Few Dutch cases at human rights court

The European Court of Human Rights heard 365 Dutch cases last year which amounts to less than 1% of the total, reports ANP news service in Friday.


But the Netherlands has a relatively high number of cases related to foreigners’ rights, says ANP. Half of these were from asylum-seekers who felt that their application to remain in the country had illegally been turned down.
However these complaints have fallen since the general amnesty granted by the government last year and a less strict regime by the current administration, ANP said.
‘The Dutch government operates in line with the minimum demands of the European Treaty for Human Rights or far above,’ Egbert Myjer, a Dutch judge at the court in Strasbourg told ANP.
‘We are used to them [human rights]. The rights are integrated. This is a big difference with countries where people are tortured or where any criticism leads to a newspaper being closed down,’ he is quoted as saying.
The Netherlands was found guilty of two serious breaches of human rights last year. One was the case of a journalist who was held in custody for 18 days for refusing to reveal his sources. The second involved the illegal recording by the police of a suspect’s conversations in a fraud case.
Russia tops the list of human rights violation cases handled by the Human Rights Court last year, says ANP.

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