• Chinese Legal "Reforms" Have Serious Implications for Hong Kong
    Feb 28, 1997
    Recent legal reforms in China related to internal security represent the culmination of a ten-year effort to strengthen authoritarian controls and have ominous implications for Hong Kong, two human rights organizations said today. In a 50-page report, "Whose Security? State Security in China's New Criminal Code," Human Rights Watch/Asia and Human Rights in China examine the March 1997 decision by China's National People's Congress to remove the crime of "counterrevolution" from the criminal code and replace it with "endangering state security." Far from being a move toward judicial liberalization, the change has served to broaden the capacity of the state to suppress dissent.
  • NPC Decision on Hong Kong Laws: Setback for Human Rights After July 1, 1997
    Feb 26, 1997
    Human Rights Watch/Asia today sharply criticized China's decision to abolish and amend twenty-four Hong Kong laws. In a resolution adopted by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), China targeted provisions of the Societies Ordinance, Public Order Ordinance, sections of Hong Kong's Bill of Rights, and legislation related to the 1992 electoral reforms as among those local laws which will cease to be effective when the territory reverts to Chinese sovereignty on July 1, 1997.
  • Provisional Legislature a Major Setback for Rights in Hong Kong
    Dec 21, 1996
    Human Rights Watch/Asia today sharply criticized the selection of a provisional legislature for Hong Kong. Meeting in Shenzhen, the 400-strong Selection Committee appointed by China chose sixty individuals to replace Hong Kong's elected Legislative Council or Legco.
  • Sexual Abuse of Women in U.S. State Prisons
    Dec 6, 1996
    In All Too Familiar: Sexual Abuse of Women in U.S. State Prisons, released today, the Human Rights Watch Women's Rights Project charges that in state prisons from Georgia to California, male officers are sexually abusing female prisoners with nearly total impunity. State and federal officials in a position to address such misconduct often deny that it exists or fail to take adequate steps to prevent it. As a result, sexual misconduct in U.S. state prisons for women is emerging as an explosive national problem.
  • Rwanda's Genocide: Human Rights Abuses Against Women
    Sep 24, 1996
    During the genocide of 1994, Hutu militia groups and the Rwandan military regularly used rape and other sexual violence as weapons in their genocidal campaign against the Tutsi community.
  • Mexico's Maquiladoras: Abuses Against Women Workers
    Aug 16, 1996
    The Mexican government fails to protect women from pregnancy testing and other discriminatory treatment in export-processing factories (maquiladoras) along the U.S.-Mexico border. In No Guarantees: Sex Discrimination in Mexico's Maquiladora Sector, released today, the Human Rights Watch Women's Rights Project finds that major U.S.-based and other corporations routinely subject prospective female employees to mandatory urine testing, invasive questions about their contraceptive use, menses schedule or sexual habits in order to screen out pregnant women and deny them jobs. Human Rights Watch also finds that some maquiladoras mistreat or force to resign women who became pregnant shortly after being hired.
  • Human Rights Watch Finds Mixed Government Response to High Rates of Rape and Domestic Abuse of Women in South Africa
    Nov 23, 1995
    In Violence Against Women in South Africa, released on the eve of the international "Day of No Violence Against Women," Human Rights Watch denounces widespread violence against women in South Africa and calls on the new government to significantly step up its response to this endemic problem. South African women's organizations estimate that perhaps as many as one in three South African women will be raped and one in six South African women is in an abusive domestic relationship, yet the government routinely fails to investigate, prosecute and punish such violence.
  • India/Nepal: Rape for Profit
    Jun 16, 1995
    In a report released today, Human Rights Watch, the New York-based human rights organization, charged that women and girls trafficked from Nepal into India for the purpose of prostitution are kept in conditions tantamount to slavery. Held in debt bondage for years at a time, they are raped and subjected to severe beatings, exposure to AIDS, and arbitrary imprisonment. Both the Indian and Nepali governments are complicit in the abuses suffered by trafficking victims.
  • State Discrimination Against Women in Russia
    Mar 7, 1995
    The government of the Russian Federation discriminates against women both by denying them jobs and by failing to investigate women's charges of domestic violence and sexual assault.
  • Human Rights in Africa and U.S. Policy
    Jun 30, 1994
    The White House conference on Africa came at a time when the Clinton Administration’s cautious response to the monstrous crime of genocide in Rwanda was increasingly under attack at home and abroad and offered an opportunity for it to adopt a much-needed change of course. This report offers a summary of human rights developments and U.S. human rights policy in ten African countries.