CIVIL RIGHTS

Civil rights are widely respected and protected in Finland. Since the early 1980s, Finland has received the highest possible rankings on civil rights in annual freedom rankings by Freedom House. The law provides for freedom of speech, which is also respected in practice. Furthermore, Finns enjoy full property rights and freedom of religion, with the government officially recognizing 55 religious groups. Freedoms of association and assembly are respected in law and practice; workers have the right to organize, bargain collectively and strike.

Civil and human rights protection is based on the Bill of Rights Act 1990 and the Human Rights Act 1993, which defines the tasks of the Human Rights Commission. The commission actively promotes compliance with civil and human rights by public bodies and in society. Recent activities concern rights within the Treaty of Waitangi and a Human Rights Action Plan 2005 with regard to violence against women and children and maltreatment in prisons and mental institutions. These have led to various activities, such as the establishment of a high-level taskforce for action on sexual violence under the chair of the secretary for justice, to advise the government. In addition, Amnesty International has criticized the increasing use of taser weapons by New Zealand police and an immigration bill introduced by the government in 2008 which would allow officials to deny entry to immigrants without requiring that a reason be given. In 2009 a citizen-initiated referendum was overwhelmingly accepted that demands the repeal of a controversial 2007 act that bans the spanking of children by their parents. The government has not implemented the referendum, as it is non-binding.

State institutions respect and protect civil rights. Personal liberties are well-protected against abuse by either state or non-state actors. People cannot be detained without charge for more than 24 hours. A court decides whether a suspect should be held in prison during an investigation. The issue of civil rights receives considerable attention in the media and by intellectuals, as well as from the government bodies responsible for civil rights protections.
Access to the courts is free and easy, and the judiciary system is viewed as fair and efficient. There is full freedom of movement and of religion. Respect for civil rights extends to asylum seekers. One example is that of Mullah Krekar, a citizen of Iraq, who is the former leader of the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam. Krekar applied for asylum in Norway in 1991 but his application was denied on grounds of national security. Both Iraq and the United States have asked for him to be extradited. However, since these countries both practice the death penalty, Norway’s government has not deported him so far.
Privacy is less protected than in some other countries. All residents are recorded in a compulsory population register with a unique number which is also used in all official and much private business, including banking. Individual tax records are public information and published routinely. This lax attitude to privacy probably concords with popular attitudes and is not seen as privacy “infringement.” In the future it is likely that the practice of publishing tax reports will be reformed, since this information is easily misused on the Internet.

The key concern in this area is the protection of Canadian citizens suspected of terrorist activity. The most famous case involves Omar Khadr, a Canadian captured in 2001 by U.S. forces in Afghanistan at the age of 15, and who was subsequently transferred to the Guantanamo prison, where he remains. Many feel that the Canadian government should have been more proactive in demanding his return to Canada.

All civil rights mentioned are codified in the Basic Law, and their modification is only possible through a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag and Bundesrat. Indeed, some of the provisions concerning basic human rights are not alterable at all. This provision ensures that fundamental human rights are inviolable even for a majority of citizens or the parliament.
In general, all state institutions respect individual freedoms and protect civil rights. The court system works independently and effectively protects individuals against executive encroachments and legislative acts. In the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, Germany was ranked 8th, with a score of 9.41 out of 10.
In 2009, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found 18 violations of human rights principles in Germany, mostly associated with the length of legal proceedings. In December 2009, the ECHR ruled against Germany on a case in which preventive detention for a violent criminal was extended well beyond the individual’s original sentence. The ruling is expected to have far-reaching consequences.
Moreover, recent developments in the collaboration with other states in the war on terror have weakened the prohibition against torture in Germany. Some states use torture to gather information. It has become evident that there are no clear rules for dealing with information from foreign sources that was gained through torture. In a speech held in September 2008, Deputy Federal Attorney General Rainer Griesbaum argued that when facing the threat of global terrorism, no kind of information should be discarded categorically. Rather, each case had to be assessed individually, he said. The legal opinion of Hamburg’s Higher Regional Court in the case of El Motassadeq, which argued that the usage of information should be prohibited only if the use of torture in the acquisition of information could be verified, has become the majority legal opinion among German judges, reducing the legal principle of benefit of the doubt to absurdity.
With respect to the limitation of state power, a very disturbing case recently gained public attention: The Federal Court of Justice decided in January 2010 that Oury Jalloh’s death by fire while in police custody had to be retried. In 2008, the Regional Court Dessau (Saxony-Anhalt) had acquitted two police officers respectively of aggravated bodily injury resulting in death and involuntary manslaughter. In his oral ruling, the judge criticized the testimony of most of the police officers, which had made a proper trial impossible. As of the time of writing, a case is still pending due to false testimony in court against one police officer. The judge was also highly critical about the “perfunctory inquiry” performed by the police. Amnesty International stated that this case was not isolated, and that in fact several examples of police misconduct and the use of excessive violence could be found in the last couple of years. Since there are statistics neither on the number of indictments nor on sentences against police officers, quantification of this issue beyond the summing up of particularly severe cases is difficult.
Amnesty International and other human rights organizations have also criticized Germany with regard to the deportation of asylum seekers.

The Icelandic state respects and protects civil rights, and as a rule, the courts effectively protect citizens’ rights. Confronted with evidence that the state has disregarded civil rights, the courts would in most cases rule against the government. Even so, the inequitable nature of the fisheries management system, under which boat owners are granted fishing quotas free of charge, recently prompted the United Nations Committee on Human Rights to declare the system a violation of human rights, and to instruct the Icelandic government to rectify the system by removing the discriminatory element. This assessment is binding. The government replied to the U.N. committee by repeating its earlier arguments, which the committee had already evaluated and rejected. As of the time of writing, the government was awaiting the committee’s reaction. Beyond this issue, the government has not satisfactorily dealt with accusations by politicians, including a former foreign minister, that the telephones of politicians and others were wiretapped as recently as 20 years ago without court orders as required by law. A police investigation was conducted in 2008 without witnesses having been freed from their duty to remain silent, and hence was inconclusive.

In principle, all citizens have equal access to the law and the courts. Under the Criminal Justice (Legal Aid) Act 1962, an extensive system of free legal aid has evolved. This act provides that free legal aid may be granted, in certain circumstances, for the defense of persons of insufficient means in criminal proceedings. The grant of legal aid entitles the applicant to the services of a solicitor, and in certain circumstances up to two counsel, in the preparation and conduct of his/her defense or appeal. The courts, through the judiciary, are responsible for the granting of legal aid. Applicants must establish to the satisfaction of the court that his/her means are insufficient to enable him/her to pay for legal aid him/herself. This is purely a discretionary matter for each court and is not governed by any financial eligibility guidelines. The court must also be satisfied that by reason of the “gravity of the charge” or “exceptional circumstances,” it is essential in the interests of justice that the applicant should have legal aid. However, where the charge is one of murder, or where an appeal is one from the Court of Criminal Appeal to the Supreme Court, free legal aid is granted merely on the ground of insufficient means.
In practice, of course, the best legal advice is very expensive and available mainly to the rich (including those who have become rich on the proceeds of organized crime). The high fees charged by the country’s leading lawyers undoubtedly limit the effectiveness of equality of access to justice.

Sweden represents a typical state under the rule of law in which a constitution defines all aspects of public, political and administrative processes. Legal security, equal treatment and predictability remain core values of public administration. That having been said, Sweden has been repeatedly criticized by international NGOs such as Amnesty International for purported flaws in the legal system and the exercise of the law. Examples include holding suspects in custody without trial for longer periods than allowed and extraditing Swedish citizens suspected of terrorism to the CIA without proper trial.
Furthermore, organized crime has taken a hold in the metropolitan regions in Sweden. A number of individuals have been the victims of extortion for “protection.” National police have made curbing organized crime a priority and crack down on these groups with increasing frequency. However, in terms of the infringement of individual freedom caused by private actors such as organized crime, this is a very real and growing problem. The incumbent government included increased spending to the police and the judicial system into the crisis package after the financial crisis. It remains to be seen if this will contribute to increasing public security and civic rights in times of increasing organized crime.

Civil rights are guaranteed by the constitution. However, the country does not have a classic constitutional court able to monitor the conformity of federal law with the constitution. The Federal Supreme Court in Lausanne monitors the constitutional conformity of federal regulations and cantonal laws. In relation to basic civil rights, the European Court of Human Rights serves as a kind of Swiss constitutional court.
In international comparison, the country’s record of guaranteeing human rights is outstanding. However, conflicts between human rights and direct democracy have emerged, particularly recently. One such case is represented by the successful popular initiative for the imprisonment of particularly dangerous criminal offenders without any chance of reexamination (2004). This conflicts with the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. This convention guarantees periodic reviews in which the necessity for continued imprisonment can be evaluated.
Likewise, there have been conflicts between popular votes on the naturalization of individuals and the call by these individuals for fair and transparent treatment, with the possibility to appeal decisions. It is doubtful whether the naturalization procedure conforms to the standard of human rights set out in the constitution. The Federal Court decided in 2003 that naturalization procedures previously established by popular vote were unconstitutional, since they violated the constitutional norms of nondiscrimination and the right to a lawful legal procedure.
A particularly problematic decision has been the ban on the construction of minarets, accepted in a popular vote in 2009. The basic claim is that minarets signify the power claims and potential aggression of Islam, which need to be suppressed as a strategy for keeping the peace. However, it is evident that the popular initiative was clearly aimed against Islam and the Islamization of Europe (see Hirter/Vatter). Legal scholars tend to argue that the decision violates the freedom of worship and the non-discrimination rule. It is expected that a case against the initiative will be brought to the European Court of Human Rights, and that it will in all likelihood be declared null and void. But the legal process will take several years before the decision can be repealed.
The major underlying problem is the claim of many political actors for the unrestricted right of the people to decide any matter through popular vote, and the way this conflicts with the basic rule of any liberal democracy that there are limitations to the will of the majority, such as human rights standards and protections for minorities. The public debate on the limits to majority rule (through popular vote) shows little cognizance of these traditional limitations to majoritarian rule. This has become very obvious in recent debates about the conflicts between international law and Swiss citizens’ decision rights in popular votes. Although anxiety over the ebbing away of popular sovereignty extends beyond conservatives, this group in particular feels uneasy with the internationalization of law and some recent interpretations of human rights, made by a professional elite with little democratic legitimation and imposed in a top-down manner. In their view, the internationalization of law and international court decisions against the results of Swiss referendums contradict Switzerland’s legislative culture, which is characterized by the principle of subsidiarity and guided by the idea that the people’s decisions have the highest degree of legitimacy.

Although Australia is the only major established democracy which does not have a bill of rights, civil rights are protected through a significant body of legislation, and by the Constitution which contains certain implied rights which are subject to interpretation by the High Court. The Labor government elected in 2007 initiated a National Human Rights Consultation to canvass views about the protection of human rights in Australia. The preliminary report was presented to the government in September 2009; the government has not yet formally responded.
While Australia’s record of protecting human rights is internationally regarded as strong, criticisms have been voiced about the treatment of the Indigenous population and about the civil rights of asylum seekers.
Although the government and opposition both apologized to the “stolen generation” – Indigenous children who were taken from their parents in the 1950s and 1960s and fostered by white families – in February 2008, many Indigenous leaders regarded this as an insufficient acknowledgement of responsibility and demanded financial compensation. Further controversy followed the government’s decision in 2007 to intervene in many Northern Territory aboriginal townships, following allegations of the abuse of children, and the widespread use of alcohol and pornography in the townships. The Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act was passed in 2007, which allowed for direct intervention and classified the measures in the Act as exempt from the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. The Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act and five other associated acts restricted the availability of alcohol and pornography in the affected communities, acquired the land by the Commonwealth and suspended the Native Title Act 1993. The legislation also quarantined welfare benefits from recipients believed to have abused, or to be at risk of abusing, their children.
Many Indigenous leaders regarded these measures as an infringement of civil rights, and disproportionate to the problem they were designed to address.
Since 1992, Australia has operated a system of mandatory detection for asylum seekers while their cases are processed offshore. This policy was withdrawn in July 2008, and mandatory detention now applies only to those considered a security or health threat, and excludes children. In April 2010, the government suspended the processing of all new asylum claims for people from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, following information that a large number of people from those countries were in transit to Australia and would claim asylum.

The courts are independent from politics, and regularly challenge government decisions. It can be said that tensions between judges and politicians have increased over recent years. In most cases, a citizen’s civil rights are very well-protected. Yet there still exists a few issues within the system. The judicial system is underfunded, which results in delays in case decisions often for a period of several years. Extreme delays sometimes force judges to abandon prosecution entirely. Belgium was chastised several times by the European Court of Justice for such delays (for example, 22 years in a case representing a worker against the social security administration, “Arrêt Poelmans vs. Belgium”, February 3, 2009).
Another issue is some (extremely complex) political issues between the Flemish (Dutch-speaking) and Walloon (French-speaking) populations, where decision powers are, in a sense, split between the courts and executive powers. One concrete case is a decree in Flanders that gave the public administration the power to block the sale of a house to anyone who cannot prove a sufficient link with the town where the house is located. Initially meant to limit real estate speculation (and restricted to public housing), this decree has also been used to prevent house purchases (through private contractors) by French-speaking citizens in Flanders, thereby infringing the people’s right to free movement in Europe.

The government and the administration in the Czech Republic respect and protect basic civil rights. As the complaints lodged with the European Court of Human Rights and the Office of the Public Defender of Rights (Ombudsman) indicate, the main problem is the length of legal proceedings. The high number of complaints first of all shows that Czech citizens are increasingly aware of their civil rights.

Civil rights are protected by the Danish constitution, including personal liberty (article 72), inviolability of property (article 73), inviolability of dwellings (article 72), freedom of speech (article 77), freedom of association and freedom of assembly (article 79).
These freedoms are normally protected by the authorities and courts.
Denmark ratified the European Convention on Human Rights in 1953. Since 1976 Denmark has had a number of cases at the European Court of Human Rights. Denmark lost some cases, especially concerning freedom of association (article 11 in the European Convention) and concerning unnecessarily lengthy case proceedings (article 6 in the European Convention). The latest case lost by Denmark in January 2009 concerned the excessive length of civil proceedings. Thus Denmark could do better when it comes to protection of civil liberties.

Civil rights were at the core of the French Revolution and since that period, the French have a strong sense of ownership about “their” rights. Nonetheless, the somewhat dependent position of the judiciary vis-à-vis the executive has too often impeded the full protection of rights. The separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary has never been fully implemented in France. In spite of recent improvements, the executive and the police are often treated better by the courts than are ordinary citizens. This has been a permanent source of conflict and frustration, particularly with “second-generation” migrants who are technically French citizens but sometimes are still considered and treated as foreigners.

The Netherlands guarantees and protects individual liberties, and all state institutions respect and, most of the time, effectively protect civil rights. The Netherlands will publicly expose abuses and report them to the U.N. Human Rights Council of the EU, and cooperate with the monitoring organizations of all international laws and treaties concerning civil liberties signed by the Dutch government.

Yet, on a number of counts, there are developments worthy of concern. Concerns over the right to privacy of every citizen top the list. Due to the government’s abundant use of instruments made available through the information revolution, Dutch citizens are more at risk than ever of their personal data being abused or improperly used, which can lead to unjustified legal prosecution, stigmatization, exclusion (at the hands of the secret service, citing security issues), faulty verdicts, identity theft, and other nasty surprises. In addition, present policies regarding rightful government infringement of civil rights are shifting from legally well-delineated areas like anti-crime and terrorism measures toward less clearly defined areas involving the prevention of risky behavior (in personal health, education, child care, etc.). There is an urgent need to re-think privacy rights and the broad use of policy instruments within the context of the information revolution.

The Portuguese constitution of 1976 defines the population’s broad categories of rights and guarantees in articles 12 – 23 and 24 – 27. These are generally respected in practice. However, several elements of concern highlighted in the previous report remain largely unchanged.
(1) Reports of police violence and brutality continue to emerge. Indeed, the government department responsible for investigating police brutality, the Inspecção-Geral da Administração Interna, received some 1,018 complaints in 2008 – a very substantial increase when compared with 2007 (207 complaints). The U.S. Department of State Report on Human Rights Practices in Portugal for 2009 considers there to be “credible reports of excessive use of force by police.”
(2) The treatment of prisoners continues to be a point of concern, with the U.S. Department of State Report on Human Rights Practices in Portugal for 2009 identifying once again as “credible” reports of “abuse of detainees by prison guards.” Moreover, this report quotes data from the Directorate-General of Prison Services that, in September 2009, the prison system was operating at 91.6% of capacity, a fact not inconsistent with allegations of overcrowding. However, there have been some improvements in this domain, with the approval of the new Code of Execution of Sentences and other Freedom-Depriving Measures (Law 115/2009, of October 12, 2009), which increased prisoner’s rights.
(3) The legal system continues to hold the possibility of lengthy pretrial “preventive” detentions, without charges being filed. According to the U.S. Department of State Report on Human Rights Practices in Portugal for 2009, some 19% of the prison population was in preventive detention of this kind in September 2009. While this is somewhat lower than the proportion highlighted in the 2005 – 2007 report – a reflection of the new penal code adopted in September 2007 – this figure is nevertheless high and remains, according to the US report, “a problem.” Also according to this report, the average detention time under preventive arrest was eight months, with approximately 20% of such detainees spending more than one year in preventive arrest.
Aside from this issue, there were further advances in the area of religious freedom. In September 2009, a new decree-law (Decreto-Lei 253/2009) laid out rules for established non-Catholic religious groups, including Jews, Evangelicals, Muslims and Bahá’ís, to provide spiritual and religious assistance in hospitals. This was previously permitted only to the Catholic Church.

Civil rights, as established by the United Nations, the Council of Europe and the European Union, are encoded in Austria’s constitution. Nevertheless, individual violations do occur. In most of these cases, Austrian institutions (administration, courts) remediate the violations. But in some cases, Austria as a state has been held responsible for violations which are usually reported by NGOs like Amnesty International.
These cases usually have to do with the treatment of foreigners, especially those coming from less developed parts of the world. With respect to the treatment of asylum seekers, there have been several borderline cases in which the limits of international standards as expressed by the Geneva Convention have been pushed.

The state and courts normally protect civil rights efficiently, but certain specific conflicts (i.e., with indigenous ethnic groups) have led to violations of those rights. In some cases, those conflicts included the application of anti-terror legislation that is actually in conflict with international conventions signed by Chile. Furthermore, conflicts between civilians and the military or the police are occasionally handled by military courts, the impartiality of which is questionable. In general, the enormous income gap between rich and poor tends to passively marginalize the poorer and poorest part of the population in terms of their ability to depend on the state for protection against infringements of their rights.

Civil rights are effectively protected in Luxembourg and all state institutions respect these rights. There are still some shortcomings. Same-sex marriages have not been awarded the same rights as traditional marriages. Data retention was extended to email communication in 2010.
There are four institutions in charge of protecting civil rights: the Constitutional Court, an advisory board on human rights, the National Commission on Data Protection and a parliamentary ombudsman. However, the judiciary system’s overload and subsequently slow case processing has triggered concerns over due process and equitable treatment. The European Court of Justice has reprimanded the country on several occasions in recent years as a result of delays in the court system.

State institutions largely respect and protect civil rights. However, the protection of civil rights suffers from inefficiency in the Polish court system and the resulting lengthy proceedings. Sometimes, minority rights also fall victim to the presence of strong informal social control in small localities, which is encouraged by the conservatism found among the lower clergy strata of the Polish Catholic Church. The Tusk government has demonstrated greater respect for civil rights than its predecessor. One controversial issue has been the treatment of pedophiles. Prime Minister Tusk publicly denied them the status of human beings, and the Sejm passed a law in September 2009 allowing for chemical castration of convicted pedophiles.

In Slovakia, civil rights are largely respected. However, some problems exist with regard to the police’s treatment of Roma suspects, the integrity of the judiciary, the duration of court proceedings and the length of pretrial detention. In July 2009 alone, the European Court of Human Rights issued 13 verdicts against Slovakia for exceeding the “reasonable time” requirement. An amendment to the Highway Act in November 2008, as well as threats by Prime Ministers Fico to expropriate foreign-owned gas companies, raised some concerns about the state’s respect for private property rights. Finally, the Slovak ombudsman has repeatedly asked for a broadening of his competencies along the lines of most European countries. As it stands, he can deal only with a limited range of civil rights.

No substantial changes in the civil rights domain were evident during the 2008 – 2010 period. Spanish state institutions respect and protect civil rights, and rights guaranteed by the constitution and ordinary legislation are enforced, although some infringements may occur in practice. Considering that cases of mistreatment of illegal immigrants were reported during the 2000s, positive developments during the period under review here include the passage of new legislation on the civil rights and integration of foreigners (Organic Law 2/2009), and on the issue of asylum (Law 12/2009), improving legal protection for asylum seekers and immigrants.
On the other hand, during 2008 and 2009 it became clearer than ever that the systematic delays and the lack of adequate resources (both human and technological) in the Spanish courts are undermining the effective protection of fundamental rights. Prime Minister Zapatero has recognized the urgent need to modernize the functioning of the court system. Thus, the parliament passed new legislation aimed at improving civil and criminal proceedings (Organic Law 1/2009), while the Ministry of Justice has started to implement a modernization plan, the only government department allowed to increase public spending and personnel recruitment during 2010.

A long tradition of protecting civil rights has worked in the United Kingdom without the support of a written constitution. The nature of the protection is thus substantially dependent on the commitment and support of the government of the day rather than on unalterable principles. Recently, UK citizens have won the right to seek recourse on the European level as well.
The absence of codified fundamental rights normally found in continental European constitutions also has to do with another feature special to the United Kingdom, namely the “sovereignty of Parliament” that rules out a special protected status for any class of rights.

Particularly in the context of the last few years’ fight against terrorism, the protection of civil rights has become a contentious political issue in the United Kingdom. There are occasional criticisms that stop and search powers under Section 44 of the 2000 Prevention of Terrorism Act have been abused by the security agencies, but also that other bodies have used powers derived from measures introduced to combat terrorism to justify low-level snooping on citizens – even in relation to parents who claim to be resident in an areas to gain access to good schools. Data on such incidents suggest widespread misuse. For example, a local newspaper (the Wandsworth Guardian) reported in October 2009 that “laws introduced to help the fight against terrorism have been used nearly 300 times in four years by council chiefs to snoop on residents” of the London borough of Wandsworth. Similarly, the Daily Telegraph of November 1, 2008, reported that of the 151 councils that responded to a freedom of information request admitted using the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to crack down on “domestic waste, littering or fly-tipping offences” in the last three years.

Especially after the London attacks of July 2005, the government has put more emphasis on the protection and security of citizens than on their civil rights. The question of whether the “right to life” deserves preference over other human rights and liberties, as the government argues, remains contested by civil rights groups and the Liberal Democrat party.
Courts protect citizens’ liberties by and large effectively, however, and observers agree that they have become more assertive in countering the government’s otherwise unchecked extension of laws and police powers.

The 2008 – 2010 period also saw extensive debate over the introduction of identity cards, which would have contained a wide array of personal data.

The emphasis on civil rights has been somewhat compromised by U.S. anti-terror legislation following the events of 9/11. There has been a basic clash between two very important goals of U.S. politics: strengthening national security versus the protection of civil liberties. The Obama administration, in one of its first actions, signed an executive order barring unlawful interrogation practices to ensure compliance with the treaty obligations of the United States, including the Geneva Conventions. But it has refrained from prosecuting or revealing the identity of CIA officials involved in illegal interrogations under the Bush administration. The administration reversed the Bush policy of denying access of the Guantanamo prisoners to civil courts, but failed to get Congressional authority to close the Guantanamo base, a move that President Obama had envisaged when he assumed office. Emergency legislation making NSA wiretapping legal, as long as it involves foreign suspects, remains on the books. Under the impact of recent terrorist attacks such as the Fort Hood shooting, the Obama administration has basically continued the policies of the Bush administration and signed the extension of the Patriot Act, allowing controversial measures such as secret searches, which had been of concern to privacy advocates and liberal Democrats in the House.

Several concerns can be noted regarding civil rights. In Western Thrace, the north-eastern portion of Greece that is home to a Turkish-speaking Muslim minority, the level of protection of civil rights, equal access to the law and equal treatment under the law are not up to the standards guaranteed to the majority of Greece’s population. This remains the case despite reforms introduced in the early 1990s by the Konstantinos Mitsotakis government. For one thing, the rights of women are not protected. Owing to Sharia legislation still held as valid among the members of this minority on issues of marriage, family and inheritance, Muslim women in that region of Greece do not enjoy the same rights as men. Married men can divorce their wives more easily than vice versa; inheritance laws favor male over female offspring; and other such matters are decided by local religious judges (muftis), while the Greek courts of first instance, to which the muftis’ decisions are submitted for final approval, do not change the muftis’ decisions.
Significantly, there is still no mosque in Athens, for example, despite the influx of migrant Muslim workers. Moreover, neighborhood and police pressure has repeatedly disrupted the ability of minority faiths to establish a settled place of worship. One such case in 2009 involved Muslims being ejected from a converted warehouse in Athens.
Furthermore, the civil rights of religious minorities more generally display unequal status. The position of the Orthodox Church of Greece is privileged on both a de jure and de facto basis. Laws against proselytism by other faiths, and a requirement that local Orthodox bishoprics must approve the establishment of new places of worship (an effective veto right) place important restrictions on minority faiths. Underlying such policies is the cultural sense that to be non-Orthodox is to be non-Greek.
Similarly, one may doubt the level of protection of civil rights and equal access to the law enjoyed by nonnative speakers who are migrants or family members of migrants. Most of this population has come from Southeastern and Eastern Europe (Albania, Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova) or from South Asia (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka). Most of the migrants entered Greece in the post-1990 period, legally or illegally, as economic migrants, asylum seekers and/or refugees. Official statistics estimate their number at over 700,000. However, their number could be as high as 1 million. First-generation migrants and their families usually have poor Greek, little knowledge of their rights and a lack of experience with a Western state administration. Few of them have acquired Greek citizenship, as this was very difficult to achieve until 2010, when a new law was passed. In this respect, the level of protection of migrants’ rights and their access to law leaves much to be desired.

Civil rights are protected by the constitution and other laws, and are widely respected by state institutions. However, the latter have failed to stop the increasing violence against Roma and gay people exercised by the Hungarian Guard (Magyar Gárda), a right-wing paramilitary organization established in 2007. The Holocaust Act, passed in February 2010, criminalized attempts to deny the Holocaust in order to protect human dignity. A more comprehensive initiative to prohibit hate speech was stopped by the Constitutional Court in 2009.

Civil rights are legally protected by detailed constitutional provisions and ordinary laws. Independent courts serve to guarantee their implementation. However, inefficiencies in the judicial administration and the heavy work backload of many courts can make the protection of civil rights (such as property rights) less effective. The legal protection of the rights of immigrants, especially if illegal, is far from satisfactory. Cases of police violence are reported with some frequency. Actions by the security agents of the various authorities (including the state police) sometimes seem to contradict the principles of the rule of law. Forms of racist discrimination against immigrants, foreigners and gays are also not uncommon.
Politicians from the Northern League, a member of the governing coalition, have at times shown particular hostility to ethnic minorities and Islam. Despite growing awareness among society at large, racism against immigrants, Sinti and Romany individuals is quite common. Illegal immigrants (mostly of African origin) in southern Italy suffer from exploitation. The dominant position of the Catholic Church, the Italian Bishops’ Conference, the nearby Vatican City as the seat of the pope, and the strong representation of Catholic pressure groups in nearly all political parties give little space to other religious groups, or to secular and nonreligious groups within Italian society.

Civil and human rights are guaranteed under the Japanese constitution. Institutionally, courts are often considered overly tolerant with respect to the possibility of maltreatment by police or prosecution. LDP governments of recent years, including during the reporting period, have made little effort to implement institutional reform. Critics have demanded – as yet unsuccessfully – the introduction of independent agencies able to investigate claims of human rights abuse. Citizens have no legal ability to take their complaints to a multinational level, while many other countries have already signed the so-called Optional Protocols to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The new DPJ-led government has given the justice portfolio to former lawyer Keiko Chiba, who has a background in human rights activism. She has pledged to work on three reforms in particular: installing an independent human rights agency, ratification of the Open Protocol mentioned above, and a reform of the police interrogation rules. It is an open question to what extent she will be successful, as the Ministry of Justice is often considered a bastion of entrenched conservatism.

Basic civil rights are protected by the constitution. Although courts have been reasonably effective in protecting civil rights, and a Human Rights Commission was established in 2001, a number of problems remain. Moreover, observers tend to agree that the human and civil rights situation has worsened somewhat in the 2008 – 2010 period. The National Security Law remains in place, outlawing activities that could be interpreted as “benefiting or praising” North Korea. In August 2008, members of the Socialist Workers League of Korea, including an economics professor at Yonsei University, were arrested without an arrest warrant for “forming an anti-state group.” Applications for warrants were turned down by the Seoul Central District Court a day after the arrest.
Among the most serious issues are the inadequate rights enjoyed by migrant workers, the widespread physical abuse of sex workers, the imprisonment of conscientious objectors, and the continuing use of the NSL to detain and imprison individuals believed to be sympathetic to North Korea’s communist ideology. On a more positive note, a moratorium on executions announced in late 1997 has remained in place. However, the attempt to abolish the death penalty altogether failed in parliament in February 2010.
Excessive use of police force is another subject of often-voiced complaint, as during the protests against U.S. beef imports, or the “Yongsan disaster” in which six people were killed during a clash between riot police and tenants refusing relocation during a construction project.

In principle, Mexico guarantees most civil rights via its legal and constitutional systems. The Supreme Court has a range of instruments that can be used to protect citizen rights. Among these tools is the so-called Amparo procedure, which is peculiar to Mexico and allows the courts to stay a process to which protesters object (for example, a land expropriation). Mexico has also institutionalized the role of ombudsman, whose role is to examine human rights cases. The main problems with civil rights include the following: (1) Corruption. Low-level courts are at times either corrupt or subject to influence. Police corruption is also a problem, and it is not rare for police officers to extort money from members of the public. (2) The effective immunity of the military, which the government has called out to participate actively in counternarcotics operations, and which sometimes abuses its power. In the last several years, it has been quite difficult to call the military effectively to account, though the Mexican Commission on Human Rights has tried to do so. (3) The social marginalization of large parts of Mexican society creates de facto constraints on some civil rights, such as equal opportunities with regard to education or employment.

The respect shown by government officials for fundamental rights and freedoms has increased throughout the EU-candidacy period. The judicial system has been strengthened by the adoption of structural reforms, and significant progress was made with the June 1, 2005 implementation of the new penal code, code of criminal procedure, the Law on Enforcement of Sentences and the Law on the Establishment of the Regional Courts of Appeal. However, independent organizations report continuing violations of rights, torture and ill-treatment at the hands of state officers. According to the 2009 Human Rights Report of the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, especially after the passage of amendments to the Law on Police Duty and Responsibilities in 2007, human rights violations in all categories have increased, especially with respect to the right to life. Violations of the right of assembly, the freedom of expression, and the freedoms of the press and communication were also noted. The report states that the number of court cases and convictions related to “thought crimes” doubled in 2009. Although Article 301 of the Turkish penal code is no longer used systematically to restrict freedom of expression, the number of journalists, opinion leaders and politicians in custody and jail has increased. In addition, both the European Commission’s 2009 Progress Report and the Report of the Parliamentary Human Rights Investigation Committee concerned the fight against impunity for human rights violations. While investigations into an alleged criminal network that includes military personnel continue, the extended period of imprisonment without trial for those accused has been criticized. Allegations of illegal wiretapping and violations of privacy and confidentiality by means of the Internet and the printed media have increased in recent years.
Article 42 of the constitution still reads that only Turkish is to be taught as mother tongue to Turkish citizens. Kurdish, the first language of approximately 12% of the population, is not taught at school at all, and to teach Kurdish to children in private remains grounds for prosecution. Parents of the Alevi Muslim confession, despite a ruling in their favor by the European Court of Human Rights, still must petition the courts to have their children exempted from obligatory religious (Sunni Islam) instruction. Female students wearing the headscarf are not permitted to attend university education settings, graduates from government vocational Imam schools face discrimination in their access to universities, and Turkey’s small non-Muslim communities do not enjoy full property rights over community owned real estate.
Other historically entrenched infringements of civil rights continued to exist as well. Some prisons are 100% overcrowded, and in so-called F-type-prisons, enforced solitude is still used as a method of torture. While the situation has improved somewhat, the violence exerted by police at demonstrations, during investigations and in custody is still out of proportion. A ban on thousands of Internet sites including “YouTube” angers Internet users, and threatens the freedom of expression and dissemination.
However, the political climate has changed for the better in all these areas during the period under investigation. For the first time, the government is permitting and even financing Kurdish language television, and Kurdish is now a research subject at some universities. The government has opened a dialogue with Alevi communities, and amended the constitution to change the headscarf regulation. This amendment was abolished by the Constitutional Court, however. Due to a change in legislation, non-Muslim communities, although only to a very limited extent, have successfully managed to claim community owned property expropriated earlier.