply to war criminals.
77. Mr. SMERDEL (Croatia), replying to the question as to whether the Serbs bore sole responsibility for the conflict or whether it was a question of collective responsibility, said that it was not the Serbian people as a whole who were responsible but only certain extremist Serbian political leaders who, when Yugoslavia had been dismembered, had revived the concept of a Greater Serbia. The war had begun with the offensive of the Yugoslav army against Slovenia and subsequently against Croatia in order to prevent the two republics from becoming independent. In fact, as had later been confirmed by a former general of the Yugoslav army, the aim had not been to maintain the Federation but to divide the territory. Croatia had always formed a State within the Federation of Yugoslavia. Under the 1974 Constitution, it had had its own political, judicial and administrative institutions. It was because it had already been a State that Croatia had been able to mobilize the population in order to fight against the offensive of the Yugoslav army. The Croatian Constitution dated from 1990; at that time Croatia had still been part of the Federation of Yugoslavia. In the spring of 1990, Croatia and Slovenia had held free elections which had led to their abandoning the communist system. It was within that context that the Croatian people had opted for independence in a referendum held in May 1991. In Slovenia, Macedonia and Bosnia, too, the people had chosen national sovereignty. In rejecting communism and establishing a democratic Government, Croatia had opted for new economic, political and social structures. It had then been necessary to prepare adequate legislation, which was a difficult enough task even in time of peace.
78. As to why the Republic of Croatia was defined in the preamble to the Constitution as the national State of the Croatian nation including members of other nations and minorities citizens of those nations, he pointed out that that definition must be read in connection with article 1 of the Constitution, which recognized the principle of popular sovereignty by stipulating that power emanated from the people and belonged to the people, defining the latter as a community of free and equal citizens. That was in fact a political issue which had to be resolved. During the preparation of the Croatian Constitution, it had been decided to include that definition in the preamble so that it would not have a normative character. It followed from that formula, inter alia, that the official language was Croatian, that it was written in Roman script and that the State emblem was of Croatian origin.
79. On the issue of fascism, he recalled that, for many Croats as well as for many inhabitants of the other republics of the Federation of Yugoslavia, Tito had been a great leader and a fierce opponent of fascism; however, he had also been President for life, as stipulated in the 1974 Constitution, and a communist dictator. During the Second World War there had been a leaning towards nazism, but that trend had been quite contrary to a very strong anti-Fascist tradition. All sorts of insignia had flourished during the war but had been prohibited once the war had ended.
80. In order to assist in a better understanding of the report, he wished to remind the Committee that Croatia was undergoing a complete transformation and that it was currently introducing a legal system consistent with the principles of the Constitution which would enable the country to embark upon a market economy and a multi-party regime. It was for that reason that the report was of a juridical character. The next report should place grater emphasis on the implementation of the laws and regulations which had been adopted.
81. On the question of ethnic lists, he would like to add that such lists could also have a positive effect. In the region of Gorskog Kotara, for example, the Yugoslav army had forced the Serbian minority to take up the arms which the army had provided. The Croatian army, which had drawn up a list of Serbs living in the region, had exempted them from the obligation to join the Croatian forces. In that way armed confrontation in the region had been avoided.
82. Regarding the case of the two villages of Kašic and Smokovic, he had very little information except that they had been traversed by troops of the Croatian army during a sudden advance by those troops.
83. On the issue of minority representation in Parliament, that question was regulated by the law on ethnic minorities, under which minorities comprising more than 8 per cent of the population were represented in Parliament in proportion to their number, while those comprising less than 8 per cent were entitled to five seats. During the 1992 elections, the Serbian Democratic Party list had not obtained a sufficient number of votes to win any seats in Parliament. The Constitutional Court had therefore ruled that the principle of proportional representation should be respected and the Serbian minority had accordingly been granted a number of seats in Parliament.
84. In conclusion, he considered that it had been important to give an overview of the situation obtaining in Croatia, as the country was attempting, in spite of everything, to implement all human rights and to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination.
85. The CHAIRMAN thanked the Croatian delegation for its replies to the questions by members of the Committee and for its invitation to the country rapporteur, Mr. Yutzis, to visit Croatia. While that would be an important step in fulfilment of the Committee's mandate, he stressed that it would be for Mr. Yutzis to take the decision.
86. Mr. YUTZIS, after commenting that there were a number of questions that might be elaborated upon, thanked the Croatian delegation for its replies and expressed the view that the dialogue between the Committee and Croatia had made a good start.
87. Mr. VUKAS (Croatia) thanked the members of the Committee for their interest and expressed the hope that Mr. Yutzis would come to Croatia to see the situation for himself and find replies to the questions which the Croatian delegation had not answered. Events were moving quickly in the country and Mr. Yutzis would be able to participate in meetings such as that which had taken place recently between the Minister of Education and representatives of the Serbian minority with a view to the establishment of a kindergarten and programmes for the Serbs.