Presenting a report for 2004, HHO president Zarko Puhovski said last year saw a decrease in the gravest human rights violations, the violations met with increasingly less support from the public and bodies of authority, and the number of violations based on ethnic or racial grounds was also down.
He added, however, that the first half of 2005 saw the position of the Serb minority undermined again, which he said was due to a change in the media policy and turmoil after local elections in May.
Puhovski said state bodies were late in reacting to terror acts against Croatian Serbs, and that for months the Interior Ministry and the Supreme Court were working without leaders. He added this was likely to be felt in the coming period as well.
The 2004 report was drawn up based on more than 1,700 complaints covering about 4,800 persons. Most complaints referred to social issues, open property rights disputes and slow court proceedings.
The HHO said the political pressure on the media was reduced, but the trend of violating the right to privacy was registered in virtually all the media, with most cases concerning ordinary citizens and not public figures.
Speaking of the most significant human rights violations covered by the report, Puhovski mentioned the case of a woman who has been fighting in court for custody of her daughter for more than 14 years, and the case of a Roma family whose child was expelled from class after being told that it smelled.
The HHO also said that only a small number of cases they had processed reached the courts, and that courts settled only five per cent of such cases.