WASHINGTON, Feb 26 (Hina) - The Slovene government generally respected human rights in 2003, but there were reports of discrimination against some national minorities and former Yugoslav citizens who do not have Slovene citizenship,
the U.S. State Department said on Wednesday in its annual report on human rights practices in the world in 2003.
WASHINGTON, Feb 26 (Hina) - The Slovene government generally respected
human rights in 2003, but there were reports of discrimination
against some national minorities and former Yugoslav citizens who do
not have Slovene citizenship, the U.S. State Department said on
Wednesday in its annual report on human rights practices in the world
in 2003.#L#
It is noted in the report that there were problems with human rights
in some areas, but that the system provided efficient instruments to
solve them.
The issue of so-called new minorities - Serbs, Croats, Kosovo
Albanians and Roma - is singled out in the report, as those minorities
are not protected with the special constitutional provisions envisaged
for indigenous minorities. It is noted that those minorities
encountered a certain degree of societal and governmental
discrimination.
The Slovene government is making efforts to solve that problem with a
new law, the report says.
As regards religious freedoms, the report says that the attitude to
Muslim and Serb Orthodox believers is mostly one of tolerance, but
that some have voiced fear of Muslim fundamentalism and that a dispute
broke out over the construction of a mosque in Ljubljana.
The State Department says that reliable sources have reported
self-censorship in the Slovene media as a result of indirect political
and economic pressure.
(Hina) rml sb