Venice Commission's President, Prof. Helgesen to EuroFora : Human Rights Defenders need protection

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             - "I wouldn't exclude that", "because it's still an on-going issue", replied Helgelsen, who has a unique long-standing experience on the matter, as former Head of UNO's Working Group on "the Right and responsibility of Individuals, Groups and organs of Society to promote and protect universally recognized Human Rights and fundamental Freedoms", which drafted the "Declaration on Human Rights' Defenders" adopted at nearby Geneva by UNO's Human Rights' Commission, and later by UNO's General Assembly at New York in 1998.

    A decade later, the issue was recently taken up in Europe by CoE's Commissioner on Human Rights, Thomas Hammarberg, strongly supported by a 2009 Resolution adopted by CoE's Assembly on a Report by German ChristianDemocrat MEP, Holger Haibach.

 

    - "As a Human Rights Professor, I think that even today, after a Decade, it's important : You can see that Human Rights Defenders' rights are violated in several parts of the World, so it's still  an on-going issue, that I wouldn't exclude to Study in Future on the relations of Governments to Human Rights Defenders"

    - Because "it's not only in Totalitarian regimes that you can find that. You can find it also in Democracies" : "There is an interesting conflict between Democracy and rule of Law : More and more Governments, even in Democracies, are really treating Human Rights Defenders harshly, because they claim that Human Rights Defenders tarnish Democracy".
   
    But, "Venice Commission is based on 2 Pillars : Democracy and Rule of Law. And we (CoE) always say that both pillars are equally important. We (CoE) cannot accept that a Democracy violates Human Rights or Minorities' rights".

    - "Human Rights' Defenders are close to my Heart... I was, indeed drafting this Declaration at the UN for years", and, even if Venice Commission has not yet specifically done anything in this field, I wouldn't exclude to take this issue on the Agenda for a Report", Helgelsen concluded.

    Venice Commission's readiness to extend such studies to all CoE Member States and not only to former "Eastern" European Countries, as in the past, was confirmed also by the experienced Director of its Secretariat, Gianni Buquicchio of Italy :

 

    - "When Venice Commission started, back in 1989, it was conceived to serve all European Countries. But soon Berlin wall fell down, and a huge area opened to help Eastern European Countries' constitutional reforms. However, its competence covers not only Constitutions, but also Elections, Constitutional Justice, Solutions to conflicts, Human Rights, etc", Often "at the invitation of the EU or UNO", whenever needed; fex. in frozen conflicts, we intervene on the sidelines of political negotiations. And recently we dealt also with old democracies such as Finland, the UK, Belgium, etc. but also Turkey.

    - Thus, "we (CoE) could do a Study on such kind of issues too", replied Buquicchio to another "EuroFora" Question on the need to ensure efficient investigations on a series of murders of Journalists working on Human Rights, particularly when ECHR has already issued judgements condemning certain States, as f.ex. on Gongadze's case in Ukraine, on  Newspaper "Ozger Ozgur"'s staff in Turkey, and on dissident Turkish Cypriot Adali's case in the Turkish-Occupied Territories of Cyprus.

    But while in Gongadge's case CoE's Committee of Ministers still keeps a pressure on Ukranian Authorities to find and punish also those who had asked for the murder, well beyond the condemnation of 2 executors to 10 Years of Jail, on the contrary, on Adali's case, sheduled for June, it reportedly has proposed to ... "postpone" anew its examination, from March to June, and now from June to September 2009, surprisingly without giving even the slightesst information on what is going on...

     Adali's murder case, in the Past, had been "stuck" also previously, pending
for a too long time inside ECHR's secretariat, but was "unblocked"  also after "EuroFora" informed New York based "Committee to Protect Journalists" (CPJ)  who called upon ECHR to really examine the case, despite obstacles and harassment denounced by the Victims' Wife, Ilkay, who visited twice Strasbourg.