SLOVENIA: REACTIONS TO 2005 HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 LJUBLJANA 000173

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

DEPT FOR EUR/NCE - TRIM, EUR/PPD - PAPAZIAN, DRL/CRA -
KNIGHT

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PHUM PGOV KPAO SI
SUBJECT: SLOVENIA: REACTIONS TO 2005 HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT

REF: SECSTATE 33794


1. (U) SUMMARY. Reaction to the 2005 Human Rights Report
was varied. The GOS reaction contrasted with last year, as
MFA State Secretary Bozo Cerar called in COM to complain
about passages in the Report on trafficking in persons,
rape, and the government's relations with Slovenia's Muslim
minority. Prime Minister Janez Jansa's reaction was more
moderate and stressed the Report's positive evaluation of
Slovenia. Media coverage was largely devoted to the section
on Slovenia, which attracted considerably more attention
than in previous years. This was particularly true of the
Freedom of Speech and Press section, which became part of a
larger debate by Slovenian journalists and media experts
about a new law governing the Board of Slovenia's national
radio and TV broadcaster, RTV Slovenija. Post encountered a
wide palette of interpretations -- depending on whatever
suited the individual interpreting the Report -- from
Government officials, representatives of political parties
and journalists. END SUMMARY.

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GOS Reaction
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2. (SBU) Deputy Foreign Minister Bozo Cerar called in
Ambassador March 8 to express his dismay over the report.
Cerar took particular exception to the information on
trafficking in persons. He pointed out that the NGO Kljuc
had indeed been fully funded by the end of the year, and
that to the knowledge of the GOS, no victims had gone
uncared for. All potential victims, too had been given
every opportunity for assistance. (Comment. Cerar objected
to the lines: "Kljuc, the country's sole NGO providing
support to trafficking victims, organized a 3-day training
for 13 prosecutors. Due to a government budgeting impasse
for part of the year, Kljuc was forced to close its safe
house and reported turning away 12 victims during the year."
In writing the TIP report subsequent to the HRR, Post
learned that while Kljuc had to close its emergency housing,
the safe house, funded by the European Commission, remains
open, and in fact, is currently housing one victim. Also,
while Kljuc was not able to assist in person the 12 victims
mentioned above, it was able to provide counseling over the
phone. Kljuc also assisted by phone in helping the police
on the scene to determine if any of the 12 potential victims
was actually a victim of trafficking. The police asserted
that four were indeed victims and offered them assistance.
The victims declined to be housed by the police saying they
felt safe in their current accommodation.)


3. (SBU) Cerar also took exception to characterizations of
some problems, such as the incidence of rape in Slovenia and
the issue of the land purchase for the mosque. The
Ambassador took great care to go over certain passages with
the Deputy FM, and to explain our intentions in reporting
them the way we did versus his interpretation of what was
being said.


4. (U) Subsequently, Prime Minister Janez Jansa adopted a
different tone, stating that "The Human Rights Report
resembles the previous ones; on the whole, the Report is
extremely positive. The Government has strived to eliminate
these problems [mentioned in the Report]. If the state of
human rights in Slovenia were compared to the state of human
rights in the country that authored the Report, [the state
of human rights in Slovenia] would be assessed as
considerably better."


5. (U) Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) deputy Branko Grims
claimed he was content with the report and particularly
pleased with the statement that "the media were active and
independent but did not express a broad range of political
views," which he interpreted at a press conference as "the
media [in Slovenia] were independent, indeed quite
independent, they were active, but did not present a wide
spectrum of political views. To put it simply: the media in
Slovenia are absolutely free, but not as plural as all of us
would like." (NOTE: Grims' press conference featured the
above-quoted sentence from the Report in approximately 72-
font letters. END NOTE.) In Grims' opinion, the above-
quoted sentence "confirms that first steps were made in the
right direction last year [with the passage of the law on
national radio and television]."


6. (U) In the opinion of the Human Rights Ombudsman, Matjaz
Hanzek, "the report is nice [towards Slovenia], but less so
than in previous years." Hanzek also noted that the Report
confirmed the assessments made by his office.

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Opposition Reaction
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7. (U) Initial reactions to the Report by the leading
coalition were reserved: the Slovenian Democratic Party
(SDS) did not wish to comment; New Slovenia (NSi) noticed
some constants which repeated themselves every year, and
emphasized that the Government worked hard on resolution of
the "erased" issue, while asylum policy was being adjusted
to European standards.


8. (U) Opposition political parties used the Report to
criticize the current government. The Liberal Democratic
Party (LDS) issued a statement saying it is "concerned with
the reduction of the field of freedom in society, for it
leads to the violation of human rights... The report
confirms our criticism of the government, and assesses those
negative phenomena ... which we warned about when the law on
radio and TV was drafted, the anticorruption commission
eliminated, and asylum standards lowered." In the opinion
of Social Democrats (SD),the situation in Slovenia is worse
than presented in the Report. The Report fails to caution
against hate speech, the government's decision to terminate
financial support for certain NGOs, and verbal attacks on
the Ombudsman.


-------------- --
Media Freedom Section Elicits Heavy Commentary
-------------- --


9. (U) The new Chairman of the Program Board of Slovenian
National Radio and Television, Stane Granda, assured the
press that he did not feel any pressure from the Government
or Parliament. Reacting to the section on media freedoms,
he said: "Does America want to tell Europe what to do?
America has exerted cultural and scientific violence upon
European culture and science. ... I find such reports
amusing, but I do not identify myself with America in any
way. To be honest, I do not pay any attention to American
assessments."


10. (U) The president of the Association of Slovenian
Journalists, Gregor Repovz, said that the Association "is
waiting for Prime Minister Janez Jansa, Minister of Culture
Vasko Simoniti, and Parliamentarian Branko Grims (author of
the Law on National Radio and TV) to say that the
Association mislead the State Department; as it had always
said when an important international institution made a
remark about any media-related activity of the Slovenian
government. In general, we can only unhappily assert that
assessments in the Report are accurate. We are unhappy
because the Report -- in this section -- is more negative
than in previous years. It should also be emphasized that
pressure on the media is growing and that the most recent
events have not been included in the Report."


11. (U) In the opinion of professor of journalism and
communication Sandra Basic Hrvatin, "the situation in
Slovenia is as described."


12. (U) The media reported extensively about the Report, but
largely refrained from comment, except to make remarks about
the state of human rights in the United States. The weekly
"Mladina," for example, says: "The United States is the
major violator of human rights. ... However, although it is
hypocritical that the United States is warning about human
rights, critical assessments made by the State Department
are not insignificant and point at the instances in which
human rights violations really do occur." The daily "Delo"
opines in a commentary by Janko Lorenci: "Because of its own
human rights violations, America has lost much credibility
in recent years. Nevertheless, we presume that the
Americans did not advise our government to address the
purported absence of media plurality by reducing freedom of
speech, and to do it in [such] a manner."

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Public Diplomacy Efforts
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13. (U) The Embassy's public diplomacy efforts included the
publication of the Report on post's website and sending
extensive outreach emails with copies of the Report to
government and civil society leaders. In addition, poloff
granted several interviews to the media, including print

LJUBLJANA 00000173 003 OF 003


dailies "Dnevnik" and "Vecer" and Radio Slovenia, to
highlight the important role that the Report plays as an
informational tool highlighting human rights concerns and
spurring support for improvements among the public, the
media, and government. Seeking to clarify the competing
interpretations of the Report's views on the new law on
national radio and TV, poloff stressed that the Report
itself made no mention of the law's effect on media
coverage. Poloff also noted that the presence of political
and economic pressures on the media had been mentioned in
previous years' reports and therefore were not new to this
year's Report.