AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORT 2016/17

members appointed by the Prime Minister. In
December, the Court of Justice of the EU
ruled that the UK surveillance legislation
violated the right to privacy.
In addition to the UK, Austria, Switzerland,
Belgium, Germany, Russia and Poland
adopted new surveillance-related legislation
during the year, all introducing, with minor
variations, extensive powers to collect and
store electronic data and conduct targeted
surveillance activities on loosely defined
target groups or suspected individuals with
little to no judicial or other oversight. The
Netherlands and Finland both had legislative
proposals pending at the end of the year.
DISCRIMINATION
Across Europe, Muslims and migrants were
vulnerable to racial profiling and
discrimination by police, both in connection
with anti-terrorism powers and during regular
law enforcement operations, including
identity checks.
Initiatives to combat violent extremism,
often including reporting obligations on
public institutions, risked alienating Muslim
communities and curbing freedom of
expression. Bulgaria and the Swiss
Parliament adopted legislation banning the
wearing of full-face veils in public. Draft
legislation banning full-face veils was still
pending before the Dutch Parliament by the
end of the year, while a similar proposal was
put forward in Germany. In France several
coastal municipalities sought to ban the
wearing of “burkinis” on the beach. The
discriminatory provisions were struck down
by the Council of State, but a number of
municipalities persevered regardless.
Several European countries saw an
increase in hate crimes targeting asylumseekers,
Muslims and foreign nationals. In
Germany there was a sharp increase in
attacks on shelters for asylum-seekers, and
in the UK hate crimes surged by 14% in the
three months after the referendum on the
UK’s withdrawal from the EU (Brexit) in June
compared to the same period the
previous year.
Roma continued to face widespread
discrimination across Europe in access to
housing, education, health and employment.
Roma remained vulnerable to forced
evictions across Central Europe, but also in
France and Italy. There was a growing trend
of courts finding in favour of evicted
communities, but their decisions rarely led to
improvements for the affected residents.
There were positive developments in the
Czech Republic; under the impulse of EU
infringement proceedings, a series of reforms
to reduce the over-representation of Roma in
special schools came into effect with the start
of the school year in September.
There was progress, albeit uneven, in the
rights of lesbians, gays, bisexual, transgender
and intersex (LGBTI) people. France adopted
a new law scrapping medical requirements
for legal gender recognition and Norway
granted the right on the basis of selfidentification.
Similar moves were under way
in Greece and Denmark. A number of
countries moved to respect the rights of
same-sex couples and second-parent
adoptions. Italy and Slovenia adopted
legislation recognizing same-sex
partnerships. An LGBTI Pride March on 12
June in Kyiv, capital of Ukraine, supported by
the authorities and heavily protected by
police, passed without incident. With about
2,000 participants, it became the biggestever
event of its kind in Ukraine.
At the opposite end of the spectrum,
consensual same-sex acts remained criminal
offences in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. In
Kyrgyzstan, draft legislation to criminalize
“fostering a positive attitude” towards “nontraditional
sexual relations” was still under
discussion in Parliament, and a constitutional
amendment banning same-sex marriage was
approved in a referendum in December.
There was also push-back from increasingly
organized, sometimes state-supported,
conservative groups. Proposals for
referendums to change constitutional
definitions of marriage and family to explicitly
exclude same-sex couples were blocked by
the President in Georgia, but allowed to be
put to Parliament by the Constitutional Court
44 Amnesty International Report 2016/17