A/51/536 English Page 7 C. The right to practise and profess their own religion (article 2.1) 19. The Government of Iceland stated that the freedom of belief and religion was protected by the Constitution, according to which people had a right to establish associations and each person was free to practise his or her religion by himself or herself or in association with others, in accordance with his or her convictions. Religious association outside the National Church of Iceland might be founded without an obligation to give notice to government authorities of its establishment or operation. 20. The Government of Lithuania provided constitutional guarantees of the freedom of religion enabling every person to freely choose any religion or faith and, either individually or with others, in public or in private, to manifest his or her religion or faith in worship, observance, in practice or teaching. The State recognized traditional Lithuanian churches and religious organizations provided that they had a basis in society and their teaching and rituals did not contradict morality and law. Those included the Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Evangelic Lutheran, Evangelic Reformer, Orthodox, Old Faith, Jewish, Muslim Sunnites and Karait confessions. More specifically, article 2 of the Law on National Minorities of Lithuania guaranteed ethnic minorities the right to profess any or no religion, and to perform religious or folk observances in their native language. Church services were conducted in the Lithuanian, Russian, Polish, German, Ukrainian, Hebrew, Arabic and Latvian languages, and the Lithuanian Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Germans, Latvians, Muslim Sunnites, Jews and Karaits had their own houses of prayer. D. The right to use their own language (article 2.1) 21. The Government of Austria stated that in addition to German, the languages of ethnic groups could be used as official languages. In some areas, Croat and Slovene could be used officially in addition to German, on condition that the members of ethnic groups had Austrian citizenship. 22. The Government of Lithuania reported that it respected every ethnic minority language. Nevertheless, article 14 of the Constitution stipulated that the Lithuanian language was the State language. The requirement to know the State language, however, could not be applied to employees who, according to the nature of their work, did not have to communicate with other persons officially or conduct office work in Lithuanian. In 1995, the State programme on the use and training of the State language for the period 1996-2005 had been adopted which provided, inter alia, for means for teaching Lithuanian to persons belonging to other nationalities. 23. In addition, the Constitution of Lithuania provided that court proceedings were conducted in the State language but that persons who did not speak Lithuanian had to be guaranteed the right to participate in investigation and court proceedings through an interpreter. The Law on National Minorities stipulated that in offices and organizations located in areas serving a substantial number of minorities with a different language, the language spoken by that minority might be used in addition to Lithuanian. The Law on the State /...