HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH Annual Report 1996-1997 Marie-Claire told us how she was attacked by the military and the militia during the genocide in Rwanda. All but one of her children were killed, and Marie-Claire was raped by a neighbor. “He said many things during the rape and he hit and kicked me. He said, ‘We have all the rights over you and we can do whatever we want.’ They had all the power—our men, our husbands, were all exterminated. We have no mother, no father, no brothers.” T.N. described to us how her husband and she were beaten as they were separated by Bosnian Serb troops during the “ethnic cleansing” of Srebrenica. “They had been separating the men and women, but my husband and I had managed to stay together somehow. Finally, when it was time to leave, we went to the buses together. We were holding each other tightly. Just before we were about to get on the bus, the Serbian soldiers told us to let go of each other. We wouldn’t do it, and then one Serbian soldier winked at the other. One guy pulled us apart, and the other hit me with the butt of his gun so that we would let go. I fell on the ground, and he stomped me with his boot and injured my leg. I can hardly walk now, I’m an old woman.” Ever since the founding of Human Rights Watch, we have worked to bring human rights abusers to justice, both out of respect for survivors like these and to prevent a repetition of such atrocities. In 1996, this quest for justice was answered in a growing number of countries, even places where only a few years ago such campaigns for accountability would have seemed futile. The campaign for justice took a major step forward when the United Nations established International Criminal Tribunals to confront atrocities that occurred on a huge scale in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Although progress in Bosnia has been particularly slow, Human Rights Watch has worked tirelessly to overcome the clear reluctance of NATO forces to arrest those indicted as war criminals. To highlight the urgency of arresting these defendants if there is to be any hope of a lasting peace in Bosnia, our Sarajevo-based investigators revealed that many of the killers who carried out the Bosnian genocide remain in positions of local authority, enforcing their ruthless vision of ethnic partition. Similarly, through our office in Rwanda, we have provided detailed information and advice to the Rwandan Tribunal in its effort to build cases against those responsible for the genocidal massacre of over half a million people. Making this international experiment with justice work is one of the highest priorities for Human Rights Watch, since it promises to help break the cycle of violence and impunity that underlies so much human suffering. INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT; In addition to these special efforts in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, momentum is growing for the establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court, which would be available to try those accused of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity anywhere that national courts are unavailable or ineffective. For years, we have been in the vanguard of this historic effort. In 1996, the effort paid off with an international commitment to begin final treaty negotiations to establish a permanent court by mid-1998. Unfortunately, the United States, Britain and France are seeking to subordinate the court to the veto power of the U.N. Security Council’s permanent members. Human Rights Watch is working aggressively to defeat this self-serving position, which would undercut the court’s independence. We are helping to build a coalition of governments and organizations from around the world who recognize that a strong and independent permanent court will be a powerful way to dissuade would-be tyrants from resorting to the violent abuses that underlie many of today’s armed conflicts and humanitarian emergencies. HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY In a trend that assumed disturbing dimensions over the past year, the major powers allowed their quest for trade and investment opportunities to subvert their opposition to human rights abuse. They argued, conveniently, that the immediate promotion of human rights must give way to a long-term strategy of “constructive engagement,” in which the economic growth fostered by trade and investment would over the long run supposedly yield greater respect for human rights. However, in the case of China, where constructive engagement replaced an emphasis on human rights, the situation has deteriorated sharply, with virtually every independent voice silenced by prison or intimidation. A better balance is clearly needed between the pursuit of business opportunities and the promotion of human rights. Those facing imprisonment, torture or execution today deserve more than to be told that their rights eventually will improve with time. Human Rights Watch is devoting considerable energy to reversing this abandonment of human rights protection. On the one hand, we have intensified our scrutiny of governments benefitting from constructive engagement policies in order to identify and, if possible, halt any increase in repression. On the other hand, we have expanded our program to monitor the human rights practices of multinational corporations, since if they are to be the vanguard of a human rights policy based on constructive engagement, it is essential that they themselves respect human rights. While the global economy has been cited as an excuse to ignore human rights, it is also helping to cut through indifference to human rights abuses by establishing new connections among distant people. Because imported goods might have been produced under circumstances of repression, the simple purchase of those goods can become an act of complicity in that repression. As a result, there has been a sharp increase in consumer and press interest in ensuring respect for human rights, particularly labor rights, around the world. This increasing interest in corporate human rights practices has made a growing number of multinational corporations highly sensitive to human rights concerns. Because a reputation for complicity in human rights abuse can severely tarnish a corporation’s public image, more and more multinational corporations are pledging to respect human rights principles in their factories and those of their suppliers. For example, General Motors announced an end to mandatory pregnancy testing for job applicants—a blatant form of gender discrimination—in response to our report on such testing in factories along the U.S.-Mexican border. In addition, public pressure over the past year led a number of large companies to close down their operations in Burma, in order to avoid being judged accomplices of its brutal military junta. As consumers increasingly insist on guarantees that the goods they buy are not the products of abusive labor conditions, we are rapidly expanding our ability to monitor workers’ rights worldwide. TREATMENT OF REFUGEES Much of the world turned its back on refugees in the past year. Because of the overwhelming number of refugees created by conflicts around the world, the “management” of population flows has preempted what used to be the foremost duty of ensuring that these people are not forced home to face persecution. This shameful response to the plight of over twenty million people worldwide was led by the developed nations, which shirked their responsibilities under international law. European countries, particularly Germany, prepared to return refugees to Bosnia without ascertaining whether they would be safe. The United States adopted a new law that authorizes the use of summary procedures to review asylum claims and imposes arbitrary deadlines for filing such claims. The United States also continued the large-scale detention of asylum-seekers—even children—to deter others from seeking refuge. Human Rights Watch is responding aggressively to reverse this abandonment of refugees. We closely monitored and reported on the principal international agencies to ensure that they not allow pressure to repatriate refugees to take precedence over their responsibility to protect them. The reliable data on human rights conditions that our country specialists provide also helps to ensure that those who have fled persecution are not returned to danger. ACCOMPLISHMENTS Effective Coalition Formed to Stop Bonded Child Labor in India Child laborers are widely used in India in the farming, jewelry, leather, and rug making industries. Often these children are indentured to manufacturers for lengthy periods to pay off a debt incurred by their parents. The children, working in appalling conditions, are denied adequate food, education or medical care. Their “debts” are virtually open-ended, and many children end up spending years in bondage. Nearly two decades of work around the world has shown that some of the most effective human rights progress is the result of cooperation between international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as Human Rights Watch, which can mobilize international pressure to end abuses, and local NGOs, which can pursue these campaigns at a local level. Our work on bonded child labor illustrates this partnership. Local groups helped us to design and carry out an investigation in often difficult circumstances, and to develop nuanced and persuasive recommendations for the Indian government, industry, and the donor community. To enlist the substantial clout of the donor community, Human Rights Watch released the resulting report on the eve of the annual meeting of donors to India. We also delivered the report to the president of the World Bank, who took it with him on a trip to India, raised the issue in his meetings with government officials, and helped secure the government’s commitment to a pilot project for eradicating bonded child labor. Meanwhile, Indian NGOs made sure that the Human Rights Watch report was submitted to the Supreme Court of India just before a hearing to create a plan for the abolition of bonded child labor in the state of Tamil Nadu. The Court then signaled that the resulting plan might serve as a blueprint for reform elsewhere in India when it ordered thirteen other Indian states to demonstrate that they are not using bonded child labor. Interrupted Sale of Cobra Helicopters to Turkey For well over a decade, we have reported on the abysmal human rights practices of the Turkish government, including its brutal treatment of the Kurds in southeastern Turkey. As part of its counter-insurgency campaign, the government has forcibly depopulated some 2,500 Kurdish villages. Large-scale detentions, death squad killings and torture continue despite vigorous protests by local and international human rights groups. It was clearly time to increase the pressure. As a result, we decided to try to deprive Turkey of the weapons that it uses to commit abuses. After a special investigation, we determined that U.S.-made Cobra helicopters played an important role in counterinsurgency abuses. We thus launched a campaign with a coalition of other groups in an effort to block further sale of these helicopters to Ankara. The campaign succeeded in freezing the proposed sale of Cobras, and Turkey eventually withdrew its request for them. By signaling to Turkey that even a NATO member could not commit atrocities with impunity, we hope to build significant new pressure to curb these serious abuses. Rape Prosecutions in Rwanda The 1994 genocide in Rwanda left more than a half million dead, most of them Tutsis and moderate Hutus, in a politically orchestrated cataclysm. Even before the killing started, Human Rights Watch was an active voice urging international action to stop the foreseeable slaughter. Once the killing ceased, Human Rights Watch worked to create and mobilize an international justice system—the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda—to bring the architects of the genocide to trial. While that process remains understaffed and under funded, it has begun to make some important inroads, with many of the architects of the genocide now in custody awaiting trial. Human Rights Watch is at the forefront of an international push by women’s groups to ensure that rape and sexual violence during the genocide are recognized as war crimes and that their perpetrators are held accountable. Our investigation in Rwanda found that rape was widespread during the genocide. Human Rights Watch has pressed the International Tribunal to investigate and prosecute crimes of sexual violence. We have also worked closely with the relief community to provide the necessary counseling and support services to Rwanda’s women as they struggle to rebuild their lives and those of their surviving children. PROFILE: JEMERA RONE “Do your homework. You are responsible for the success of the mission, and if you prepare well, your likelihood of success is great.” So begins a training session by Jemera Rone, Counsel to Human Rights Watch, and someone who knows a great deal about preparing an investigative mission. Jemera has monitored human rights in at least twenty-four countries since she first began working with Americas Watch (now Human Rights Watch/Americas) in 1984. She began with three investigations in El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua while still working full-time as a litigation associate at a large New York law firm. In March 1985, she returned to El Salvador to open up the first field office of any international human rights group and to report on the human rights abuses resulting from a then-raging civil war. A new strategy in the human rights movement was born. “Pickering’s jaw just dropped,” Jemera says, when the U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador at the time, Thomas Pickering, first learned of the organization’s newly created office. “You get to ask tough questions (in a nice way, of course) of government officials” and try to learn “what was really going on—the deep grammar—of the situation.” Jemera chronicled a pattern of disappearances, torture, and murders committed by both the military and the FMLN, the guerrilla group in El Salvador. Back in Washington, Human Rights Watch used this information in a campaign to expose the truth in El Salvador: that civilians were being indiscriminately targeted by both the military and rebel forces, and that the U.S. government was contributing to the carnage with military aid to the Salvadoran army. “It meant leaving friends and a considerable salary to go live in a country that was somewhat dangerous,” Jemera adds. In the months before and after she opened the office, Salvadoran soldiers massacred sixty-eight civilians near the town of Los Lenities and at least fifty more on the banks of the Gualsinga River. The FMLN assassinated a Salvadoran officer and a military judge, killed four off-duty U.S. Marines, and kidnaped the daughter of the president as well as several town mayors. In response, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams denied that either of the massacres ever occurred and argued that further military aid was necessary to combat the rebels. Jemera purchased a land cruiser and set about gathering information. “I never traveled alone outside of San Salvador, for there was safety in numbers. I would blend in with either journalists or our colleagues from Tutela Legal,” the human rights office of the Catholic Archdiocese of San Salvador. While investigating an aerial bombing in the countryside that killed three civilians, Jemera and three journalists were stopped at a military roadblock. “The soldiers wanted us to leave our vehicles and walk for two hours to their barracks, but I told them I was too old” (she was forty-one at the time and fully capable of making the trek, but refused to walk through guerrilla territory accompanied by soldiers), “so they seized our film, and made us drive to the barracks.” Once released, Jemera hurried back to the office and contacted Holly Burkhalter in our Washington office. Holly started knocking on doors on Capitol Hill and at the State Department. As a result, when a Salvadoran colonel called the U.S. embassy asking how to develop Jemera’s film, he was persuaded to return it. After five years of working in El Salvador and Nicaragua, Jemera decided that, with the wars winding down in both countries, it was time to return to the U.S. She became a roving troubleshooter, reporting on abuses in, among other places, Afghanistan, Angola, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Chechnya, Croatia, Georgia, Guatemala, Honduras, Iraqi Kurdistan, the Philippines, Rwanda, Serbia, Yemen, and recently, Sudan. Jemera also draws on her many years of experience to train new investigators for Human Rights Watch. Some of her advice is as mundane as a travel guide: “Make a list. Will women need a fake wedding ring to ward off unwanted attention? Sleeping bags? Money belt? Extra locks for back packs? Wire to secure train doors? Sheets, towels, laundry soap, toilet paper? Plastic bags for muddy boots? An emergency food supply in case you are stranded? Do not count on buying what you need there unless you know for a fact it can be found. Do not plan to mooch. It is bad manners.” In June 1993, Jemera turned her expertise to one of the longest and most intractable conflicts: the Sudan. The government denied her entry, so Jemera visited Sudanese communities in Cairo, Nairobi, and London, and entered rebel-controlled territory in southern Sudan. Flying via cargo plane from relief camp to relief camp, she would borrow a hut or sit in the shade of a tree to interview those who had recently fled the fighting, asking them what had happened, where they had come from, how many times they had been forced to move, how many people had died from their village. Jemera documented a pattern of aerial attacks on civilians, scorched-earth tactics, torture, disappearances, and summary executions—part of a pattern that has left more than a million Sudanese dead from the war and attendant starvation and disease. Sudan shared almost nothing with El Salvador in terms of geography, language, or number of people affected, but the depth of human misery and the tactics of war remained surprisingly constant. How does someone take a break and reflect on experiences such as these? Human Rights Watch offers a three-month sabbatical for every seven years of service. Jemera, having earned at least two such sabbaticals, is working on a book about her experiences. What does she plan to do when her sabbatical is completed? “I hope to return to the Sudan, of course.” HOW HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH WORKS Human Rights Watch’s programs address a wide range of problems, but unifying all these efforts are basic goals of justice, liberty, equality, and humane treatment, toward which we work with victims and activists worldwide. The staff, a mixture of veteran human rights investigators and young country specialists, some of them Americans but also many other nationalities, gathers information and constantly brainstorms to devise new ways to bring pressure to end abuses. Maxine Marcus and Ivan Lupis, who investigate human rights in the former Yugoslavia, are typical of young, specialized country researchers, fluent in the languages of the countries they cover and willing to spend extended periods of time in the field. With the aim of pressing for accountability for war crimes, they designed a set of investigations in Prijedor, Teslic, and Mostar, key Bosnian towns where known war criminals still circulate freely and hold many key positions of authority. Max and Ivan took turns working inside Bosnia, interviewing survivors, international officials and anonymous sources, and tracking recent incidents of abuse. Their reporting on the names, current positions and violent histories of these men enabled us to alert European governments and international donor agencies that to channel funds through municipal governments run by such individuals would only reinforce ethnic partition. As a result of these and similar efforts, the World Bank and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees have begun to withhold reconstruction aid from Prijedor and similar towns where the violent enforcers of ethnic partition retain power. This international reaction increases the pressure to arrest the mass murderers who stand in the way of a multiethnic Bosnia. In recent years, Human Rights Watch has expanded its efforts to prevent and remedy discrimination—against minorities, women, refugees and other vulnerable groups. In the garment industry along Mexico’s border with the United States, where the workforce is overwhelmingly female and unionization is unknown, researcher LaShawn Jefferson set out to determine the nature and extent of gender-based discrimination. A specialist on Latin America, LaShawn spent months interviewing workers in six areas and determined that women applying for jobs were typically required to take pregnancy tests and rejected if found to be pregnant. In addition, those who became pregnant while employed were sometimes treated so badly that they were forced to resign. LaShawn traced the connections between the plants she investigated and several U.S. parent companies, demonstrating that behind many of these modest operations were major corporations, like General Motors and Sunbeam-Oster. When General Motors (which employs over 50,000 people in these plants) insisted to Human Rights Watch that pregnancy testing was necessary to avoid paying legally mandated maternity benefits, we focused our advocacy on changing its position. In conjunction with Working Assets, a telephone company that addresses social issues, we helped to arrange for 22,000 letters and 4,000 phone calls to be sent to G.M. in protest. The corporation quickly announced that it would end pregnancy testing in its plants worldwide. LaShawn has met with G.M. officials to discuss implementation of that promise, and continues to monitor conditions in the plants.