ANGUELOVA v. BULGARIA JUDGMENT – PARTLY
DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGE BONELLO
43
all doubt that the expulsion might have been collective” [Conka v. Belgium,
no. 51564/99, ECHR 2002-I].
17. The Court has also, by an admirable process of judicial activism
“created” the concept of a “procedural violation” of Article 2 [McCann and
Others v. the United Kingdom, judgment of 27 September 1995, Series A
no. 324], and, more recently, of Article 3 [Assenov and Others, cited above].
The selfsame rationale that found in a non-investigation, or an inadequate
investigation of death or inhuman treatment by the State, a “procedural
violation” of those guarantees, should inspire and would justify the finding
of a violation of Article 14 taken in conjunction with Articles 2 or 3 where
no proper investigation of the alleged violation has been carried out.
18. The Court has thus at its disposal a notable arsenal of weapons with
which to break the stalemate that has not allowed it, throughout fifty years
of activity, to censure one single act of racial discrimination in areas of
deprivation of life or inhuman treatment. Ideally it should reconsider
whether the standards of proof should not be the more juridically justifiable
ones of preponderance of evidence or of a balance of probabilities.
Alternatively it should, in my view, hold that when a member of a
disadvantaged minority group suffers harm in an environment where racial
tensions are high and impunity of State offenders epidemic, the burden to
prove that the event was not ethnically induced shifts to the Government.
Subordinately, in the sphere of Article 14, as it has done in the case of
Articles 2 and 3, the Court ought to invest in its own doctrine of “procedural
violation” when the record shows that the injury suffered by a member of a
disadvantaged minority has not been adequately investigated.
19. This would help bring the Court in line with its own case-law that
“very weighty reasons would have to be put forward (by the Government)
before the Court could regard a difference in treatment based exclusively on
the ground of nationality as compatible with the Convention” [Gaygusuz v.
Austria, judgment of 16 September 1996, Reports 1996-IV].
20. For the reasons sketched briefly above, I found it inescapable to vote
for a violation of Article 14 of the Convention.