CCPR/C/139/D/2925/2017 Annex II [Original: Spanish] Individual opinion of Committee member Carlos Gómez Martínez (partially dissenting) 1. I disagree with the Committee’s treatment of the claims concerning violations of articles 26 and 27 of the Covenant. After finding the alleged violations under both articles to be admissible for consideration on the merits, the Committee decides not to examine these claims separately, on the basis of a purely formal and tautological argument (see para. 9.10). 2. The Committee’s decisions must be duly reasoned. In this case, the violation of the rights of the authors, who are members of a religious community, not to be discriminated against on the ground of religion (article 26) and to practise their own religion (article 27) is an essential question. However, the Committee takes no decision on these violations, despite having found them admissible for consideration on the merits. It states that it has no need to do so because of its prior finding of violations of the rights to freedom of religion (article 18 (1)) and freedom of association (article 22 (1)). It provides no further clarification and makes no reference to the principle that specialized law takes precedence over general law. 3. Accordingly, I believe that a minimum argument in this case, aimed at addressing the authors’ complaint, could have been: “The Committee considers that the application of articles 18 and 22 of the Covenant to the relevant facts of this case also implies, in itself, a violation of the rights to non-discrimination on the ground of religion (article 26) and respect for religious minorities (article 27)”. This should have led the Committee to find that there had been violations of the latter two rights as well instead of deciding not to examine these violations, as it has done. 4. If the Committee considered that the complaints under articles 26 and 27 were inadmissible for lack of sufficient substantiation – under article 2 of the Optional Protocol – or that the alleged violations had not occurred, it should have so indicated in an explicit and reasoned manner. GE.24-00304 15