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India “Being Neutral is Our Biggest Crime” Government, Vigilante, and Naxalite Abuses in India’s Chhattisgarh State
HRW Index No.: 1-56432-356-0 July 15, 2008 Download PDF, 1700 KB, 172 pgs Purchase online Download E-Book Protecting the Killers A Policy of Impunity in Punjab, India
HRW Index No.: C1914 October 18, 2007 Download PDF, 834 KB, 125 pgs Purchase online Download E-Book Last Hope The Need for Durable Solutions for Bhutanese Refugees in Nepal and India This 86-page report discusses the possible solutions to this protracted refugee situation and the choices the refugees now face. It describes conditions of the ethnic Nepali refugees who have languished in exile in Nepal and India, and also documents continuing discrimination against the ethnic Nepalis still living in Bhutan, who live in fear that they too could be stripped of their citizenship and expelled from the country. HRW Index No.: C1907 May 17, 2007 Download PDF, 363 KB, 88 pgs Purchase online Download E-Book Hidden Apartheid Caste Discrimination against India’s “Untouchables” This 113-page report was produced as a “shadow report” in response to India’s submission to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which monitors implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). The committee will review India’s compliance with the convention during hearings in Geneva on February 23 and 26. HRW Index No.: C1903 February 13, 2007 Download PDF, 502 KB, 116 pgs Purchase online Download E-Book "Everyone Lives in Fear" Patterns of Impunity in Jammu and Kashmir This 156-page report documents recent abuses by the Indian army and paramilitaries, as well as by militants, many of whom are backed by Pakistan. Indian security forces have committed torture, “disappearances” and arbitrary detentions, and they continue to execute Kashmiris in faked “encounter killings,” claiming that these killings take place during armed clashes with militants. Militants have carried out bombings and grenade attacks against civilians, targeted killings, torture and attacks upon religious and ethnic minorities. HRW Index No.: C1811 September 12, 2006 Download PDF, 1600 KB, 156 pgs Purchase online Download E-Book After the Deluge India's Reconstruction Following the 2004 Tsunami This 47-page report examines the Indian government’s response to the tsunami and documents several systemic and potentially enduring failures. Human Rights Watch applauded the Indian government’s overall response to the tsunami, but found that government recovery efforts did not adequately take into account the needs of different vulnerable segments of the affected population, particularly women, children, the disabled, Dalits (so-called untouchables) and tribal groups. HRW Index No.: C1703 May 26, 2005 Download PDF, 330 KB, 49 pgs Purchase online Still at Risk Diplomatic Assurances No Safeguard Against Torture This 91-page report documents the growing practice among Western governments—including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands—of seeking assurances of humane treatment in order to transfer terrorism suspects to states with well-established records of torture. The report details a dozen cases involving actual or attempted transfers to countries where torture is commonplace. HRW Index No.: D1703 April 15, 2005 Download PDF, 563 KB, 94 pgs Purchase online Future Forsaken Abuses Against Children Affected by HIV/AIDS in India This 209-page report documents how many doctors refuse to treat or even touch HIV-positive children. Some schools expel or segregate children because they or their parents are HIV-positive. Many orphanages and other residential institutions reject HIV-positive children or deny that they house them. Children from families affected by AIDS may be denied an education, pushed onto the street, forced into the worst forms of child labor, or otherwise exploited, all of which puts them at greater risk of contracting HIV. HRW Index No.: 1564323269 July 29, 2004 Download PDF, 1100 KB, 219 pgs Purchase online "Bad Dreams" Exploitation and Abuse of Migrant Workers in Saudi Arabia Migrant workers in the purportedly modern society that Saudi Arabia has become continue to suffer extreme forms of labor exploitation that sometimes rise to slavery-like conditions. Their lives are further complicated by deeply rooted gender, religious, and racial discrimination. This provides the foundation for prejudicial public policy and government regulations, shameful practices of private employers, and unfair legal proceedings that yield judicial sentences of the death penalty. HRW Index No.: E1605 July 14, 2004 Download PDF, 707 KB, 137 pgs Purchase online Compounding Injustice The Government's Failure to Redress Massacres in Gujarat The ringleaders of massacres committed in 2002 are still roaming free in Gujarat, Human Rights Watch charged in a new report. The 70-page report, Compounding Injustice: The Government's Failure to Redress Massacres in Gujarat, examines the record of state authorities in holding perpetrators accountable and providing humanitarian relief to victims of state-supported massacres of Muslims in February and March 2002. Human Rights Watch urged the federal government to take over cases of large-scale massacres where the state government has sabotaged investigations. More than one hundred Muslims have been charged under India's much-criticized Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) for their alleged involvement in the train massacre in Godhra. No Hindus have been charged under POTA in connection with the violence against Muslims, which the government continues to dismiss as spontaneous and unorganized. Although the Indian government initially boasted of thousands of arrests following the attacks, most of those arrested have since been acquitted, released on bail with no further action taken, or simply let go. Police regularly downgrade serious charges to lesser crimes - from murder or rape to rioting, for example - and alter victims' statements to delete the names of the accused. Even when cases reach trial, Muslim victims face biased prosecutors and judges. Hindu and Muslim lawyers representing Muslim victims, and doctors providing medical relief to them, have also faced harassment and threats. HRW Index No.: 1504C July 1, 2003 Download PDF Purchase online Small Change: Bonded Child Labor in India's Silk Industry The Indian government is failing to protect the rights of hundreds of thousands of children who toil as virtual slaves in the country's silk industry, Human Rights Watch said in this new report. The 85-page report, "Small Change: Bonded Child Labor in India's Silk Industry,"calls on the Indian government to implement its national laws to free and rehabilitate these "bonded children." Bound to their employers in exchange for a loan to their families, they are unable to leave while in debt and earn so little they may never be free. A majority of them are Dalits, so-called untouchables at the bottom of India's caste system. Human Rights Watch interviewed children, employers, government officials and members of nongovernmental organizations in three states that form the core of India's sari and silk industries: Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. At every stage of the silk industry, bonded children as young as five years old work 12 or more hours a day, six and a half or seven days a week. Children making silk thread dip their hands in boiling water that burns and blisters them. They breathe smoke and fumes from machinery, handle dead worms that cause infections, and guide twisting threads that cut their fingers. As they assist weavers, children sit at cramped looms in damp, dim rooms. They do not go to school and are often beaten by their employers. By the time they reach adulthood, they are impoverished, illiterate, and often crippled by the work, the report said. HRW Index No.: C1502 January 23, 2003 Download PDF Purchase online Epidemic Of Abuse: Police Harassment Of HIV/AIDS Outreach Workers In India Widespread police abuse of front-line AIDS prevention workers in India is undermining efforts to contain one of the worst epidemics in the world, Human Rights Watch said today.Several organizations in India have succeeded in empowering women in prostitution to demand condom use of their clients. One such organization, SANGRAM in Sangli, Maharashtra State, helped AIDS educators distribute 350,000 condoms per month in twelve districts among sex workers and others at risk. But in recent months, police abuse of SANGRAM’s workers as well as of others in Bangalore and Tamil Nadu State has sabotaged their life-saving work. In Bangalore, HIV/AIDS peer educators working with women in prostitution were beaten severely by the police. One AIDS worker had hot chili powder rubbed into her eyes and vagina. Police perpetrators of these crimes have gone unpunished. HRW Index No.: C1405 July 9, 2002 Download PDF Purchase online Epidemic of Abuse Police Harassment of HIV/AIDS Outreach Workers in India Women in prostitution in India are treated with disdain and commonly subjected to violations of their fundamental rights by the police, both at the time of their arrest and while in detention. Peer educators providing HIV/AIDS outreach to these women frequently suffer many of the same abuses. Police have beaten peer educators, claimed without basis that HIV/AIDS outreach work promotes prostitution, and brought trumped-up criminal charges against HIV/AIDS workers. Police also extort money and sex from these workers. The very possession of condoms—a key tool in the work of HIV/AIDS peer educators—often is enough to trigger police harassment, so deterring outreach that could help prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and save thousands of lives. July 1, 2002 Download PDF, 349 KB, 37 pgs Printer friendly version 'We Have No Orders To Save You' State Participation and Complicity in Communal Violence in Gujarat State officials of Gujarat, India were directly involved in the killings of hundreds of Muslims since February 27 and are now engineering a massive cover-up of the state's role in the violence, Human Rights Watch charged in a new report released today. The Indian parliament is scheduled today to debate the situation in Gujarat, and may vote to censure the Indian government for its handling of the violence. The police were directly implicated in nearly all the attacks against Muslims that are documented in the 75-page report, 'We Have No Orders to Save You': State Participation and Complicity in Communal Violence in Gujarat. In some cases they were merely passive observers. But in many instances, police officials led the charge of murderous mobs, aiming and firing at Muslims who got in the way. Under the guise of offering assistance, some police officers led the victims directly into the hands of their killers. Panicked phone calls made to the police, fire brigades, and even ambulance services generally proved futile. Several witnesses reported being told by police: "We have no orders to save you." HRW Index No.: C1403 April 30, 2002 Download PDF Purchase online India: Child Soldiers Global Report 2001 From the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers There are indications of under-18s in government armed forces as voluntary recruitment is possible from 16. There is widespread use of child soldiers, some as young as 11, by armed groups in various regions. June 12, 2001 India: Landmine Monitor Report 2000 Key developments since March 1999: India ratified CCW Amended Protocol II on 2 September 1999, exercising the nine-year deferral period. India is making its stockpile of M14 antipersonnel mines detectable. India states it has cleared 8,000 mines planted by intruders during the 1999 conflict in the Kargil area of Kashmir. Officials report 835 civilian casualties to mines and IEDs in the state of Jammu and Kashmir alone in 1999. August 1, 2000 Politics by Other Means: Attacks Against Christians in India The Indian government has failed to prevent increasing violence against Christians and is exploiting communal tensions for political ends, Human Rights Watch charged in a report released today. This 37-page report details violence against Christians in the months ahead of the country's national parliamentary elections in September and October 1999, and in the months following electoral victory by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People's Party, known as the BJP) in the state of Gujarat. Attacks against Christians throughout the country have increased significantly since the BJP began its rule at the center in March 1998. They include the killings of priests, the raping of nuns, and the physical destruction of Christian institutions, schools, churches, colleges, and cemeteries. Thousands of Christians have also been forced to convert to Hinduism. The report concludes that as with attacks against Muslims in 1992 and 1993, attacks against Christians are part of a concerted campaign of right-wing Hindu organizations, collectively called the sangh parivar, to promote and exploit communal clashes to increase their political power-base. The movement is supported at the local level by militant groups who operate with impunity. October 1, 1999 Purchase online India: Politics by Other Means Attacks against Christians in India Between January 1998 and February 1999, the Indian Parliament reported a total of 116 incidents of attacks on Christians across the country. Unofficial figures may be higher. Gujarat topped the list of states with ninety-four such incidents. Attacks have also been reported in Maharashtra, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Manipur, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and New Delhi. Attacks on Christians have ranged from violence against the leadership of the church, including the killing of priests and the raping of nuns, to the physical destruction of Christian institutions, including schools, churches, colleges, and cemeteries. Thousands of Christians have also been forced to convert to Hinduism. September 1, 1999 Download PDF, 349 KB, 37 pgs Printer friendly version Behind the Kashmir Conflict: Abuses by Indian Security Forces and Militant Groups Continue In this report, Human Rights Watch charges that human rights violations by all parties in Kashmir have been a critical factor behind the current conflict. The report says that if those violations had been seriously addressed at any time over thelast ten years, the risk of amilitary confrontation between India and Pakistan might have been reduced. The escalation in fighting has made it urgent that the international community put pressure on India to end widespread human rights violations by its security forces in Kashmir, and on Pakistan to end its support for abusive militant groups. The 44-page report, Behind the Conflict in Kashmir, focuses on the border areas in southern Kashmir where militant forces have been crossing over from Pakistan. The report documents several of the massacres of Hindu civilians carried out by these groups and their local counterparts, in which more than 300 civilians were killed between 1997 and mid-1999. July 1, 1999 Purchase online Broken People: Caste Violence Against India’s “Untouchables” Some 160 million people in India live a precarious existence, shunned by much of society because of their rank as "untouchables" or Dalits—literally meaning "broken" people—at the bottom of India's caste system. Dalits are discriminated against, denied access to land, forced to work in degrading conditions, and routinely abused, even killed, at the hands of the police and of higher-caste groups that enjoy the state's protection. Dalit women are frequent victims of sexual abuse. In what has been called India's "hidden apartheid," entire villages in many Indian states remain completely segregated by caste. National legislation and constitutional protections serve only to mask the social realities of discrimination and violence. Caste clashes, particularly in the states of Bihar and Tamil Nadu, but also in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Gujarat, reflect patterns which are common to many parts of the country: a loss of faith in the state machinery and increasing intolerance of their abusive treatment have led many Dalit communities into movements to claim their rights. In response, state and private actors have engaged in a pattern of repression to preserve the status quo. The report also documents the government's attempts to criminalize peaceful social activism through the arbitrary arrest and detention of Dalit activists, and its failure to abolish exploitative labor practices and implement relevant legislation. HRW Index No.: ISBN 1-56432-228-9 March 1, 1999 Purchase online |
  
Related Material Films screened in the HRW International Film Festival 2002: Dweepa 1999: Pathos / Karunam 1998: Earth 1998: The Terrorist 1997: Death Sentence 1996: The Square Circle 1996: We Are Not Your Monkeys | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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