Wayzata World Factbook 1996/The World Factbook - 1996 Edition - Wayzata Technology (3079) (1996).iso/mac/TEXT/HUMANrts/CZECH_RE.TXT

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TITLE:  CZECH REPUBLIC HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES, 1994
AUTHOR:  U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DATE:  FEBRUARY 1995

                         CZECH REPUBLIC


The Czech Republic came into existence on January 1, 1993, when
the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic dissolved and its
constituent republics became independent.  It is a parliamentary
democracy.  Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus and his Civic Democratic
Party lead the coalition Government.  The Czech Republic has
essentially completed the reform of political and economic
structures initiated after the 1989 revolution.

The Ministry of the Interior oversees the police.  The Internal
Security Service (BIS) is independent of ministry control, but
reports to Parliament and the Prime Minister's office.  Foreign
intelligence is under the authority of the Interior Ministry.
Military intelligence agencies are integrated into the Ministry
of Defense.  Police and BIS authorities observe constitutional
and legal protection of individual rights in carrying out their
responsibilities.

Pursuing a consistent policy of transforming the former
centrally planned economy, the Government had privatized some
80 percent of the economy by year's end.  The nation
experienced moderate economic growth in 1994, and macroeconomic
indicators (balanced budget, low inflation and unemployment,
current account surplus) were favorable.

The most important human rights problem is popular prejudice
against the Roma minority, and the inability (or unwillingness)
of the Government to counteract it.  The Citizenship Law, whose
provisions limited the access of many Roma residents to Czech
citizenship after midyear, is the most celebrated example of
such discrimination.  Roma have also been victims of "skinhead"
violence.  Other human rights problems include the Law on
Lustration (screening) which forbids certain Communist secret
police collaborators from holding high public office, and the
law criminalizing defamation of the State or the Presidency.
Women's issues, including violence against women, are still
rarely raised in mainstream political debate.

RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Section 1  Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including
           Freedom from:

     a.  Political and Other Extrajudicial Killing

There were no reports of political or other extrajudicial
killings.

     b.  Disappearance

There were no reports of disappearances.

     c.  Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading
         Treatment or Punishment

There were no reports of such practices.

     d.  Arbitrary Arrest, Detention, or Exile

The Czech Republic assumed Czechoslovak laws governing arrest
and related rights.  Courts issue arrest warrants.  The
authorities may hold persons without charge for 24 hours,
during which time they have the right to counsel.  There were
no instances of incommunicado detention or preventive
detention.  A person charged with a crime has the right to
appear before a judge for arraignment.  At arraignment, if the
prosecution files charges, the judge determines whether bail
will be granted pending trial.  The law does not allow bail for
certain serious crimes.  Pretrial detention may not exceed
1 year, and in such cases monthly appearances before a judge
are required.  Counsel and family visits are permitted.

There have been occasional reports of police shakedowns and
anecdotal stories of physical abuse and malfeasance, often
directed at foreigners.  According to press reports, police
killed five persons not in detention, including two separate
cases in which they shot and killed German tourists in roadside
altercations, but the courts have not yet judged these cases.

The law prohibits forced exile, and the Government does not
practice it.

     e.  Denial of Fair Public Trial

The court system consists of district, regional, and high
courts.  The Supreme Court is the highest court of appeal.  In
addition, a Constitutional Court rules separately on the
constitutionality of legislation.  Military courts, which have
jurisdiction over police, intelligence, and military matters,
were abolished at the end of 1993, and civil courts took over
their functions.

The judiciary is impartial and independent.  Judges are not
fired or transferred for political reasons.  Justice Ministry
officials and press observers noted that the shortage of
qualified judges (a problem under the Czechoslovak federation)
is slowly being overcome.

The law stipulates that persons charged with criminal offenses
are entitled to fair and open public trials.  They have the
right to be informed of their legal rights, of the charges
against them, to consult with counsel, and to present a
defense.  The State provides lawyers for indigent defendants.
Defendants enjoy the presumption of innocence and have the
right to refuse to testify against themselves.  Defendants may
appeal any judgments against them.  These rights are observed
in practice.

Foreign and domestic human rights groups expressed concern
about the continued existence of the 1991 Lustration Law, which
bars former Communist officials, members of the People's
Militia, secret police, and collaborators from holding a wide
range of elected and appointed positions for a period of 5
years.  The law is rarely enforced.  Although the Czechoslovak
Federal Constitutional Court in 1992 eliminated the largest
category from the Law, those listed as collaborators but who
may only have been intelligence targets, observers continued to
criticize it in principle for embracing employment
discrimination and the concept of collective guilt.  In perhaps
the most celebrated lustration case, the Government in
September dropped lustration charges against former federal
parliamentarian Jan Kavan.  News reports indicated that nearly
all those who challenged lustration judgments in court cleared
their names.

Although a 1993 law defining the pre-1989 Communist regime as
criminal and lifting the statute of limitations for crimes
committed by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia during its
40-year rule remained on the books, the Government rarely
invoked it.  Human rights monitors criticized this law, too,
for adopting the principle of collective guilt.  However, the
Constitutional Court in December 1993 upheld the law.

There were no known political prisoners.

     f.  Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or
         Correspondence

Electronic surveillance, telephone tapping, and interception of
mail require a court order, and the Government complies with
this requirement.  There were no known cases of electronic
surveillance reported in 1994.  There were no reports of
arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy.

Section 2  Respect for Civil Liberties, Including:

     a.  Freedom of Speech and Press

Czech law provides for freedom of speech and the press, and the
Government generally respects these rights.  Individuals may,
and do, speak out on political and other issues and freely
criticize the Government and public figures.  However, the
Constitutional Court in December 1993 upheld a provision in the
Criminal Code forbidding "defamation" of the State and the
Presidency.  The law was not applied at any time in 1994, but
represents a potential restriction of freedom of speech and
press.

A wide variety of newspapers, magazines, and journals publish
without government restriction or interference.  The Civic
Democratic Party (ODS)--the leading party in the ruling
coalition--became embroiled in controversy in September when
the editor of the nominally independent Denni Telegraf was
dismissed by the paper's board, which said it had lost
confidence in him.  Other newspapers claimed that the firing
took place on the Prime Minister's orders, noting that the
editor and several board members were ODS members.  The Prime
Minister denied any role in the dismissal.

The electronic media are independent and free of censorship.
Most television and radio stations are publicly funded and
independently managed.  The Television and Radio Council
oversees these stations under parliamentary supervision.  A
leading television channel, Nova, is privately owned, partially
by foreign investors.

The law provides for academic freedom but also forbids
activities by established political parties at universities.

     b.  Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association

The law provides for the right of persons to assemble
peacefully.  Some public demonstrations require permits, but
the Government rarely refuses to issue them.  Police generally
do not interfere with spontaneous peaceful demonstrations for
which organizers lack a permit.

Nonetheless, domestic press editorials sometimes criticized
police behavior.  In a July commemoration held at the former
concentration camp of Terezin (Theresienstadt), witnesses said
that police stood by or even encouraged rightists who objected
to the idea of reconciliation with Sudeten Germans transferred
to Germany after the Second World War.  The rightists disrupted
the ceremony and destroyed wreaths and other property.  The
authorities fired five district police chiefs after this
incident.

The law provides for the right of persons to associate freely
and to form political parties and movements, and this law is
respected in practice.  The Interior Ministry or local
officials register organizations, associations, foundations,
and political parties, but this procedure is routine.  The
Communist Party is represented in Parliament and in local
government and continues to own considerable assets throughout
the Republic.

     c.  Freedom of Religion

The Constitution provides for religious freedom, and the
Government respects this right in practice.

     d.  Freedom of Movement Within the Country, Foreign
         Travel, Emigration, and Repatriation

The Government does not restrict domestic or foreign travel,
emigration, or repatriation.

Refugees and asylum seekers are treated according to
international norms and are not forcibly repatriated.  Most
migrants use the Czech Republic as a transit route to the
West.  The law outlines lengthy procedures for granting refugee
status and eventual citizenship, but very few of those who make
applications remain in the country long enough to complete the
procedure.

Section 3  Respect for Political Rights:  The Right of Citizens
           to Change Their Government

Citizens have the right to change their government by
democratic means.  Those over the age of 18 are eligible to
vote by secret ballot in nationwide and local elections.
Opposition groups, including political parties, function openly
and participate without hindrance in the political process.

The Constitution mandates parliamentary elections at least
every 4 years, based on proportional representation within
eight large electoral districts.  There is a 5-percent
threshold for parties to enter Parliament.  The President is
elected by Parliament for a 5-year term.  He has limited
constitutional powers but may use a suspensive veto to return
legislation to Parliament, which has the right to override the
President's veto.

The Constitution also calls for an upper house of Parliament,
the Senate, which in 1994 had yet to be constituted; the first
senatorial election may take place in 1996, although
legislation defining its procedures remains to be adopted.  As
long as no Senate is created, the Czech Republic's
parliamentary system could be open to accusations of operating
extraconstitutionally.

There are no restrictions, in law or in practice, on women's
participation in politics.  However, they appear to participate
less in politics and government since the overthrow of the
Communist regime, which used quotas to include women in large
governing bodies such as the Federal Assembly.

Relatively few women hold high public office in the Czech
Republic, though 19 of 200 parliamentary deputies are women.
In the November local elections, voters elected a woman mayor
of Brno, the Republic's second largest city, and women serve on
both the Supreme and Constitutional courts.  Women achieve the
same educational level as men and attend institutions of higher
education in roughly equal numbers.

The country's two significant minorities--Roma and Slovaks--are
not represented in Czech politics.  No minority leader holds
significant elective office at the national level.  The
estimated 300,000 Slovaks are primarily "Czechoslovaks" who
elected to live in the Czech Republic after the split, and who
largely define their interests in the context of Czech politics
rather than along ethnic lines.  Many serve in high positions
in the civil service.

Not all the estimated 200,000 Roma have integrated into Czech
society, and the party that represented their interests
immediately following the demise of communism, the Roma Civic
Initiative, is in disarray.  Other local Roma political
groupings have not gained national prominence, although they
continue to strengthen their ties with international Roma
groups.  The political culture of the Czech Republic generally
defines Roma as outsiders, and the Roma themselves have been
unable to unite behind a program or set of principles that
would allow them to represent their interests within the
country's democratic structures (see Section 5).

Section 4  Governmental Attitude Regarding International and
           Nongovernmental Investigation of Alleged Violations
           of Human Rights

The Government encourages the activities of domestic and
international human rights organizations.  The presidency of
former dissident and human rights monitor Vaclav Havel serves
as an important symbol for these groups, which work without
government restriction or interference.  Government officials
generally cooperate with official and unofficial visits by
foreign human rights monitors.

Section 5  Discrimination Based on Race, Sex, Religion,
           Disability, Language, or Social Status

The law provides for the equality of citizens and prohibits
discrimination, and the Government respects this law.  In
practice, Roma face discrimination in such areas as education,
housing, and job opportunity.

     Women

The law provides for equality for women, and they receive pay
equal to that of male colleagues for the same job, although the
median wages for women in 1994 lagged significantly behind
those of men.  Women appear to be concentrated in professions
in which the median salary is generally low:  medicine,
teaching, and white-collar clerical jobs.

Violence against women does exist, but public debate about the
problem is rare, despite the efforts of a handful of women's
groups to bring this and other issues to the attention of the
public.  According to 1993-94 police statistics, 12 percent of
Czech women over the age of 15 have experienced some sort of
sexual assault, and only 3 of every 100 women raped report the
crime.  Gender studies experts say that women are ashamed to
speak about rape and that the police are not equipped, either
by attitude or training, to help.  Police and human rights
groups sometimes link violence toward women with economic
hardship and excessive drinking but without concrete
substantiation.  Human rights groups acknowledge that the
Government effectively enforces laws against violence.

A more public issue--and one that has gained considerable
attention in the press--is the growth of prostitution, which
has become increasingly visible.  For the most part,
prostitutes are in business for themselves, but police report
that underground elements, often also involved in smuggling and
petty crime, coerce some women into prostitution.  The law does
not explicitly protect prostitutes against trafficking and
sexual exploitation.

     Children

The Government is committed to children's welfare through
programs for health care, compulsory education, and basic
nutrition.  However, some Roma children do not receive these
benefits owing to the Government's inability to counteract
cultural differences and instances of social prejudice.  Child
abuse as a social problem received growing attention in the
press.  According to the Ministry of Justice, courts judged 164
cases of child abuse in the first 6 months of 1994.  An
independent organization claims that 50 Czech children die at
the hands of their parents each year, but this number could not
be confirmed.

     National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities

The Roma population, estimated at about 200,000, is the most
significant minority.  Roma live throughout the country but are
concentrated in the industrial towns of Northern Bohemia, where
many of them settled more than 40 years ago in the homes of
Sudeten Germans transferred to the West.  They suffer
disproportionately from poverty, crime, and disease.  Efforts
by foundations and government education and health workers to
improve their living conditions, especially the conditions of
Roma children, have had only minimal impact.  Efforts by local
leaders to mobilize local Roma communities, especially in the
north, generally have failed.

Roma suffer from serious popular prejudice and from
discrimination, particularly in employment, housing, and
everyday life.  The central authorities have intervened to
eliminate overt discrimination by local jurisdictions; for
example, the Constitutional Court invalidated the anti-Roma
decrees adopted in 1992 by the Jirkov (northern Bohemia) town
council.

Local authorities have been unable (or, according to some Roma,
unwilling) to curb skinhead intimidation and violence against
Roma.  In December perpetrators accused of anti-Roma violence
were acquitted by a court in Pisek, and the next day skinhead
assailants attacked Roma there.  The Government has denounced
such violence, but has failed to prevent it.  Human rights
organizations and articles in the Czech press accuse the
Government of serious neglect in this area.

International legal and human rights organizations and Roma
activists strongly criticized the discriminatory impact on Roma
of the 1992 citizenship law, which required Czechoslovaks
living on the territory of the Czech Republic to apply for
citizenship by June 30, 1994.  Slovaks had to prove they had a
clean criminal record over the previous 5 years and had lived
in the territory of the Czech Republic for 2 years.  Czechs
were automatically granted citizenship.  Because the majority
of Roma were considered Slovaks, based on a 1969 Communist law,
the Czech citizenship requirements have had a disproportionate
impact on them.  No accurate estimates are available on the
number of Roma who were unable to obtain Czech citizenship;
Roma activists and human rights groups cite figures in the tens
of thousands.  No deportations or large-scale refugee
migrations have been documented as a result of the law, and
Czech authorities note that those who fail to obtain
citizenship are granted permanent resident status and can
receive state benefits.  But they are also denied the right to
vote or serve in the government, the military, police, or the
judiciary.  The Conference for Security and Cooperation in
Europe has criticized this law as contrary to human rights
norms, noting that it is inconsistent with Article 11(2) of the
1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

     Religious Minorities

The Jewish community numbers only a few thousand.  There were,
however, isolated instances of public anti-Semitism.  For
example, in April, 24 graves in a Jewish cemetery in the
Moravian town of Prerov were defiled with Nazi markings; in
June the far-right Republican Party called the new Culture
Minister, who is of Jewish background, the "Jewish destroyer of
Czech culture," for which the media roundly condemned the
Republicans.

     People with Disabilities

The Government does not place a high priority on ensuring
access for the disabled, nor has discrimination against the
disabled been the subject of significant policy or public
debate.  The law does not mandate accessibility to public
buildings and services for the disabled.

Section 6  Worker Rights

     a.  The Right of Association

The law provides workers with the right to form and join unions
of their own choosing without prior authorization, and the
Government respects this right.  For example, after trade union
leaders protested a law drafted by the Government that would
have forbidden civil service workers from joining unions,
claiming that such a law violated not only International Labor
Organization statutes but the Czech Constitution as well, the
Government withdrew the proposal.  More than 50 percent of the
work force is unionized, although the number of workers who are
members of labor organizations continued to fall steadily.

Most workers are members of unions affiliated with the
Czech-Moravian Chamber of Trade Unions (CMKOS).  CMKOS is a
democratically oriented, nationwide umbrella organization for
branch unions.  It is not affiliated with any political party
and carefully maintains its independence.

The law provides workers with the right to strike, except for
those in specific professions whose role in public order or
public safety is deemed crucial, e.g., judges, prosecutors,
members of the armed forces and the police, air traffic
controllers, nuclear power station workers, workers with
nuclear materials, and oil or gas pipeline workers.  The law
also places some limitation on the right to strike of
firefighters, rescue workers, telecommunications workers, and
health workers.  The law requires that labor disputes be
subject first to mediation and that strikes take place only
after mediation efforts fail.  There were no major strikes in
1994.

Czech unions are free to form or join federations and
confederations and affiliate with and participate in
international bodies.  This freedom is fully exercised.

     b.  The Right to Organize and Bargain Collectively

The law provides for collective bargaining.  The basic
collective bargaining instrument is the Law on Collective
Bargaining.  It is carried out in a tripartite system, a
voluntary arrangement in which representatives of unions,
government, and employers set the guidelines for labor
relations.  Union leaders complained repeatedly that the
Government intended to sabotage the tripartite arrangement, and
the Government stated repeatedly that the tripartite "steering
process" had outlived its usefulness.  Despite such complaints,
wages were set in free negotiations, although the Government
imposed an upper limit on wage growth (levying penalties on
inflationary increases).

Union leaders may file charges of antiunion discrimination in
court.  Union and Labor Ministry officials reported that no
such charges were filed in 1994.

The Czech Republic has one export processing zone.  Its workers
have and practice the same rights to organize and bargain
collectively as other workers in the country.

     c.  Prohibition of Forced or Compulsory Labor

The law prohibits forced or compulsory labor, and it is not
practiced.

     d.  Minimum Age for Employment of Children

The Labor Code stipulates a minimum working age of 15 years,
although children who complete courses at special schools
(i.e., schools for the severely disabled) may work at the age
of 14.  There are no legal limits on the hours children may
work, although they may not work at night.

     e.  Acceptable Conditions of Work

The Government sets minimum wage standards at roughly
one-fourth of the average monthly wage.  The current minimum
wage is about $75 per month.  This provides an adequate, if
sparse, standard of living for an individual worker and, when
combined with allowances available to families with children,
provides an adequate standard of living for a worker and a
family.  Major efforts at worker retraining, carried out by
district labor offices, seek to provide labor mobility for
those at the lower end of the wage scale.  The Ministry of
Labor has the authority to enforce minimum wage standards and
does so, as needed.

The law mandates a standard workweek of 42 1/2 hours.  It also
requires paid rest of at least 30 minutes during the standard
8- to 8 1/2-hour workday, as well as annual leave of 3 to 4
weeks.  Overtime may not exceed 150 hours per year or 8 hours
per week as standard practice.  The Labor Ministry enforces
overtime regulations but reports that the rapid growth of the
private sector, especially in small service enterprises, makes
it very difficult to assess abuses and enforce the law.

Health and safety conditions in some sectors of heavy industry
remain substandard, especially in those sectors awaiting the
process of privatization, but industrial accident rates are not
unusually high.  The Office of Labor Safety is responsible for
enforcement of health and safety standards and carries out its
responsibilities effectively.