WRITTEN QUESTION E-0356/03 by Bill Newton Dunn (ELDR)and Baroness Sarah Ludford (ELDR) to the Commission. Human rights abuses in Honduras.
Date: 2003-02-12
Institutions: European Parliament, Provisional data
Subjects: EU relations, Honduras, child protection, cooperation policy, human rights, street children

8.4.2004

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 88 E/11

Answer given by Mr Patten on behalf of the Commission

(26 February 2003)

The reference to the respect for human rights and democratic principles of Article 1 of the Community-
Vietnam Co-operation Agreement constitutes the enabling framework for the Human Rights dialogue of
the Commission with the Government of Vietnam. The Commission’s policy towards Vietnam is to
encourage and support continued progress on human rights and democratisation, and to raise concerns
where abuses occur or were a deterioration in the situation becomes evident. The Commission works
closely with the Member States in the framework of regular meetings of the Union’s ‘Politics and Human
Rights Group’ and takes part in Troika meetings with the Vietnamese Government as well as in ad-hoc
missions and through joint Union statements. In this context, concrete cases of Persons of Concern are
also addressed.

The Commission and Member States have repeatedly urged the Government of Vietnam to strengthen its
respect for political and religious freedoms, as well as further strengthen economic and social freedoms.
They again expressed this request recently in their joint declaration at the Consultative Group meeting in
Hanoi in December 2002.

The Vietnamese Constitution guarantees freedom of belief and religion. Vietnam’s Government officially
recognises six religions (cid:1) one Buddhist organisation, the Central Buddhist Church of Vietnam, the Catholic
Church, two Protestant church organisations, Islam, Hoa Hao Buddhism and Cao-Daism. Article 70 of the
Vietnamese Constitution, however, also states that ‘it is forbidden to violate freedom of belief, or religion,
or to take advantage of it to act against the law or the policies of the State’. As the Government of
Vietnam still sees religious movements as a potential element of opposition and disunity, this provision is
frequently invoked to justify the many controls,
limitations, prohibitions and sanctions that restrict
freedom in this field.

Reports of systematic harassment of Christians in Vietnam (especially against the Montagnard Christians
and Hmong Christians) are common and have increased since the uprising in the Central Highlands in
February 2001. Several reports point to the repeated practice by the security forces of forcing highlanders
to renounce their Christian faith and mention accidental deaths or beatings under police custody, although
the authorities strongly deny this happening.

The access to the Central Highlands remains limited and a systematic first hand verification of reports
remains impossible. Nonetheless, in 2002, two local Union-Troika missions to the Central Highlands took
place with Commission participation, the latest in November 2002. Following the latest Troika mission to
the Central Highlands the Commission, in close coordination with the Member States, has offered to the
Government of Vietnam to support (cid:1) in the framework of its co-operation programme (cid:1) possible
activities, involving ‘inter alia’ the ethnic minorities, to reduce poverty in the Central Highlands and thus to
deal with some of the root causes of the problems in the area. At the end of January 2003 the
Government of Vietnam agreed that an exploratory mission of the Commission should visit the area in the
coming weeks.

The Commission and Member States will continue to closely monitor the human rights situation in
Vietnam. A decision on appropriate action will be taken in due course.

(2004/C 88 E/0011)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-0356/03

by Bill Newton Dunn (ELDR)
and Baroness Sarah Ludford (ELDR) to the Commission

(12 February 2003)

Subject: Human rights abuses in Honduras

The Commission will be aware of the human rights abuses, notably the frequent murder of street children,
which continue in Honduras.

C 88 E/12

Official Journal of the European Union

EN

8.4.2004

Has the Commission:

1. Made representations to the Honduran Government?

2. Other plans, to try to improve the dreadful situation?

Answer given by Mr Patten on behalf of the Commission

(28 February 2003)

The Commission would refer the Honourable Members to its joint reply to questions E-0086/03 by
Mr Roger Helmer and question E-0097/03 by Mr Philip Whitehead on the same subject (1).

(1) See page 5.

(2004/C 88 E/0012)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-0434/03

by Erik Meijer (GUE/NGL) to the Commission

(18 February 2003)

Subject: Sterilisation of young Roma women in Slovakia on the basis of misleading information or without

their consent

1.
Is the Commission aware of the testimony given by two Slovakian women, Magda Kandráèová and
Sonja Pokutová, on the Netherlands television programme Network (TV1, 4 February 2003, www.net-
werk.tv) that sterilisation or hysterectomies are performed on young mothers from the Roma community
who have complications during childbirth and that this happens either without their knowledge or after
they are suddenly told during the delivery that there is a medical need for intervention, which amounts to
exacting their ill-informed consent?

Is there any truth in the statements by the director of the hospital in Spisˇska Nová Ves saying that it
2.
is the Roma women themselves who want to be separated from other Slovakian women in hospital and
that Slovakian law authorises hysterectomies to be performed after a second caesarean section because this
is good for the women concerned?

3.
Is the Commission aware of reports, confirmed by the Poradna human rights organisation, that
interviews with 230 Roma women showed that 140 of them had been misled in this way and that
unwanted operations of this kind occur particularly in the case of young women who have had their first
or second child and that it can therefore be assumed that the measure is primarily designed to keep the
numbers of Roma, a group disliked by many other nationals, as low as possible?

Is this a case of practices developed during the 1938-1945 and 1948-1989 dictatorships living on in

4.
the medical profession despite there being no legal basis for them?

5. What is the Commission doing to ensure that the Slovakian judicial system prosecutes those who
break the law and that the necessary changes to the law, if any, are adopted in Slovakia to put an end to
forced sterilisations as soon as possible and to ensure that such practices are never carried out again after
Slovakia joins the EU?

Answer given by Mr Verheugen on behalf of the Commission

(13 March 2003)

The Commission is aware of the allegations, recently published in a report of the ‘Center for Reproductive
Rights’, a non-governmental organisation based in New York, and which were later reflected in other
media statements, that Roma women are being sterilised without their consent or with coerced consent by