Just like the parliamentary human rights and ethnic rights committee, which said yesterday in a statement that unemployment presented a form of gross violation of individuals' rights and that many labour rights had not yet been ensured, Puhovski today highlighted violations of rights in the economy, high unemployment and violations of employees' rights in the workplace as very serious problems.
Puhovski said that the highest number of complaints by citizens sent to the HHO referred to the work of social services, and added that in the social welfare sector the conduct of bodies of authority was perceived as very incompetent.
The HHO leader said pensioners were the most endangered category of citizens whose situation was very bad.
Political pressures were noticed on the media scene in the last year. "A precedent happened, namely multiparty parliamentary pressure on the HTV (Croatian Television)", Puhovski said adding that irregularities were also noticed in the ownership concentration in the media.
Puhovski praised the incumbent government for having symbolically done a lot to normalise the political scene and reduce its radicalization, but on the other hand, he said, it recently became clear that "the government has poor control over the state apparatus".
To corroborate this statement, Puhovski cited examples of what he called purges in the public health sector and the escalation of the situation in secret services.
"It turned out to be unclear who controls those services and we also witness a situation when the President of the Republic is the target of (intelligence) investigation," Puhovski said, adding ironically that the HHO was now expecting President Stjepan Mesic to refer to it for help.
Puhovski also said that secret services acted against law and human rights when they were dealing with issues outside their scope of activities.
The HHO received a number of complaints over the inefficiency of the judiciary.
With regard to the return of refugees, positive trends, although they came late, were recorded over the past year, Puhovski said.