Human Rights Monitoring Institute

The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Thomas Hammarberg, published today letters sent to the Prime Minister of Lithuania and to the Speaker of the Seimas (Parliament) on discrimination issues, minority rights and steps taken to investigate whether the CIA detained terrorist suspects on Lithuanian territory.

The Ministerial Conference in Interlaken on the future of the European Court of Human Rights started today. At a Conference the States will take decisions which could bring welcome reform to relieve the Court’s backlog of cases. Conversely, the decisions taken could undermine a body that has provided redress for the victims of human rights violations in Europe for 50 years.

Today, Human Rights Monitoring Institute has distributed a public appeal to the Prosecutor General to initiate pretrial investigation into Lithuania’s participation in the Extraordinary Rendition Program by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The Institute has expressed its concern about the lack of initiative from the Office of the Prosecutor General in investigating the presumed criminal acts committed in the territory of Lithuania while the country had taken part in the Program.

Discussion „Anti-Crisis Measures, Freedom of Enterprise, Equality, and Human Rights“ hosted by HRMI looked into the recent wave of criminal prosecution of business owners and young mothers for presumably abusing the social security system by increasing salaries of the latter shortly before maternity leave.

The Human Rights Monitoring Institute and the Lithuanian National UNESCO Commission have organised two national essay competitions on human rights – one for high school students, another one for teachers. Essays exploring the connection between art and human rights (by students) and sharing constructive ideas for the integration of human rights in high school education (by teachers) were submitted by the 1st December.