ombudsman seeks retaliation of citizens arrested during the epidemic

Ombudsman Hilmi Jashari estimates that Kosovo citizens who during the austerity period for preventing COVID19 pandemic have been punished because of disrespect for these measures should be suspended.

In fact, Jashar says that the state should have those citizens who were banned and sentenced to recompensation. According to him, fine or even arresting citizens for violating measures that he said have been declared unconstitutional is a violation of human rights.

In an interview for Kosova Prees, Jashat claims problematic will be the way these citizens compensate.

And the second is being given a compensation because it's an illegal and anti-unconstitutional act that belongs to citizens no matter what their number is, it seems to me that it's beyond a thousand and a few individuals... that they can't have a direct effect on the citizen, they can't be applied as such as this is more obvious. However, the problem of how citizens will be compensated for these measures that have been pronounced or even arrested because there have been cases of citizens' arrest, as I said, the number is over a thousand so this constitutes violations of Article 5 and 6 of the European Convention and as such must be compensated by the state because they are human rights violations<1>, he stressed.

The Jashar for Kosova Prees announced that he has already launched an investigation, and will soon be released with a report that will include recommendations for relevant authorities on how the cases of citizens punished during the months of the epidemic will be addressed.

“We have opened the investigation under official duty at the first moment that we have had information that something like this is happening we have contacted the responsible authorities, in this case the Prosecutorial Council and the courts also to get information about what is happening in practice because there were two decisions that changed the judicial situation, and in the first phase we have had a treatment that was made on the basis of the Kosovo Criminal Code Article 249 and Article 250. And in the second case these were treated as non-verbal acts. However, the Constitutional Court issued the verdict, which it declared unconstitutional and then legally states that they are neither criminal acts nor are considered an act of backlog. Under these circumstances, state authorities would have to respond primarily to courts and the relevant Judicial and Prosecutorial Councils themselves and give concrete instruction to courts on how to act. However, in the absence of such an action so far we are in the process of drafting a report we assume to come up with concrete recommendations for the authorities what the solution should be to offer the citizens of the country”, he said.

Ombudsman Hilmi Yashari estimates that human rights were violated during the pandemic with measures the government took in office, whose aim was to prevent the spread of coronary to citizens.

In the interview for Kosova Preess, he says there has been an increase in domestic violence cases over 30 per cent compared to the same period last year.

“Human rights violations in such situations are not ruled out, even Kosovo has not been excluded from violation of rights. First of all, we've had a response to the first few days to protect privacy when different media and authorities started publishing images, persons and their data and various medical diagnostics that came up through the media is a very serious violation of the privacy rights that are protected by existing law and are punishable. Then we had the second effect of pandemic referring to domestic violence and it's more than evidence that has contributed to the escalation of this situation has increased the number of domestic violence rates by over 30 percent compared to the same period last year and that has also been disturbing.... can't be described as major or minor violations because by human rights you can't describe as minor or major violations for each individual as huge because it violates a right of his”, he said.

During the period of pandemic at the ombudsman institution, over 100 complaints have been addressed, where, according to the leader of this institution, most have been dealing with measures imposed by the Kosovo government in office for failing to spread the virus.

<x) A large part, however, have almost dealt with the state of pandemic and the effects it has had on them, but it also concerns public institutions”, the ombudsman added.

Regarding the measures imposed by Kosovo's incumbent government for the prevention of COVID19, we remember that on March 24th, Kosovo President Hashim Thaci was addressed to the Constitutional Court for the interpretation of the Kosovo government's decision on March 23rd that the circulation of citizens and private vehicles from March 24th 2020 during 10:00 p.m.00 p.00 p.m., and from 800th to 600, in addition to the medical needs, production, supply and sale of essential goods (food and human and animal/unives), and activities that have been linked to the pan-demonix).

Kosovo's Constitutional Court decided on 31 March to abolish the Kosovo government's decision, which entered into force on 13 April.

While, the Ministry of Health later took new measures for each of the country's municipalities. Yet, there was also an bias in the Constitutional arrangement. This time the Parliamentary Group of the Democratic Party of Kosovo, supported by MPs from other parliamentary groups, handed over to the Kosovo Constitutional Court the request for assessment of the issue of constitutionality of Minister Vitita's decisions.

Later, the Constitutional Court declared the Health Ministry's decision to declare the area quarantined territory of the Prizren municipality unconstitutional.