According to the 2004 Country Report on Human Rights Practices released by the US department of state on February 28, the Bulgarian Government generally respects human rights in spite of some problematic areas.
Problems quoted include prison conditions, corruption in the judiciary and the executive, police brutality and human trafficking, among others.
The report underlines that the Government is undertaking measures to deal with the problems.
It states further that there are indications of police brutality used on detained persons but that the authorities have undertaken measures to address such incidents.
The report criticises Bulgaria for the poor conditions in some prisons, but underlines that as a whole the Government permits independent observers to check conditions in most of the jails and detention centres.
Another problem is the lack of transparency in the judicial system, insufficient coordination between prosecutors, investigating magistrates and justices, corruption and clumsy procedures.
“Crime and corruption remained primary concerns of the Government,” the report states. “While the Government implemented several measures in the fight against corruption, the EU reported that it remained a problem and said that renewed efforts were needed to combat it, including tackling high-level corruption.”
The section dedicated to freedom of the press notes that the Government generally respected these rights but that some NGOs reported that a significant numbers of journalists continued to feel constrained in their reporting because of media outlet management, political influence, and outside pressure.
With regard to the freedom of religion, the department of state report noted that most religious denominations in Bulgaria can operate freely, the Government providing financial aid for both the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and other traditional religions like Islam, the Catholic Church and Judaism. Relations between the major religious communities were generally amicable; however, discrimination, harassment, and general public intolerance of non-traditional for the country religious groups remained an intermittent problem.
Domestic violence against women was a serious problem, the report stated, however, there were no concrete statistics on its occurrence.
It also quoted human rights monitors as being sharply critical of the serious deficiencies in Government-run institutions for children, including orphanages, educational reform boarding schools, facilities for children with mental disabilities and shelters for homeless children. “Inadequate budgets, poorly trained and unqualified staff and inadequate supervision plagued these facilities,” the report read. “Access to medical care and proper hygiene was poor.”
The section of the report dedicated to human trafficking noted that this remained a serious problem and the country remained primarily a transit country. There is no evidence of a pattern of official complicity in trafficking, according to the report, although a number of individual law enforcement officers and other Government authorities were involved in trafficking.