Strasbourg, 09/04/2014 (Agence Europe) - For the second time, Latvian Nils Muiznieks, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights since 2012, has presented his annual report to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
He delivered his report on Tuesday 8 April, International Roma Day, as Luxembourg's Anne Brasseur, who was elected the body's president in January of this year, pointed out. This date is significant when reading this 2013 report on the state of the fundamental rights in the 47 member countries of the Council of Europe. The issue of Roma and migrants is just as critical in this text as it was in the 2012 state of affairs.
“The specific targets of hate crimes in these times of austerity”, these populations are currently suffering from further discrimination brought about by the “pressure which, in Europe, aims to stem the flow of migrants to stop them from reaching the territory of the Union”, Muiznieks said. He has noted “ethnic profiling on the borders of certain countries and measures such as confiscating passports and airline tickets”. Given these observations, he announced the forthcoming publication of a document on the “right to leave the country”, before drawing the Assembly's attention to a “new group of migrants arriving in Europe: Syrians”. In view of this crisis, “the greatest refugee crisis it has seen in 20 years”, Europe “is doing little, far too little when the capacity of Syria's neighbours are at bursting point”, he lamented.
Another front on which Muiznieks pledged to focus his attention when taking up his office was the situation of human rights in countries under drastic economic austerity conditions. On the strength of the 24 visits he made in 2013, including one to Greece, he reiterated his recommendations: 1) maintaining social protection (“nobody should be slipping through the net”, he said; 2) ensuring equality, also for “the most vulnerable”, such as young people, the disabled, children and people living in poverty, stressing that according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), equality is a vital precondition for long-term growth; 3) maintaining human rights protection structures in order to benefit from their experience on the ground to ensure the monitoring of austerity measures.
“Reprehensible behaviour on the part of police, throughout the territory of the Council of Europe”, issues around freedom of expression and freedom of the media and the internet were also addressed with concern in this 2013 report, which was presented by a Human Rights Commissioner who did not hide his concerns over Crimea. He is to travel to the region “in the near future”, but has already received “extremely alarming reports” on the human rights situation on the ground: kidnappings, attacks on journalists, exodus of more than 5,000 Tatars to Western Ukraine (mainly women and children) and the doors of certain members of this community in Crimea being marked. Muiznieks announced that he is to publish a detailed report on these issues in June. (VL)