Tirana Times
TIRANA, April 9 – US Department of State last week released the 2010 human rights report for 194 countries of the world, including Albania with 25 pages of this document referred to it.
Mentioning the Parliamentary Elections of 2009, which, according to OSCE, were better than the previous elections, but didn’t achieve the standards.
In June 2009 the country held parliamentary elections, which the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) described as marking progress over past elections, but not fully realizing OSCE commitments. While the opposition Socialist Party (SP) voted to certify the elections as legal and final, it began a boycott of the parliament in September 2009, calling for an investigation into alleged electoral fraud. The boycott continued at year’s end. Security forces reported to civilian authorities.
Related with the financing of political parties, the document says that this case remains largely obscure. The report said that government corruption remained a serious and unresolved problem.
Despite several arrests of high-level local and central government officials, government corruption remained a major obstacle to meaningful reform.
It said that there were reports that police severely beat and mistreated suspects during interrogation and detention. Some cases of physical mistreatment were reported in prisons. Police corruption and impunity persisted. Government corruption remained a serious and unresolved problem. Discrimination against women, children, homosexual persons, and minorities were problems. Trafficking in persons also remained a problem.
Discrimination against women, children and homosexual persons is also a big problem. Trafficking of persons also remained a problem. As for the Roma community, the report mentions the National Action Plan 2010-2015, with a budget of 2.5 billion leks.
On the media role it writes that the government and the businesses influence very much and exert pressure against the media. Critics against the government may be open, private and without limit, says the report, but there are some exceptions. Some media have been under strong pressure for the taxes, because of their political convictions.
Some media outlets reported they experienced selective tax inspections due to their editorial point of view.
Again on the media, the report says that media were active, but nevertheless there have been direct and indirect pressures against them, including threatens against journalists.
There were cases of direct and indirect political pressure on the media, including threats against journalists. At times political pressure and lack of funding constrained the independent print media, and journalists reported that they practiced extensive self-censorship. Journalists continued to complain that publishers and editors censored their work, either directly or indirectly in response to political and commercial pressures. Many journalists complained that their lack of employment contracts frequently hindered their ability to report objectively.
The report also said that political pressure, threats, open corruptions and limited instruments have obstacle the independent functioning of the judiciary.
The document cites reported cases of police violence against suspects during interrogation and detention, as well as discrimination.
