CAT/C/BGR/CO/4-5 The State party should enhance efforts to eradicate stereotypes and discrimination against the Roma and other national minorities, including through increased awareness-raising and information campaigns to promote tolerance and respect for diversity. Measures should be taken to prohibit and prevent advocacy of hate speech, discrimination and intolerance, including in the public domain, in conformity with international standards and human rights instruments to which Bulgaria is a party. The State party should enhance the enforcement of anti-discrimination legislation and ensure that violent acts, discrimination and hate speech are systematically investigated, prosecuted and the perpetrators convicted and punished. The State party should systematically apply provisions of the Criminal Code concerning crimes based on intolerance and should ensure that offences motivated by discrimination constitute an aggravating circumstance in criminal prosecution. The State party should ensure that members of the Roma community are not singled out on a ethnically motivated basis with regard to the use of force by the police and ensure that excessive use of force against members of national and other minorities is promptly and impartially investigated and perpetrators prosecuted and punished. The victims need to be compensated and accorded all remedies afforded by the Convention, including reparations for damage. The Committee requests to be updated on the results of the investigations into the recent attacks on journalists. Redress 29. The Committee takes note of the information provided in the State party’s report on the right to redress, including financial compensation, for persons whose rights have been violated. However, the Committee regrets that not more information was provided on the actual implementation of redress to persons subjected to torture or ill-treatment, among others, to persons who have been interned in centres and homes for persons with mental disabilities, including a high number of children (art. 14). The State party should ensure that the efforts in respect of redress, including compensation and rehabilitation, are strengthened in order to provide victims, including those who have suffered torture and ill-treatment in such centres, with redress and fair and adequate compensation, including means for as full rehabilitation as possible. Corporal punishment 30. While taking note that corporal punishment is explicitly forbidden in law, the Committee is concerned by persistent lack of implementation and notes that the Committee on the Rights of the Child has found that children are still victims of corporal punishment in the home, schools, the penal system, alternative care settings and situations of employment. The Committee is concerned that a 2009 survey shows that 34.8 per cent of public opinion is in favour of corporal punishment in childrearing in some circumstances and that 10.9 per cent felt it was acceptable if the parent believed that it would be effective. It is concerned in particular that the use of corporal punishment is substantially higher in institutions for children with disabilities and that a number of cases of physical abuse were documented in the children’s personal files (art. 16). The Committee recommends that the State party carry out professional and public awareness-raising in order to promote non-violent, positive and participatory methods of childrearing and education; and that the State party take a comprehensive approach to ensuring that the law prohibiting corporal punishment is widely enforced and known, including among children with regard to their right to protection from all forms of corporal punishment. There should be an absolute prohibition of corporal punishment in institutional settings, including for children with disabilities. The State party should provide effective and appropriate responses to corporal punishment, including investigations, prosecution and sanctioning of perpetrators. 12

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