The vulnerability to abuse of specific groups, such as women, indigenous peoples, minorities and migrant workers was very much at issue. Asian women took an active role in the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, and the problems of custodial abuse, unprosecuted domestic violence, rape and sexual exploitation as weapons of war, and official complicity in the trafficking of women continued to be major problems. Government discrimination against and failure to protect religious, tribal, and ethnic minorities were a concern throughout the region, including in China, Vietnam, Burma, and Indonesia.

For all the criticism by some Asian governments of the tendency of the West to focus too much on individual civil rights at the expense of communal obligations, it was one of those civil rights-freedom of expression-that became perhaps the paramount political demand of Asians. In China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia, the freedom to express opinions critical of government leaders and policies became a major issue. On the one hand, the prevalence of the issue supported those who argued that economic growth in Asia would lead to demands for greater civil liberties, as middle-class professionals, for the most part, were the most vocal in seeking greater freedom. On the other hand, the governments in question showed no disposition to make concessions.

In Cambodia, the government's systematic campaign against former finance minister, independent parliamentarian and corruption fighter Sam Rainsy, together with the passage of a new press law, symbolized the steady narrowing of the political space opened up by the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia during its eighteen-month peace-keeping operation. Journalists and editors were charged with criminal defamation for articles, and in one case a cartoon, critical of the government.

In China, delegates to the Fourth World Conference on Women got some inkling of the restrictions faced by ordinary Chinese when they found themselves under surveillance, their meetings restricted or cancelled, their papers confiscated and their press coverage censored. Wei Jingsheng, the country's most outspoken advocate of political change and respect for human rights who was re-arrested in April 1994 after only six months of freedom, continued to be held at an undisclosed location. Other critics faced imprisonment or other forms of persecution. Chinese media were ordered to put a favourable spin on sensitive issues and to rely exclusively on Xinhua, the government news agency, when breaking a story.

In Indonesia, members of the urban middle class protested a range of violations of free expression, from the arrest and conviction of three members of an independent journalists' association, to the police investigation and harassment of a parliamentarian who criticized President Soeharto while on a speaking tour of Germany. These actions, and the government's ban on public appearances of popular opposition figures, seemed designed more to punish and humiliate outspoken individuals than to restrict the flow of information.

In Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Journalists' Association noted with alarm the increasing tendency of editors to apply self-censorship on issues related to China as 1997, the year of the colony's return to Chinese rule, approached. The firing of a popular political cartoonist seemed a disturbing harbinger of things to come in a place known as having one of the freest presses in all of Asia.

Controls on freedom of expression throughout the region ran counter to the calls on the part of the international community for increased "transparency" as a sign of good governance. Another hallmark of good governance on which Asian governments had a very mixed record was respect for the rule of law. Impartial legal systems, free of corruption and with full independence of the judiciary are as important to businesses as they are to the human rights community, and they have been hard to find in Asia. Developments on this front were mixed. In Malaysia, the effect of Prime Minister Mahathir's destruction of judicial independence became clear when a national scandal erupted over a company's purchase of a judge to rule in its favor in a takeover bid. In Hong Kong, pro-democracy activists were outraged at Britain's capitulation to Chinese pressure over the creation of a Court of Final Appeal that is to take the place of the Privy Council after 1997; they believed that implementing legislation approved by the two countries would compromise judicial independence and subject the court to political pressure from China. On the other side of the balance sheet, however, Indonesian courts, generally regarded as among the most corrupt and politicized in the region, made three courageous decisions during the year that went counter to government wishes.

Worker rights issues were a major concern throughout the region, with abuses of migrant labor a growing concern of NGOs in East and Southeast Asia, and freedom of association and the right to strike an ongoing issue in South Korea, Indonesia and China, among other countries. The South Korean government, seeking entry into the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the club of industrial democracies, boycotted an OECD seminar on worker rights in Seoul in order to avoid awkward questions about Korea's repressive labor laws and practices. A crackdown on labor activists in May and June led to arrests of key Korean organizers. Throughout the region, concern about violations of worker rights was such that a major NGO meeting to address this issue was planned to take place in Kyoto, Japan just prior to the APEC summit.

Ratification of international instruments on human rights proceeded at a snail's pace, and Asia continued to have a poor record on acceptance of international standards. On July 5, 1995, Malaysia ratified the convention on Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, just weeks before the Beijing Women's conference. At the same time, the generally useful role played by national commissions of human rights in India and Indonesia suggested that the formation of these bodies elsewhere in the region where a strong NGO community was present might aid in the promotion of human rights and acceptance of international standards.

Human rights NGOs in many Asian countries faced harassment for their monitoring activities. In Malaysia, Irene Fernandez, director of the women's rights organization, Tenaganita, was called to police headquarters in Kuala Lumpur in late September for interrogation in connection with possible criminal defamation charges after her organization published a report on abuses in Malaysian immigration detention centers. The U.S. company Freeport McMoran urged the U.S. embassy to cut off funds to the Indonesian human rights and environmental NGO, Walhi, after Walhi reported on links between Freeport security guards and the local military in the commission of human rights abuses. In China, where independent human rights NGOs do not exist, individuals who tried to circulate petitions demanding more respect for human rights were harassed or imprisoned, with twenty-two people still detained as of November.

The Policy Response

Governments in the APEC region have frequently complained about the use of bilateral pressure to improve human rights, and fiercely resisted any linkage between trade, economic development and human rights or worker rights. A possible alternative to such bilateral pressure might be the application of a broad multilateral strategy to promote rights. But multilateralism on Asian human rights issues seemed moribund in 1995. There were almost no examples of international cooperation to set concrete human rights goals and develop strategies for achieving them. The one exception may have been the effort, ultimately unsuccessful, to push through a resolution on China at the U.N. Commission onHuman Rights in Geneva in March. The amount of time and resources required to coordinate strategy on human rights was clearly more than most individual governments were willing to spend.

Even individual governments that professed concern about human rights in Asia found it extremely difficult to come up with coherent or effective policies to reflect that concern, especially when strategic and economic interests were also strong. The desire to strengthen trade and investment ties to Asian countries often pushed human rights to the sidelines, although there were some efforts in the U.S., Australia and elsewhere to define principles for businesses operating in repressive countries. In some cases, conflicting signals on human rights were the result of contradictory domestic pressures on governments: U.S. China policy was probably the best example of a cacophony of competing concerns which ended up addressing none effectively. Within Asia, donor governments were strong on some countries and weak on others, again as the result of different pressures: the business lobby in Germany was stronger on China and Indonesia than on Burma, for example, while the Australian government clearly had to take public opinion more into account in addressing East Timor than in formulating policy on India.

In some cases, what appeared to be lack of coherence may have been a conscious policy choice. Japan, for example, the world's largest aid donor, was willing to exert human rights pressure through the United Nations but emphasized economic incentives rather than pressure in its bilateral relations.

An effective human rights policy in the region is urgently needed, combining the following elements:

C Efforts to promote the rule of law, not to strengthen the hand or increase the legitimacy of abusive governments, but to open up legal and judicial systems and build in basic protections.

C Greater use of existing international human rights mechanisms, mainly the U.N. Human Rights Commission's working groups and rapporteurs, plus humanitarian agencies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the International Labor Organization. This must be accompanied by consistent pressure on governments to follow up investigations or negotiations with concrete steps to carry out recommendations for change, or to implement agreements signed.

C Bilateral measures to compliment those taken at the multilateral level, including the selective use of economic sanctions, such as trade benefits, development assistance, or investment guarantees linked to respect for human rights and worker rights. In addition, governments should not shy away from voicing public criticism of rights abuses at international donor meetings, or in the context of high-level political and trade delegations. Asian governments may balk at such criticism, but stigmatization can be a useful form of pressure and a way of signaling support for domestic human rights advocates.

C Steps by the World Bank and Asian Development Bank to move beyond a rhetorical commitment to "good governance" to actively use governance as a policy tool, pushing governments to reform labor practices and legal institutions to make them more accountable and responsive to the people whose interests development is supposed to serve.

C A pro-active role for the private sector in support of human rights, not as an extension of government policy, but on the basis of a long-term interest in ending corruption, promoting the rule of law, and increasing the free exchange of information as a corollary to building free markets. Foreign investment can play a contributing role in bringing about change, but only if corporations are willing to take specific initiatives, and to explore ways of cooperating with human rights, labor and environmental NGOs active in the countries where they have commercial interests.

Daw Suu and more than 200 other political prisoners were released in 1995, but at least 1,000 people, including sixteen members of parliament elected in 1990-all representing Daw Suu's party, the National League for Democracy (NLD)-remained in jail, and there were new political arrests. In February, nine students were arrested at the funeral of former prime minister U Nu when they began singing a pro-democracy anthem and were later sentenced to seven years in prison. A month later, six more students were arrested for allegedly obstructing soldiers preparing for Armed Forces Day. In June, four veteran politicians in their late sixties were arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison. On September 27, a student, Ye Htut, was arrested for having sent information to Burmese abroad; as of November, his trial was still pending. All of these people were tried under Section 5 (j) of the 1950 Emergency Provisions Act, for "spreading false news about the government."

The treatment of those detained remained an issue of concern. Two of the students were known to have been beaten immediately after their arrest, but the fate of the other is not known. In June, Dr. Thida, a twenty-nine-year-old medical doctor who was sentenced to twenty years of imprisonment in 1993 under the 1950 Act, was reported to have contracted tuberculosis while in Rangoon's Insein jail. She was also diagnosed in June as needing surgery to remove ovarian cysts. Dr. Thida reportedly received inadequate medical treatment.

The year opened with a renewed offensive against the Karen National Union (KNU) following a split within the KNU and the formation of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) which was supported by the SLORC. By January 27, the KNU headquarters at Manerplaw near the confluence of the Salween and Moei rivers had fallen, and on February 23 the KNU retreated from its base at Kawmoora. Since early November 1994, the SLORC army had arrested as many as 5,000 men from towns and villages in the Karen and Mon states and even from Rangoon to work as porters in preparation for this offensive. Although the offensive was relatively short, scores, and possibly hundreds, of forced porters are believed to have died from beatings or exhaustion compounded by lack of food. Others were caught in the cross fire during the fighting or were killed by landmines laid by both the SLORC and the KNU.

In early February the offensive took a new turn as DKBA and SLORC troops launched the first of several raids into refugee camps in Thailand. There were already more than 70,000 refugees in these camps, joined by some 10,000 people after the fall of Manerplaw. Many camps were situated along the banks of the Salween and Moei rivers, which mark the border between Burma and Thailand, and were easily accessible by the DKBA/SLORC troops. The raids, which were intended to terrify the refugees into returning to Burma, continued from February to May. They left fifteen refugees and Thai civilians dead, scores injured, and at least 1,000 houses in different camps razed to the ground. In addition, the DKBA/SLORC forces kidnaped more than twenty-five individuals and took them back to Burma at gunpoint, forcing hundreds of others to return through a campaign of fear and intimidation (see Thailand chapter). Following its defeat in these areas, the KNU made several offers to the SLORC to engage in cease-fire talks. While there were meetings between the two sides, at the end of October there was no sign of any progress.

Talks with other ethnic groups were more successful, but the weakness of the military cease-fires as solutions to long-term ethnic insurgencies became apparent as the SLORC failed to deliver the promises of reconciliation and economic development that formed the basis of the agreements. Moreover, the SLORC continued to refuse to discusslasting political solutions with the ethnic groups, claiming that as a temporary, military government, it had no authority to discuss political matters.

In the Karenni State, the Karenni Nationalities Progressive Party (KNPP) signed a cease-fire agreement at a ceremony in Loikaw on March 21, making it the fourth and final armed group in the Karenni State to do so. But on June 28, the KNPP issued a statement claiming that the SLORC had broken the terms of the agreement by sending an additional 2,000 troops into its territory and continuing to take porters from the area. Two days later, fighting broke out after the SLORC launched an attack on the KNPP headquarters near the Thai border. The SLORC insisted that the offensive was launched in order to chase away illegal Thai loggers and to secure a route through the KNPP territory to that of drug warlord Khun Sa. In later addresses, the SLORC also claimed that it had positioned so many troops in the area, close to the Thai border, because of possible threats to national security during the time of the general election in Thailand.

During the fighting some porters escaped into Thailand, but these were relatively few, given the total numbers believed to have been taken in Loikaw township alone. Those who did arrive in Thailand told of witnessing the deaths of fellow porters from landmines, stories which were confirmed by medical workers who reported that in just one day seven porters arrived in a refugee camp all close to death as a result of landmine injuries. These reports led observers to believe that landmines planted by both sides may have killed many porters who fled.

The fighting died down during the rainy season in August and September, though skirmishes were still reported. By October, despite the arrival of SLORC intermediaries in Thailand, there was no sign of any new settlement, and the KNPP claimed that the SLORC was preparing for a major offensive against it and had brought in a further 6,000 troops.

In the south, the New Mon State Party (NMSP) signed a cease-fire on June 29. Discussions that had started between the NMSP and the SLORC in 1993 were helped in 1995 by three intermediaries, one of whom was an elected member of parliament for the Mon National Democratic Front who had been in jail from 1991 until November 1994. While the agreement itself, like all other previous agreements, was not made public, it was known to have included the right of NMSP troops to retain their arms within twenty small circles of territory. However, the SLORC did not agree to the right of the Mon to receive developmental assistance from international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Thailand, nor were there clear decisions made on rights to the natural resources of the area, especially logging and fishing rights. The agreement did include a program to repatriate the 11,000 Mon refugees in Thailand, with no international monitoring or guarantees of safety on return, fueling speculation that Thailand had played a major part in pressuring the Mon to accept the terms.

In the northeast, fighting continued against drug warlord Khun Sa in the Shan State. In January the SLORC had announced its resolve to crush his Muang Tai Army (MTA) by the end of the year. SLORC had also made this promise in 1994, but by October the much-heralded final offensive had not materialized. However, Khun Sa suffered a major blow in August when one of his military commanders broke off to form his own Shan nationalist group, taking between 1,000 and 2,000 troops with him. Then, in September, the United Wa State Party, a group that has had a cease-fire agreement with the SLORC since 1989, joined in the attack against Khun Sa, allegedly in order to secure its own stake in the drug trafficking market.

As in other areas, the Burmese army impressed thousands of civilians to work as porters in the offensive against Khun Sa. In January, indiscriminate aerial bombardments by the SLORC forced hundreds of people to flee from villages near Kengtung, and in March and April heavy fighting forced others to seek refuge in Thailand (see Thailand chapter).

At the same time, inside the Karen State, thousands of villagers living in areas where the Karen had been active were forcibly relocated to areas under DKBA/SLORC control. At first these relocations were restricted to areas in Hlaingbwe township near the DKBA headquarters, but by July relocations were also reported to have taken place as far south as Kyaukkyi, Kawkereik and Pa-an townships. Relocated families either were forced to live in encampments guarded by the army, or they fled to the forests. From the camps, they were forced to work as laborers on road-building and other infrastructural projects for the army.

Indeed, forced labor was endemic in Burma. As the SLORC sought to open up the economy to international investors, it forced tens of thousands of civilians and prisoners to rebuild the country's long-neglected infrastructure. During the year, scores of people died on such projects from beatings, lack of medical care and food, and sheer exhaustion. In the southwest, at the site of the Rangoon-Kyaukpyu road in Arakan State, at least twelve people died during December 1994 and January 1995 from untreated fevers. In the far north, some 3,000 people were taken from Putao, Kachin State, in late 1994 to work at a remote site on the Putao-Sumprabum road. After walking for six days to reach the site, they found that the rice supplies that had been promised by the army had not arrived, and they had to walk back. Many died on the journey from malaria and other diseases, exacerbated by lack of food. In the northwest, soldiers supervising the work killed a woman working on the Pakokku-Kalemyo railway line in Chin State after she had stopped working twice to feed her young baby. In the south, in Mon State, two to three families each week fled from the site of the Ye-Tavoy railway to refugee camps in Thailand.

In Arakan, Burma's most western state, refugees who had fled into neighboring Bangladesh in 1992 returned to Burma. Of the 270,000 refugees, only 40,000 remained in camps by October, though it was unclear how many of these would eventually be accepted by the Burmese authorities. Despite the presence of fifteen UNHCR staff in Arakan and two NGOs running programs to reintegrate the refugees, reports continued of abuses of Muslims, especially of those Muslims who had not left Burma in 1992. In their Bulletin of June, the UNHCR claimed that it had succeeded in getting an agreement to limit the amount of forced labor for returnees to one day a week. However, the government had plans to build more than 1,200 miles of road in the area, and it was unclear how the UNHCR would be able to monitor the many forced labor sites in Maungdaw and Buthidaung townships. Muslims who remained in 1992 were also subject to forced relocations and forced labor and religious persecution, and villages in Mro Haung and Myauk Oo townships were forced to move to Buthidaung, forming a Muslim enclave on the border with Bangladesh.

Following Daw Suu's release from house arrest in July, members of her party, the NLD, were able to visit her freely. Among her first visitors were former chairmen of the NLD, U Tin Oo and U Kyi Maung, who had been released from jail in March. She was also able to meet foreign journalists, ambassadors and other international representatives, including the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Madeleine Albright, who visited in early September. Daw Su's international profile was enhanced by the showing of a videotaped speech she gave to open the NGO Forum of the U.N. Women's Conference in Beijing. Daw Suu also held regular Sunday morning gatherings outside her home, at which up to 200 people would come to hear her speak. She made her first trip outside Rangoon on October 4, visiting the famous Thanmanyat monk in the Karen State. In press interviews Daw Suu continued to take a reconciliatory line, calling on the SLORC to begin dialogue with her. On October 11, the NLD re-elected Daw Suu, U Tin Oo and U Kyi Maung as general secretary and vice-chairmen of the party respectively. This was a move intended to deprive the SLORC of their main justification for not talking to her: she was not just an ordinary individual, but re-instated as a party representative.

The National Convention, the SLORC's constitutional assembly, had begun deliberations on a new constitution in January 1993, sat for six months from September 1994 to March 1995 and was then suspended for six months until October 24. Nearly 600 of the 700 delegates were hand-picked by the SLORC. During this session, the question of representation at the local and national level for ethnic groups was discussed, including representation for those groups that were not included under previous constitutions-the most contentious issue for Burma's political future. Despite strong statements opposing the government proposals by ethnic representatives and members of the NLD, the National Convention approved the formula of 'self-administered zones' entitling groups to one representative in the House of Nationalities. In early October the convention was again postponed for a further month, leading analysts to suggest that the SLORC feared an NLD walk-out if Daw Suu was not invited to attend the convention.

There are no indigenous human rights organizations in Burma, and no international human rights organizations were permitted to visit the country during the year.

U.N. bodies, however, were given limited access. In January the International Labor Organization conducted a preliminary mission to investigate the government's compliance with Article 87 of the ILO Convention concerning freedom of association. By the end of the year, however, the ILO had not decided to conduct a formal mission. In October, U.N. Special Rapporteur to Burma Prof. Yozo Yokota went to Burma for the fourth consecutive year and met with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi for the first time; his previous requests to see her had all been denied.

At the same time, the government refused to allow international monitoring of prisons. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced on June 16 that it would close its office in Rangoon the following month due to the failure of negotiations with the SLORC on allowing the ICRC regular and confidential access to prisoners.

The Role of the International Community

On December 13, 1994, the U.N. General Assembly passed the toughest ever resolution on Burma. A key part of the resolution called on the secretary-general of the U.N. to assist in implementing the resolution, including facilitating a political dialogue between the SLORC, the democratic opposition and ethnic minorities. On that basis, Alvaro de Soto, the assistant secretary-general for political affairs, spent two days in Rangoon in February 1995 to follow up meetings held in Rangoon in November. At the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in March, the mandate of the special rapporteur to Burma was once again renewed. At the same meeting, the U.N. secretary-general presented a report in which he complained that Mr. de Soto had not been permitted to meet with Daw Suu, but made it clear that meetings with the SLORC would continue in the spring. No further meetings took place until after the release of Daw Suu. Mr. de Soto went to Burma again in August and met with Daw Suu, but was unable to see Gen. Khin Nyunt, the Secretary-1 of the SLORC. Press reports suggested that the SLORC was not prepared to enter into meaningful discussions with the U.N.'s representatives.

The efforts of the secretary-general's office failed to receive adequate support from the international community. No governments took concerted action to exert pressure on the SLORC to ensure that the resolution's recommendations were implemented. Indeed, when the SLORC launched its attack against the KNU, just days after the resolution was passed, only the U.S. government reacted with a strong statement, condemning the use of civilian porters in the January offensive. In mid-February, the European Union issued a similar statement, but days later the German Deputy Foreign Minister, Helmut Schaefer visited Rangoon to continue the policy of 'critical dialogue' adopted by the European Union in 1994.

Worse yet, governments did not back up their rhetoric on Burma by denying the SLORC the benefit of bilateral aid and investment. Instead, at the end of February, the British embassy in Rangoon launched the second 'British Week' aimed at encouraging British business in Burma. On March 18-as the SLORC-backed DKBO attacks on refugees in Thailand were at their height-Japan announced an agreement to give Burma an $11 million grant for "agricultural development." In April, Tokyo also granted Burma debt relief worth $4 million.

Following the release of Daw Suu in July, the attitude of some governments toward the SLORC further softened-notably Japan, which had previously maintained support for the international consensus on Burma. Differences in approach emerged even on the day of her release, with Western countries reacting in a spirit of "cautious optimism" and Asian governments, such as Japan and Thailand, welcoming the move as "substantive progress." Later, Tokyo indicated it planned to resume some Official Development Assistance (ODA) projects suspended in principle since 1998. (See chapter on Japan for details.) South Korea also rewarded the SLORC with a government loan of $16.8 million in October.

China continued to be a key supporter of the SLORC. The relationship was enhanced by the visit to Rangoon of Chinese Premier Li Peng in December 1994, followed by a flurry of diplomatic trips between the two countries during the year, including a delegation of 150 Burmese officials and businessmen who took part in the Yunnan trade fair in August. Arms supplies remained a crucial element of the Sino-Burmese relationship. Throughout the year, arms shipments arrived in Rangoon from a November 1994 deal reportedly including $400 million of helicopters, armoredvehicles, rifles and parachutes. Several Chinese naval vessels, purchased with a $40 million interest-free loan, also arrived in June.

The ever increasing closeness between China and Burma was disquieting for Burma's other neighbors, notably India, and prompted India to reopen official border trade in April for the first time since the 1962 military coup. The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) also sought to increase its economic influence in Burma, and by March Singapore had become the second largest investor, with projects totaling $294 million.

However, relations with Thailand, which had been the originator of ASEAN's "constructive engagement" policy, soured during the year. When DKBA/SLORC troops attacked refugees, Thai police and villagers in Thailand, the Thai government maintained a policy of appeasement, barely even criticizing the SLORC for the attacks. The SLORC, on the other hand, showed no such restraint in condemning what it saw as Thailand's un-neighborly acts. It accused Thailand of supporting Khun Sa by allowing his forces to seek medical care and obtain food supplies in Thailand, and in August the SLORC condemned the murder of a Burmese fisherman by his Thai bosses, who were also illegally fishing in Thai waters. The construction of the Mae Sot-Myawaddy "Friendship Bridge" was suspended in June, and by September all border crossings between the two countries were closed.

Nevertheless, Thailand still supported the SLORC in its bid to become a member of ASEAN. Bangkok's position was made public at the ASEAN Ministerial Conference in July when Foreign Minister U Ohn Gyaw acceded to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, the first step towards membership. During the ASEAN meeting, Australia and the European Union urged the ASEAN countries not to grant Burma membership too rapidly, insisting that the SLORC needed to do much more than release Daw Suu. But the ASEAN governments ignored this warning and arranged for a special conference to take place in December to assess ways in which they could facilitate Burma's and Cambodia's entry into the forum in the shortest possible time.

In the U.S., the Clinton administration faced congressional pressure to respond to the "further deterioration of human rights in Burma," as described by sixty-one members of the House of Representatives in a letter to President Clinton on June 1, 1995. On June 21, the administration announced that it would reward SLORC's cooperation in allowing the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to undertake a joint opium yield survey by stepping up some forms of anti-narcotics assistance to Burma. This included an agreement to provide limited in-country training for SLORC's anti-narcotics enforcement agencies as well as an exchange of information on anti-drug operations. This decision contradicted earlier administration statements that without progress on each of the three fronts of human rights, democratization, and narcotics control, an upgrading of U.S. cooperation could not take place. In June, the House of Representatives adopted by a decisive 359-38 vote an amendment to the fiscal year 1996 foreign appropriations bill prohibiting anti-narcotics assistance to Burma, including training. As of the end of October, the bill was still awaiting final approval by Congress.

Following the release of Daw Suu, President Clinton issued a statement welcoming the news but expressing "concern about a number of serious and unresolved human rights problems in Burma." The White House then dispatched Ambassador Albright to visit Daw Suu and senior members of the SLORC in early September. She delivered a tough message, calling for "fundamental progress toward democracy and respect for human rights" before relations with the U.S. could be improved or the U.S. would consider lifting the ban on World Bank loans to Burma imposed since 1988.

However, while the State Department did not rule out the possibility of further economic sanctions, such as prohibitions on private U.S. investment, the administration took no moves to implement this option. By 1995, the U.S. was the fourth largest investor in Burma, with investment primarily in the oil sector, totaling some $203 million. An abortive attempt to impose comprehensive sanctions, including a ban on all U.S. investment in Burma, was led by Senator Mitch McConnell, who introduced legislation in July. But he failed in his attempt to insert the bill as a last minute amendment to the 1996 foreign aid legislation.

Low-level war with the Khmer Rouge continued. In late 1994 and continuing into 1995, the guerrillas shifted tactics, directly attacking civilian settlements in an effort to exacerbate internal displacement and food shortages. A stream of defections from Khmer Rouge ranks continued even after the official amnesty period expired, and some defectors reported that in response the guerrilla leadership mounted purges and stepped up extrajudicial executions of those it deemed disloyal. The kidnapping of civilians for profit and political advantage continued to be a staple Khmer Rouge tactic, and finally came to the attention of the international community when a series of young Europeans were abducted, and in some cases, killed. The Khmer Rouge continued to engage in and endorse the planting of landmines and hidden booby traps even while the government declared a ban on the use of landmines, a ban that has not been scrupulously enforced. Both sides to the conflict engaged in instances of rape and widespread pillage, in contravention of the international laws of war.

The government outlawed the Khmer Rouge in July 1994, and the first prosecutions under the law took place at the conclusion of a statutory amnesty period in February 1995 (amnesties for voluntary military defectors, however, continued). These cases, involving two men accused of laying mines in Battambang, realized fears that the law could be misused for abusive prosecutions. The accused, both returnees from a Khmer Rouge border camp in Thailand, were convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years of imprisonment each, although the government's case rested on confessions obtained by torture; the cases are now on appeal on the basis of numerous substantive and procedural flaws. The political pressures and lack of due process evident in these trials cast in an ominous light the tendency of government authorities to accuse all critics of being "Khmer Rouge," an accusation voiced by Second Prime Minister Hun Sen as recently as September 23.

Sam Rainsy, a former finance minister and member of the royalist FUNCINPEC party and the most prominent political critic of the government, came in for repeated attack throughout the year, including threats to his life and safety that appeared to emanate from the highest levels of the government. In March 1995, the government withdrew his bodyguards, some of whom later left the Ministry of Interior and continued in Sam Rainsy's private employ. In May, the FUNCINPEC party expelled Rainsy in an irregular proceeding, and on June 22, the National Assembly expelled him as a parliamentarian, despite concerns raised as to the legality of such a move by the Interparliamentary Union, the U.N. Special Representative, former U.N. officials closely involved with the drafting of Cambodia's constitution and election law, and legislators around the world. On the night of July 13-14, three of Rainsy's bodyguards and another man were abducted and taken to a Ministry of Defense installation where several dozen soldiers beat one and pointed guns at their heads, demanding that they identify Rainsy as a "Khmer Rouge." The government confirms that the four men were interrogated, but denies there was any wrongdoing and claims that they spontaneously and inexplicably drove to the military base on their own accord.

Sam Rainsy's expulsion opened the prospect that other independent legislators would be stripped of their position and their parliamentary immunity. In July, a rift opened in the small Buddhist Liberal Democratic Party (BLDP) between Ieng Mouly, currently minister of information, and Son Sann, the party's founder. Ieng Mouly called an ad hoc party congress (boycotted by Son Sann's supporters) at which his faction voted to expel Son Sann's from the executive committee and announced a vote of "no confidence" in Son San and five other BLDP members; the Ieng Mouly factionsubsequently voted to expel the six in August, among them four sitting legislators. The prime ministers recognized Ieng Mouly as the new party leader and warned Son Sann not to proceed with his own party congress unless he first reconciled with Ieng Mouly. Son Sann's group went ahead with plans, asking the Interior Ministry for protection, which was denied. On the evening before the congress, September 30, grenades were thrown at a pagoda and at the party headquarters where Son Sann's supporters had gathered, injuring between thirty and fifty bystanders. The meeting proceeded anyway on October 1, with more than a thousand participants crowding the party headquarters and the street outside. Government military police, however, waited until the U.S. ambassador had left the meeting and then dispersed most of the participants on the excuse that they were blocking street traffic; the police then cordoned off the street.

Although government officials strongly condemned the attacks by unknown perpetrators, these statements rang hollow in view of the government's condemnation of Son Sann's plans to go ahead with the meeting against its wishes. Both Second Prime Minister Hun Sen and Minister of Information Ieng Mouly prior to the incident had predicted that were the meeting to go ahead, agitators might disrupt it by throwing "grenades." Once the attacks occurred, broadcast stations reported they were told to limit their coverage of the meeting to a government-provided script that implied Son Sann was to blame for rejecting government protection at party headquarters. In fact, BLDP members had asked the government for protection and permission to hold the meeting at the Olympic Stadium, and they moved it to party headquarters only after these requests were denied.

Government efforts to control the press included criminal prosecution as well as intimidation. In February, the Phnom Penh municipal court sentenced Chan Rotana, the editor of Samleng Yu Vachon Khmer (Voice of Khmer Youth) to a year of prison and a $2,000 fine for publishing a cartoon of First Prime Minister Ranariddh carting a bag of money on his head and an essay that criticized him as both autocratic and subservient to Hun Sen; his appeal was rejected in October but he will appeal to the Supreme Court. Thun Bun Ly, the editor of Odom K'tek Khmer (Khmer Ideal) was charged with "disinformation" for five articles and editorial cartoons that satirized government leaders; mid-trial, the prosecution added the charge of defamation over the objection of defense counsel. He was convicted of all charges, fined approximately $4,000 and ordered to spend two years in jail should he fail to pay; the court also ordered his newspaper closed pending appeal. The government confirmed it was pressing charges against at least five other newspapers that had yet to receive official notice; one was the English-language Phnom Penh Post. The government also acted during the year to confiscate print runs and suspend publication of several critical newspapers, all under dubious legal authority, and banned from the country two foreign correspondents from the French newspaper Libération who had reported on atrocities by government military personnel in the northwest. According to the Phnom Penh Post, the government has also tried to limit the influence of critical reporting by forbidding teachers to discuss politics or use newspaper articles critical of the government in teaching foreign languages.

After intensive pressure from the international community and King Sihanouk, the government did free six men who had been arrested for tying petitions onto balloons at the time of U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher's visit to Phnom Penh in August.

The most recent journalist to be murdered was Chan Dara, who was shot to death on the night of December 8, 1994, just after he was seen leaving a restaurant in Kampong Cham with a colonel named Sath Soeun. A correspondent with the newspaper Koh Santepheap (Island of Peace), Chan Dara had also published exposés of corrupt timber and rubber deals by government and military figures, among them Sat Soeun, in the paper Preap Noam Sar (The Carrier Pigeon). Ministry of Interior police arrested Sat Soeun, who still continued to send threats to the two papers and to Chan Dara's wife. The colonel, however, was acquitted at trial and released, although two other serious criminal charges were still pending against him. The government has not apprehended any further suspects in the case. Violence directed at journalists continued when a grenade exploded in front of the office of Damneung Pelpreuk (Morning News) on September 7, exactly a year from the date that Noun Chan, former editor of Samleng Yu Vachun Khmer, was gunned down in public by still-unknown perpetrators. Although a neighbor was hit by shrapnel, Damneung Pelpreuk editor Nguon Nonn was upstairs at the time.

The threat to the press was not lightened by a new press law adopted in July that left open the possibility of criminal prosecution for material that negatively "affects national security or political stability." The government has usually prosecuted journalists under criminal "misinformation" or "defamation" charges, with judges typically refusing to make distinctions between articles purporting to report fact and opinion pieces or editorials. The new law also gives government ministries broad powers to suspend or confiscate publications. Positive features of the new law include a prohibition on pre-publication censorship and guidelines for access to official information.

Other legal developments included the passage of a law establishing the Supreme Council of Magistracy, a body charged with ensuring the independence and integrity of the judiciary and supervising the appointment, promotion and discipline of judges and prosecutors. The law, however, gives the minister of justice or his representative a place on the council, which some observers feared might perpetuate the ministry's close direction of the judiciary. A council stipulated by the Cambodian constitution to rule on the constitutionality of laws and government decisions had yet to be created, although King Sihanouk had put forward his nominations two years before. The government supported programs designed to help professionalize the legal system and to improve military accountability, although the actual impact of these programs has yet to be measured.

The justice system remained plagued by corruption, however, and government officials, particularly police and military, continued with rare exceptions to enjoy virtual impunity for criminal behavior. Symptomatic of this was the way an official inquiry into the behavior of military intelligence officers accused of abducting, extorting and murdering civilians in the northwest stalled this year. Following several trips by a special commission of inquiry to Battambang province that interviewed witnesses in this sensitive case in the presence of the military and a press corps, the commission concluded that the temple of Che K'mau was not being used as a "secret prison" for victims. This conclusion hardly closed the matter, as human rights monitors had alleged that imprisonment and murders had taken place in a variety of locations in Battambang over a period of at least eighteen months.

Cold-blooded murder of ethnic Vietnamese civilians in Cambodia continued, with the Khmer Rouge the likely perpetrators in most instances. On May 20, approximately thirty men identified as Khmer Rouge killed four ethnic Vietnamese, one Khmer policeman, and wounded at least five others in Phat Sandai village in Kompong Thom province. In September, another band of men identified as Khmer Rouge attacked the floating village of Tonle Chhmar in Siem Reap province, killing an as yet unconfirmed number of ethnic Khmer and Vietnamese civilians. Ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia also faced harassment from the government, as local officials confiscated identity documents and drew up plans for large-scale confinement of ethnic Vietnamese as "illegal aliens" pending repatriation. Although local officials sometimes hindered international delegations from gaining access to ethnic Vietnamese who were stranded at the Vietnamese border at Chrey Thom since 1993, by mid-year the government had agreed to allow a small number of these families to return to their homes in Cambodia.

In September, First Prime Minister Ranariddh called for reinstatement of the death penalty in Cambodia for drug trafficking and murder during robberies and abductions. The Cambodian constitution currently forbids the use of the death penalty, and King Sihanouk went on record as opposing its reintroduction.

Human rights groups continued to raise concern over abuses despite the worsening political atmosphere and persistent government attempts to register and monitor their members and activities. Important work continued in prison monitoring, education, and investigations, with groups often able to interact constructively with government authorities as advocates or intermediaries. The independence and vigor of the Cambodian nongovernmental movement was reflected in a series of international conferences hosted in Phnom Penh during the year, among them an international conference on the banning of landmines, a regional conference on child prostitution, and several other conferences that raised human rights in the context of environment and development problems.

However, the government's increasing intolerance of criticism produced an intimidating atmosphere for all groups. In the days following the international donors' meeting in April, the prime ministers called for the closure of theU.N. Human Rights Centre office in Phnom Penh, a request that was withdrawn under intense local and international pressure. The government, however, continued to criticize Justice Michael Kirby, the special representative of the U.N. secretary-general. Justice Kirby's detailed reports on the human rights situation and his frank criticism of serious abuses led the government to complain it had been inadequately consulted; nevertheless, the prime ministers were unavailable to meet with Kirby on his most recent visit.

Kem Sokha, the head of the National Assembly's human rights commission, also received death threats at various points in the year and became a target of condemnation by both prime ministers, particularly Hun Sen who in July called for his removal as commission chairman. Other members of the commission who come from the two governing coalition parties were instructed by their party leadership to cease cooperating with Kem Sokha in investigations of human rights complaints and other matters. Kem Sokha is also one of the six BLDP members who have been "expelled" from the party on the initiative of Ieng Mouly.

The Role of the International Community

The U.S. administration expressed concern about the government's abuses through private diplomatic channels but publicly tended to downplay the Cambodian government's dismal human rights performance, urging the swift passage of legislation that would grant Cambodia Most Favored Nation trading status and celebrating "progress" as gauged from the darkest years of Cambodia's recent history. Mid-year the administration certified Cambodia as an "emerging democracy" for the purpose of eligibility for agricultural credits, a designation that by law requires a country to be taking steps toward respect for internationally recognized human rights. In August, Warren Christopher was the first U.S. secretary of state to visit Cambodia in forty years, signing aid agreements and hosting a lunch that included government officials, NGO representatives, and dissident politicians. Christopher praised Cambodia's democracy, but warned that "elections are not enough" and suggested that U.S. aid levels would depend on the government's human rights performance. As usual, Congress was less reticent in publicly voicing dismay at the deteriorating state of human rights, with Senators Thomas, Feinstein and Roth and Representatives Neal, Frank and Rohrabacher among others offering strong statements and letters of concern.

The ASEAN countries that were investors in Cambodia, particularly Malaysia, assumed more prominent influence as the government concluded major deals with them, such as logging concessions, a casino project, and an airlines contract; this support was especially important as an alternative source of government revenue apart from international aid. International donors, on the other hand, expressed concerns regarding the government's accountability and transparency at the 1995 donors' conference, and a proposal for a special working group to address these concerns was aired but at years' end not implemented. Japan, Cambodia's largest aid donor, protested the government's request to close the Phnom Penh office of the U.N. Human Rights Centre, but otherwise kept a low profile on human rights issues.

Thailand continued to play a pivotal role in the Cambodian conflict, diplomatically supporting the Royal Government on the one hand, while continuing to allow trade in logs and gems across its borders, a critical and vast source of revenue for the Khmer Rouge. According to the London-based environmental monitor Global Witness, Thailand was still issuing import permits for logging businesses operating in Cambodia that inevitably pay the Khmer Rouge protection money for safe passage of their haul. The summary of the U.S. administration's report to Congress on Thai military support for the Khmer Rouge (the only unclassified part of the document) acknowledged "unofficial" contacts between Thai military personnel and the Khmer Rouge, "generally in the context of business transactions."

In its March 1995 report Cambodia at War, Human Rights Watch/Asia documented gross violations of the international laws of war committed by both sides and called on all nations to halt aid and trade in arms and military equipment to the parties. Among the nations that have supplied arms to the Khmer Rouge in the past were China and Thailand; the guerrillas still draw on these stockpiles and buy current supplies from local arms brokers who sometimes deal in weapons intended for the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF). The RCAF, in turn, has purchased military supplies and upgrades from North Korea, South Africa, the Czech Republic, Israel, Poland, Russia, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia since 1994.

The U.N. Commission on Human Rights passed a resolution expressing concern about the continuing serious violations of human rights and requested Special Representative Michael Kirby to present a report to the General Assembly and to the 1996 session of the commission.

On May 30, the Supreme Court unanimously confirmed a prison sentence of seven years for Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, a retired army general and former head of Chile's secret police, the National Intelligence Directorate (Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional, DINA), and a sentence of six years for Brig. Gen. Pedro Espinoza, Contreras's former deputy. These two had been convicted in 1993 by a special judge appointed by the Supreme Court to resolve the 1976 Washington, D.C., car-bombing murders of Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean foreign minister, and U.S. citizen Ronni Moffitt. Contreras was finally incarcerated in Punta Peuco prison in the early hours of October 21. The Letelier-Moffitt case is the only one in which senior DINA officials-responsible for a widespread campaign of disappearances and political murders between 1973 and 1978-have been fully prosecuted or imprisoned.

On June 19, after three weeks of uncertainty in which police officials tried in vain to carry out an arrest order, the army discharged Espinoza, and an army escort took him to a prison constructed especially for military officers in Punta Peuco, on the outskirts of Santiago. It took almost five months for the court sentence on Contreras to be executed. On learning of his conviction, Contreras promised that he would "never spend a day in jail" and took refuge in his ranch in southern Chile. On June 13, after police received authorization to arrest him there, army commandos working under cover of night spirited him away to the naval base in Talcahuano, where he was admitted to hospital allegedly suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure, disorders from which he had not been known previously to suffer. Citing ill health, Contreras's attorneys launched a series of appeals against his imprisonment, prompting a sequence of medical examinations. Finally, Contreras underwent a hernia operation at the hospital, having received permission by the court to begin serving his sentence there. When his doctors had pronounced him fit and all further avenues of appeal had been exhausted, Contreras finally joined Espinoza in prison on October 21.

In response to the civil-military crisis, right-wing opposition parties, which have historically rejected concerns about human rights issues stemming from Pinochet's military rule (1973-90), pressed for a new law to interpret the 1978 amnesty that provided immunity from punishment for human rights violations committed between 1973 and 1978. Opposition senators introduced a bill in July proposing what amounted to a "full stop law," a deadline for judicial investigations into human rights cases. The bill would make it easier for courts to close unresolved human rights cases by requiring that they need only establish the type and date of the human rights violation that took place to mandate the permanent closure of the case. In recent years, trial-level courts have made significant advances in the opposite direction, including reopening human rights cases and prosecuting suspected human rights violators.

At issue was the ability of Chilean courts to investigate human rights violations and prosecute perpetrators, which the Supreme Court itself threw into further question. The amnesty clearly made punishing human rights violators impossible but did not definitively address investigations and prosecutions. Trial-level courts had previously considered disappearance cases open pending confirmation of the fate of the victim. In August, however, the Supreme Court ordered the final closure of the case of the 1976 disappearance of Joel Huaquiñir Benavides, a Socialist Party leader. The court ruled that Huanquiñir be legally considered deceased from the time of his disappearance, even though his fate remained unknown. In October, the Penal Chamber of the Supreme Court confirmed the application of the amnesty law in two more cases: Juan Carlos Perelman, a member of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (Movimiento de la IzquierdaRevolucionaria, MIR) who was detained and disappeared in February 1975, and Juan Núñez Vargas, a Socialist Party member who disappeared after his arrest by members of the San Bernardo Infantry School in September 1974.

In response to the proposed bill to "reinterpret" the amnesty, the government countered with a proposal of its own. In an unusually frank television address to the nation on August 21, President Eduardo Frei stressed that the Letelier-Moffitt case had brought Chile face to face with the limitations of its democracy and that the truth about past human rights violations, especially disappearances, had to be confronted for national reconciliation to be possible.

After his speech, Frei presented three bills to parliament, the first dealing with human rights investigations and the second and third with constitutional reforms aimed at phasing out military restrictions on the full exercise of democracy. The human rights bill promised to streamline court investigations, but its general effect would be to reinforce and extend the negative effects of the amnesty law by trading information about abuses for guarantees of secrecy about the violations. The bill would mandate the appointment of superior court judges devoted for two years exclusively to disappearance cases. The judges would receive special investigative powers, including access to classified documents, military installations, and police stations, which are normally off-limits for members of the civilian judiciary. Judges would also take over all cases currently filed in military courts. Cases could be closed finally only if the judges were able to establish either the physical whereabouts of the victims' remains, or the fact of their death. However, to accomplish this, military witnesses or suspects would be given several extra incentives-in addition to the impunity they already enjoyed-to encourage them to cooperate with the courts. Judges would have to cancel arrest or detention orders against them and would be unable to issue indictments. Witnesses would be allowed to conceal their addresses and to testify outside the court. Their names would be kept off the public record, and not even the lawyers representing victims would have access to them. The names and any classified information would be entered in a secret notebook which would be destroyed as soon as a case was finally closed.

Other bills introduced by Frei would reduce some, but not all, of the military privileges left in place by the army when Pinochet left the presidency in 1990. With respect to human rights, they would restore the president's power to retire military officials, which could be used to remove human rights violators from service even if they could not be tried in the courts. Human Rights Watch/Americas encouraged a review under these provisions of cases such as those of Brig. Miguel Krasnoff Marchenko and Lt. Col. Fernando Laureani Maturana, former DINA agents directly implicated in several cases of disappearance in 1974. At this writing, Krasnoff was on active service in Santiago and Laureani was serving in a regiment in the northern city of Iquique.

Human Rights Watch/Americas was pleased that the Frei bills would not establish a date by which all human rights cases would be closed, but was troubled by other provisions in the package of legislative initiatives, including the legitimization of the amnesty law, judges' ability to close a case once they determined the fate of the victim, and the secrecy with which case details would be handled. The congressional debate on the government's and the opposition's proposals was continuing as this report went to press.

While past military abuses received considerable national attention, ongoing abuses by Chile's police forces did not, even though they continued to constitute a human rights problem in the country. Police, particularly the uniformed carabineros, operated without effective judicial control, often arbitrarily arresting, mistreating, or torturing detainees. Though Chilean police forces instituted internal mechanisms for investigating complaints of torture, their internal investigations rarely, if ever, led to successful court prosecutions. In a meeting with Human Rights Watch/Americas in July, officials of the Ministry of the Presidency and the Ministry of Justice failed to provide evidence that any police officers had been convicted of torture since the return to democracy, although the Ministry of Interior reported that courts received some sixty complaints of torture between March 1990 and October 1994. In July, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture Nigel S. Rodley visited Chile.

Although the government officially recognized the importance of freedom of expression, it continued to apply laws that limited this right, including the Law of State Security, which the former military government used to stiflepolitical dissent. Police continued to arrest people for expression-related "crimes" under this law, and prosecutors based indictments on it. In January, both branches of the legislature voted to file a lawsuit, based on the law, against Francisco Javier Cuadra, a former Pinochet minister, because of remarks he made in the news magazine ¿Qué Pasa? In the interview, Cuadra said that he had information that "some parliamentarians and other persons holding public office take drugs." Members of parliament deemed the comment an affront to their honor. On June 19, police arrested Cuadra and took him to Capuchinos prison in Santiago. He was released on bond on July 7. In August, police jailed Chilean Socialist Youth leader Arturo Barrios, accused of violating the law, on charges of "insulting" General Pinochet. Two weeks later, Pinochet sued Christian Democrat Congressman Rodolfo Seguel under the same law for observing that "after well-irrigated lunches he [Pinochet] is wont to say stupid things."

The state also restricted freedom of expression in other ways. In August, the Supreme Court refused permission for Channel 7 television to interview Miguel Estay Reyno, a jailed former police undercover agent, who was believed to have information about the fate of the people who had disappeared during the military period. That same month, in an apparent case of self-censorship, a music video by the hit Argentine rock group Los Fabulosos Cadillacs was edited to delete an image of Pinochet. The video, titled "Mal Bicho" (Bad Bug), showed the general along with Argentine dictator Rafael Videla, Hitler, Mussolini, and Saddam Hussein. According to the Chilean newspaper La Epoca, Sony Music (Chile), which distributed the video, said that it received the version already cut from the company's Miami office and that the cut had been made to avoid problems with Chilean law.

Human Rights Watch/Americas has not received any reports that the government prevented or restricted human rights organizations from conducting their investigations and reporting their findings during 1995.

U.S. Policy

Human rights remained a low priority in United States relations with Chile, as both the Chilean and U.S. governments focused their attention on Chile's proposed entry into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In mid-1995, representatives of Chile, Mexico, the United States, and Canada met to begin official negotiations on Chile's accession to the treaty. Neither the U.S. nor the Chilean government opposed the labor rights components of the existing accord.

The Supreme Court ruling on the major issue of historic contention between the two governments, the Letelier-Moffitt case, motivated a brief official note of congratulations to the Chilean government. Although the Clinton administration was outspoken about the human rights implications of the Letelier-Moffitt case, the United States failed to voice concern about other human rights problems, including Chilean proposals to expand the amnesty law, justice for past human rights violations, current police abuses (including torture), and freedom of expression.

During 1995, the Chilean and United States militaries continued to expand their links. The U.S. continued to provide aid to the Chilean military for training in the United States and began to program military training for civilian members of Chile's defense management. The U.S. also transferred to the country excess military equipment, including a Landing Ship Tank (LST), trucks, and other vehicles. In 1995, for the first time since the 1976 Kennedy Amendment blocked U.S. military aid to Chile, the Chilean army participated in joint military exercises with the U.S. Southern Command. Congress had lifted the aid restriction in 1990.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) provided an estimated $3,598,000 in assistance to Chile, focused basically on administration of justice. The Agency for International Development's justice-related programs will end by 1996, when the AID Chile mission is expected to close down.

Chinese courts levied harsh sentences, up to twenty years, on those who challenged the one-party system. Where evidence was weak, courts substituted spurious criminal charges, or "re-education committees" administratively imposed shorter "labor re-education" terms, a form of punishment that the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention had earlier labeled "inherently arbitrary in character." Severely ill political prisoners remained in detention under conditions that violated the U.N.'s Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.

Chinese officials blatantly attempted to censor delegates' participation in and press coverage of the Fourth World Conference on Women and the parallel nongovernmental organization (NGO) Forum held in Beijing and Huairou in August and September. Even before the meetings convened, China challenged the U.N. accreditation of independent organizations with whose views it disagreed. Despite U.N. challenges and China's public promise to issue visas to all those registered by the NGO Forum, China used its position as host to deny visas to selected individuals. Security personnel monitored and disrupted NGO workshops and meetings, videotaping participants, their materials, and members of the audience. There were also attempts to confiscate NGO videotapes and to remove video equipment. Members of human rights organizations attempting to monitor Chinese violations of free expression and association were themselves under surveillance.

Members of the press were hampered in their coverage of the conference. Some hotel managers selectively refused reporters pre-arranged access to guests. As a condition of publishing, editors at the Earth Times, a daily newspaper that had been freely distributed at all major U.N. conferences and summits since 1992, were forced to comply with Chinese restrictions, including prohibitions on distribution at hotels and at the NGO Forum site and a ban on criticism of the host country.

In preparation for the conferences, Chinese officials cleared Beijing of prominent dissidents not already in custody so as to prevent meetings with outsiders. Tong Zeng, a leading campaigner for Japanese compensation to Chinese war victims, had expected to participate in a workshop about Japan's use of conquered "comfort women" during World War II. Instead, he was ordered to go on "vacation." Wang Zhihong, wife of dissident Chen Ziming who is serving a thirteen-year term for his 1989 pro-democracy activities, was "offered" a two-week prison visit with her husband. Dai Qing, who exposed fallacies and inconsistencies in the government's assessment of the Three Gorges dam project, had to leave the city. In yet another move to "ensure the security" of delegates, the government announced the executions of sixteen "criminal elements."

Throughout the year, the Chinese government continued to subvert the rule of law, violating its own criminal procedure code, using trumped-up criminal charges against political dissidents, and re-interpreting some laws and regulations to ensure specific outcomes. To blunt criticism of the use of counterrevolutionary charges to sentence political dissidents, authorities turned to the 1993 State Security Law to charge dissidents with the crime of "leaking state secrets." On September 19, former student Li Hai became the latest to be so charged. Misuse of the criminal code was evident in the disappearance of Wei Jingsheng, China's most famous dissident, missing since April 1, 1994. He has never been charged nor has a warrant for his arrest been produced. As of November, he was neither in "shelter for investigation," a common form of administrative detention, nor under "residential surveillance." Bi Yimin, director of the Institute of Applied Science and Technology of Beijing, was sentenced to a three-year prison term in February 1995 for allegedlymisappropriating public funds. The money in question was legally transferred to two well-known dissidents serving thirteen-year terms for 1989 pro-democracy activities. In December 1994, Tong Yi, Wei Jingsheng's former secretary, was sentenced to "re-education through labor" on a trumped-up charge of "disturbing the public order." An attempt to pin a morals charge on her for cohabiting with Wei had already failed, and the original charge of forging an official seal on an application for study in the U.S. was deemed too minor to prosecute.

That same month, Shanghai activist Dai Xuezhong, a member of the unofficial Human Rights Association, received a three-year sentence for alleged tax evasion. On April 10, labor activist Xiao Biguang went on trial on "swindling" charges; as of November, a sentence had not been announced. On August 18, Ding Zilin and her husband Jiang Peikun were detained in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, for some forty days for "economic reasons," then released without explanation. The couple, whose seventeen-year-old son was killed during the June 1989 massacre in Beijing, compiled a list of those killed and maimed in the crackdown and tried to persuade the government to reverse its finding that the 1989 demonstrations were counterrevolutionary. Gao Yu, a dissident journalist imprisoned in October 1993, was finally sentenced in November 1994 to a six-year prison term after the procuracy twice returned the case to the court. Despite a ruling that "the evidence...is partial....," no new evidence was ever offered to justify the verdict.

In December 1994, in one of the most important political trials since those that followed the 1989 protests, the Beijing Intermediate Court sentenced nine dissidents, including medical researcher Kang Yuchun, lecturer Hu Shigen, Democracy Wall activist Liu Jingsheng, and printing plant worker Wang Guoqi, to terms ranging from three to twenty years. They were among sixteen arrested in May and June 1992 and charged with "leading a counterrevolutionary group" and with "counterrevolutionary propaganda and incitement." A human rights monitor, U.S. citizen Harry Wu, was arrested on June 19, sentenced on August 24 to a fifteen-year prison term for spying and immediately expelled from the country.

Despite the release in July of Shanghai activist Yang Zhou for treatment of an esophageal condition, reports of serious and untreated illness among jailed political prisoners continued into 1995. One of the most egregious cases was that of Chen Ziming, sentenced to a thirteen-year term in early 1991 and released on medical parole in May 1994. Still under treatment for urinary tract cancer, he was returned to Beijing No.2 Prison on June 25, 1995, on the pretext that the skin condition that had led to his parole had cleared up. The medical condition of long-term prisoner Bao Tong, former principal aide to ousted Party Secretary Zhao Ziyang, did not improve; he remained in a prison hospital, and his family lacked access to his medical records and was refused permission to choose his doctor.

Released dissidents and the families of those still imprisoned continued to be harassed. Five months before he was re-arrested in May, Public Security Bureau officials threatened Wan Dang with death if he continued to speak out. Liu Gang, released in June after completing a six-year term, was prohibited from leaving his home in Liaoning Province for two years and from talking with foreign journalists. Police broke into Liu's house in June and July, tried to run over family members on the street, and threatened friends and relatives who maintained contact with him. On September 1, Liu was again detained, this time for ten days, for refusing to "share his thoughts" with security officials. Gou Qinghui, the wife of Xiao Biguang, was prohibited from returning to her job at Yanqing Theological Seminary, attending church or meeting at home with co-religionists. Tong Yi's father was warned that his job could be jeopardized if his daughter refused to comply with prison regulations. On January 16 and 17, Tong was beaten by fellow inmates in collusion with prison guards after protesting sixteen-hour work days.

Restrictions surrounding religious practice continued during 1995, and the official drive to register and subject to lay control all congregations, including the smallest family churches, escalated. Harsh crackdowns came in areas where foreigners were active proselytizers and trainers of lay leaders, where evidence of indigenous networks of unofficial churches surfaced, where evangelists were especially active, and where "underground" church members challenged the authorities through public worship. In April, during the Easter season, more than forty Catholics were detained in Jiangxi Province. Most were released, but several were sentenced to terms ranging between two and five years. At the end of October, Catholic lay persons and clergy arrested between February and June in Hebei, Inner Mongolia, and JilinProvinces, remained in detention. But the more usual pattern during 1995 was to detain and physically abuse Catholics and Protestants until their families, the local church community or foreign evangelical organizations paid onerous fines. During a gathering of some 500-600 Protestants in Jiangsu Province in late January or early February, Protestant leaders from the province and from Wenzhou in Zhejiang Province were detained, severely beaten, heavily fined, and released. More than 300 were detained in Yingshang County, Anhui Province, at the end of May.

During 1995, Chinese officials tightened restrictions on freedom of expression. At the beginning of the year, the press was notified that it was required to put a favorable spin on sensitive issues, such as double-digit inflation, failing enterprises, and demonstrations by unemployed workers. On May 19, the party's propaganda chief ordered the twenty largest national newspapers not to cover issues that "have not been resolved" or are "impossible to resolve" and to use reports by Xinhua, the official news agency, for all breaking stories. In July, the Hong Kong-based Apple Daily was banned from covering a Beijing meeting about the colony's future. Its owner had angered the government with criticism of Premier Li Peng.

Information flows were further restricted in connection with the sixth anniversary of the June 4, 1989, crackdown. At the end of May, Nick Rufford of the London Sunday Times, was questioned for thirteen hours by officials who demanded the names of his Chinese contacts. From June 2-6, officials cut the CNN feed to hotels in Beijing, concerned that commemorative footage might include shots of the 1989 massacre. Also in June, the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications moved to limit local users' access to the Internet. Invoking China's sovereign status, he declared that "by linking with Internet, we do not mean absolute freedom of information." In August, when Greenpeace members from outside China tried to stage a demonstration in Tiananmen Square protesting China's nuclear testing, they were detained for thirty hours, interrogated about the involvement of Chinese citizens, and deported.

Films did not escape censorship. When New York Film Festival officials refused to cancel a showing of The Gate of Heavenly Peace, about the June 1989 crackdown in Beijing, Chinese officials asked Zhang Yimou, whose Shanghai Triad opened the festival, to cancel plans to attend. He agreed. Zhang's work as a filmmaker in China has been entirely dependent on government approval.

Officials further curtailed freedom of association and assembly during 1995. An April law forbade Chinese citizens from attending foreign-run schools. That same month, police broke up a peaceful demonstration against corruption by some thirty entrepreneurs in Guangzhou. In April, security agents broke up a series of marches by former Nanjing residents who had been banished to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) and who were attempting to return. In June, authorities denied permission to two female war victims to demonstrate outside the Japanese embassy.

Human rights conditions in Tibet deteriorated throughout 1995. During the first quarter of the year, at least 123 dissidents were detained, more than in all of 1994. The government intensified its campaign challenging the legitimacy of the Dalai Lama, even as a religious leader, and the battle over who was to choose the new Panchen Lama, the second most important spiritual leader and the most important Tibetan leader resident there, resulted in the detentions of at least forty-eight people between May and July. The six year old identified by the Dalai Lama as the legitimate successor, but rejected by Chinese officials, disappeared, along with his immediate family. Authorities further curtailed religious activity by limiting the number of monks and nuns in any one nunnery or monastery, and by instituting an absolute cap on the total number in all of Tibet and a ban on the building of monasteries and nunneries.

Pro-independence activities, such as possession of the Tibetan flag, resulted in raids on the offending monasteries. In May, after independence posters surfaced at Labrang Monastery in southern Gansu Province, an area inhabited by Tibetans, five monks were arrested and two badly beaten, one so severely he suffered neurological damage. In 1994-95, two nuns, Gyaltsen Kelsang and Phunstog Yangkyi, were unexpectedly released from custody shortly before they died from injuries sustained in prison. In an attempt at restricting news flows, on three separate occasions women touristsleaving Tibet were stopped at the airport and strip-searched. Confiscated items included private letters, film, audio cassettes, and a diary.

There is no right to monitor in China. To form a legal human rights or monitoring organization, members would have to comply with the 1989 "Regulations on the Registration and Management of Social Groups," which require approval by the "relevant professional leading organs," presumably the official China Society for Human Rights Studies. Furthermore, the "monopoly" stipulation in the regulations, which mandates that an "identical or similar social group cannot be set up within the same administrative area," further restricts independent organizational efforts. In 1995, the authorities blocked several informal attempts at monitoring, such as the dissident petition drives which began in March and culminated in May, and which initially resulted in the detention and questioning of some fifty dissidents. In November, some twenty signatories were still detained.

The Role of the International Community

In 1995, human rights concerns were further marginalized on the international agenda, as governments actively pursued trade and investment with China unhindered by any linkage to human rights. Chinese authorities aggressively offered human rights "dialogues" in exchange for business deals, sending the president and premier to visit Western capitals. At the U.N. Human Rights Commission, China defeated the most intensive, high-level campaign yet waged on behalf of a mildly worded resolution. As if to underline its growing confidence, the Chinese government made a travesty of its commitments to NGOs at the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women with nearly total impunity.

The Clinton human rights policy of "constructive engagement" toward China lacked both substance and clout, with a few notable exceptions. The administration indicated in October that certain post-1989 sanctions would remain in place for the time being, namely a prohibition on weapons sales, denial of licenses for transfer of dual-use technology, and suspension of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) program in China. But for the most part, the administration downplayed human rights while concentrating on "stabilizing" relations with China at the economic and political level. The detention of the Chinese-American human rights activist Harry Wu pushed human rights to the top of the U.S.-Sino agenda, but only temporarily. The Chinese government used both Wu's detention and the controversy over the Taiwanese President Li Teng-hui's visit to the United States in June 1995 as bargaining chips to secure a summit meeting between Clinton and Jiang Zemin which took place in New York on October 24.

Clinton raised human rights concerns in his discussions with Jiang Zemin, but he declined to issue a public appeal for the release of any specific political prisoners, as he had following a previous meeting with Jiang in 1993. The two presidents agreed to meet again in Osaka in November, and the administration described the summit as "very positive" though it resulted in no concrete progress on human rights.

"Constructive engagement" got off to a shaky start in 1995 with the United States threatening a trade war over Chinese copyright and trademark violations. As the administration set a deadline for imposing sanctions, Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary led a "presidential mission" to China in February, accompanied by more than seventy-five corporate executives. O'Leary used the opportunity to go after business deals in the energy sector, signing more than $1 billion worth of agreements. In meetings with Premier Li Peng and other senior officials, she raised human rights concerns privately but avoided any public criticism of China's human rights practices.

In March, Vice-President Al Gore held a frosty meeting with Li Peng in Copenhagen around the edges of the U.N. Social Summit. Li Peng denounced U.S. interference "in other people's affairs," while the vice-president stressed the administration's desire to maintain "constructive relations" with China while "strengthening dialogue" in areas where the two governments have differences. Gore was publicly silent about human rights.

The Copenhagen meeting occurred just days after a vote in the U.N. Human Rights Commission on a resolution criticizing China's human rights practices. Co-sponsored by the European Union, the U.S., Japan and others, the measure attracted broad support from Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa. For months, the United States, in particular, hadlobbied in capitals around the world to line up votes in favor of the resolution. China responded in kind, warning European governments, for example, that support for the resolution could endanger their prospects for doing business in China and offering to engage in bilateral "human rights dialogues" with various governments in lieu of facing action at the United Nations. Although the Chinese government failed to prevent passage of a no-action motion, resulting in the first-ever debate on a China resolution, it narrowly won the final vote, with twenty-one countries voting against, twenty for and twelve abstaining.

It was clear by May that the international community would do little to come to the defense of beleaguered activists in China waging a petition campaign. At the height of their protests in the weeks leading up to the June 1989 anniversary, President Clinton renewed Most Favored Nation (MFN) trading status for China for one more year. The president reiterated his belief that "broad engagement with China, including on human rights issues, offers the best prospect in all areas of concern to us." He denounced China's human rights record as "unacceptable," but defended the administration's "vigorous" approach to human rights, including bilateral and multilateral efforts, as well as its work with the private sector to develop "voluntary business principles."

Nearly a year after the president's initial promise to develop a voluntary code of conduct for businesses, the White House officially announced the fruit of its efforts just prior to the MFN decision. The principles did not focus exclusively on China, as originally promised, but instead were designed for universal application. Half-heartedly endorsed by eight major companies who said they would serve as a "useful reference point" in framing their own codes, the principles did contain several positive elements, but were vaguely worded and lacked any concrete details as to how they would be implemented.

In Congress, resolutions to overturn the president's MFN decision never came to a vote in the House. Instead, a consensus bill (the 1995 China Policy Act) was formulated and adopted by a huge bipartisan margin (416 to 10) in July, demanding that the administration take diplomatic initiatives to improve human rights in several specific areas. In addition to giving the administration a clear human rights mandate, the bill required a report in thirty days on what actions had been taken at the World Bank, the U.N. and elsewhere. The Chinese government expressed "strong resentment" and opposition to the bill, but clearly was relieved that MFN was not challenged. The bill was referred to the Senate; as of November, no action had been taken.

The administration reacted strongly to the reimprisonment of Chen Ziming in late June; he had been released on medical parole in May 1994 as a gesture just prior to Clinton's MFN decision. Shortly thereafter, Harry Wu was detained, and the administration launched a campaign of high-level public and private lobbying to secure consular access to Wu and, ultimately, his release. Wu's case was a top item of discussion at a key meeting between Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen in Brunei on August 1, in conjunction with the annual conference of the Association of South East Asian Nations. The meeting coincided with a decision by the World Bank's executive directors on a $260 million non-basic human needs loan for a major highway project. Several influential members of Congress wrote to the administration and World Bank officials urging the Bank to postpone considering the loan as a way of indicating concern over Wu and the deterioration of human rights in China generally. But the Treasury Department opposed the suggestion, and the administration claimed that it did not have the authority to hold up a loan on its own, although it had previously prevented loans to Vietnam and Iran from being considered by the executive directors. Furthermore, the administration argued that seeking a delay would "undercut [its] ability to pursue our human rights objectives in our ongoing bilateral discussions with China." World Bank lending to China, despite occasional abstentions or no votes by the U.S., continued to outstrip loans to any other government. According to the Bank's annual report, in the fiscal year ending June 1995, China received $2.9 billion from the Bank.

Meanwhile, the White House continued an interagency review on possible Export-Import Bank funding for U.S. companies involved in the highly controversial Three Gorges dam project in China. In late September, the White House completed the review and recommended against Ex-Im Bank funding the project, both on environmental and human rightsgrounds. By November, no decision had been made by the Bank on an initial request from a U.S. company seeking funding.

As the year ended, prospects for developing a multilateral strategy to promote human rights in China through concerted political or economic pressure appeared dim. In July, the European Union's trade commissioner, Leon Brittan, outlined a long-term strategy to expand dramatically the E.U.'s ties with China while removing human rights as an impediment. His proposal acknowledged that both public pressure and private discussion would be needed to bring about human rights improvements, but stressed cooperative efforts to develop the rule of law in China over the long-term, rather than pressure. He also endorsed the E.U.'s political dialogue as a venue for raising human rights concerns. A meeting of the E.C.-China Joint Committee took place in Brussels in early October to review overall Sino-E.U. relations. Human rights concerns were discussed only briefly; Leon Brittan again affirmed the E.U.'s interest in playing a "constructive role" to improve China's judicial system. While Brittan was unveiling his proposal, President Jiang Zemin was preparing to visit Germany, Hungary and Finland. The visit was aimed at countering the effect of the Taiwanese president's trip to the U.S., but it also provided Jiang with an opportunity to generate greater recognition and acceptance, as well as new trade deals. In 1994 and 1995, Germany was China's largest European trading partner, with bilateral trade in the first five months of 1995 totaling over $4 billion. The president of Germany, Roman Herzog, and Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel presented China's foreign minister with a list of political detainees; Chancellor Kohl stressed the universality of human rights, but undercut these moves by stating that different levels of economic development and varying cultural traditions had to be taken into account. Demonstrators were kept away from Jiang, as the German government tried to prevent a replay of Li Peng's visit in 1994 which was cut short by protests. With economic and political relations on track, Kohl planned another visit to China in mid-November.

In the weeks preceding Jiang Zemin's meeting with President Clinton in New York, Canada's prime minister, Jean Chretien, welcomed Li Peng to Montreal in mid-October as a featured speaker at a conference of the Canada China Business Council. Canada's policy towards China was similar to that of the U.S. and Europe, discreetly raising human rights in official discussions and U.N. fora, while concentrating on improving relations through "constructive engagement." In an even more subdued way, Japan followed a similar approach. (See Japan chapter.)

By the end of 1995, Beijing had successfully insulated its economic and political relations and ambitions from being seriously affected by its human rights record. For the most part, the Chinese government escaped accountability for its egregious violations of human rights, even as it sought recognition as an emerging superpower. No government was willing to exert the consistent political and economic pressure needed to compel the Chinese government to comply with its international obligations. The prospect of instability and greater repression in the wake of Deng Xiaoping's passing, however, raised doubts about the long-term prospects for economic reform and development of the rule of law in China without greater attention to human rights by the international community.

Prominent among those issues is the Court of Final Appeal described in the 1984 Joint Declaration between China and the U.K. that was to replace the Privy Council in London as the court of last resort. The agreement provided that the Court "may as required invite judges from other common law jurisdictions to sit, "a provision designed both to ensure an adequate pool of high-caliber judges and to insulate the court from political pressure after the transition. A 1991 bilateralagreement that only one foreign judge would be able to sit on at most half of the Court's sessions drew protests from legislators and the bar, as did the restriction of the Court's jurisdiction to exclude "acts of state," a common law term that might be expansively interpreted by China to include a large range of cases involving government interests. Nevertheless, in June of this year China and the U.K. agreed on implementing legislation that would preserve the limit of one foreign judge, the acts of state exception, and delay the establishment of the Court until the 1997 transition. This foreclosed the possibility that some of the jurisdictional uncertainty might be resolved in advance through the precedent of the Court's own decisions. The Legislative Council narrowly approved the legislation in July of this year, but key political figures such as Martin Lee, the leader of the Democratic Party, remained convinced that the compromise has jeopardized Hong Kong's judicial independence, and appeared eager to try to amend the legislation. The government, for its part, argued that these features do not threaten the Court's independence and that the alternative was to risk having China dissolve the Court and fashion its own institution in 1997.

The power of this argument illustrated how profoundly Beijing's threats have begun to shape the future of the territory. The Chinese government has promised to appoint a temporary legislature in place of the one elected this year, and it is this appointed body that would be called upon to approve the most basic institutional arrangements for the post-colonial era, including confirming the judges for the Court of Final Appeal. The Chinese government has also threatened to repeal the 1991 Bill of Rights, and it has so far refused to report to the U.N. Human Rights Committee on the application of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a breach of its bilateral obligation to ensure the covenant's application to Hong Kong. The Chinese government has also threatened to dissolve the lower tiers of elected representation in Hong Kong, the municipal councils and district boards, and in October a Beijing-appointed committee declared that the system of executive appointments to these bodies should be reintroduced.

While strenuously lobbying for its own legislative proposals, the Hong Kong government opposed initiatives by individual legislators, such as a trio of anti-discrimination bills introduced by appointed member Anna Wu. Private discrimination, particularly in employment, remained endemic in Hong Kong, where job advertisements frequently specified age, sex and even race as qualifications. Arguing that the measures were too radical, the government proposed its own more limited version and successfully lobbied to have Wu's drafts voted down in July. Other legislators promised to reintroduce the bills. The governor also refused to allow the legislature to consider a bill for an equal opportunity commission.

The Hong Kong government made progress in reforming the archaic colonial laws of the colony to be in conformity with the Bill of Rights, although the pace and extent of reform did not satisfy many human rights advocates. One example was the government's striking out a number of restrictive subsidiary laws enacted under the authority of the Emergency Regulations Ordinance, including provisions that allowed the government to censor and suppress publications. The government, however, left untouched the ordinance itself, which permits the governor to declare an emergency and issue laws and regulations on any subject, leaving open the prospect that new regulations will be promulgated under its authority. In October, a Beijing-appointed committee called for reinstatement of the emergency regulations, of the governor's power of censorship, of the former ban on societies not registered with the police, and an end to the Bill of Rights' power to override legislation.

Other government-proposed legislative amendments scrapped or modified licensing, permit or registration procedures for demonstrations, megaphones, public performances, and news organizations. A bill introduced by legislator Martin Lee passed in December 1994, repealing a section of the Film Censorship Ordinance that had been used to censor Taiwanese films, such as a documentary on the pro-democracy movement, because they might "seriously damage relations with other territories." The government submitted to China its proposed legislative amendments to the Official Secrets Act, and it planned to submit amended laws on treason and sedition to the legislature later next year.

Self-censorship in the media continued to be a serious problem, albeit difficult to document. A poll of journalists conducted in February by the University of Hong Kong revealed that more than 80 percent believed that self-censorship took place occasionally or frequently and that press freedom would decrease during the next three years. The Hong KongJournalists Association reported several potential incidents of self-censorship. ATV television in December 1994 dropped the popular talk show News Tease after its confrontational host, Wong Yuk-man, was accused by pro-Beijing newspapers of being "anti-China" and "hostile." In January, Hong Kong's two land-based television stations refused to air a British Broadcasting Corporation documentary on the sale of organs from executed prisoners in China. In May, the South China Morning Post abruptly canceled the popular and controversial "Lily Wong" cartoon strip, citing financial reasons but refusing to run the balance of cartoons that were already paid for. One of the last strips had shown a Chinese official assuring an observer that there will be no future shortage of organs for sale from executed prisoners because "by then it'll be 1997 and we got all the democrats and over a dozen cartoonists!"

Pressure on journalists took less subtle forms as well. Both Xi Yang, a reporter for Ming Pao, and Gao Yu, a free-lance contributor to Hong Kong publications, continued to languish in Chinese prisons for their reporting, which the Chinese government prosecuted as "espionage" (see China chapter). The Chinese government continued to deny entry to journalists it considered untrustworthy.

The Chinese government also tried to control access to the mainland by perceived political opponents. In July, it denied an entry permit to Cheung Man-Kwong, a member of the government's Education Commission and a Democratic Party legislator. Rosie Young, the chairwoman of the commission, canceled its planned official visit to China in response. Later in the month, China banned Martin Lee from attending a law seminar.

Serious abuses against Vietnamese asylum-seekers took place again this year, as Hong Kong authorities increasingly resorted to force in connection with deportation procedures and camp inmates resisted ever more violently. The most serious incident took place on May 20, when police and correctional service officers moved some 1,500 asylum-seekers from a section of the Whitehead Detention Centre to High Island in preparation for deportation. The officials fired 3,250 tear gas canisters during a period of eight hours, also using truncheons and mace against the Vietnamese. The asylum-seekers responded initially by barricading themselves, but as the assault progressed, neighboring sections hurled home-made spears and projectiles at the oncoming force. Nearly 170 officers were treated for injuries, most for heat exhaustion, and seventy-eight Vietnamese reported injuries from batons, gas canisters, mace and shields, in addition to the hundreds who suffered the effects of tear gas, among them women, children and babies. Among the injured was a sixty-five-year-old woman who was sprayed with mace, kicked in the ribs and struck by a truncheon, and a baby who had fainted from the tear gas and was accidentally scalded when an inexperienced officer tried to revive her under what turned out to be a hot water tap. Few Vietnamese complained to the authorities, however, because of the experience of almost 400 other asylum-seekers who pressed complaints of injury and loss of property from a similar raid that took place on April 7, 1994; few of these complainants had yet had their request for legal aid processed, and many were deported in the meantime.

Despite the massive use of tear gas and the injuries produced during the raid, the Hong Kong government refused to appoint a commission of inquiry, or indeed, to release video footage of the operation. It relied on its own account of events and a sketchy report by four independent monitors, two of whom questioned the use of tear gas. In the next operation, on June 8, authorities again deployed large amounts of tear gas in response to what they said was violent resistance, a claim disputed by Vietnamese who witnessed the events. Independent monitors arrived after the conflict was virtually over, as the authorities did not notify them that disturbances had caused police and correctional officers to move in ahead of the scheduled time. Incidents of violence by both officials and Vietnamese continued to plague camp transfers and deportations, and the authorities continued to incarcerate Vietnamese whom they deemed "troublemakers" or "protesters" without any legal hearing or review in punitive detention facilities such as Victoria Prison. In July, Vietnamese brought allegations that camp guards had beaten two Vietnamese youths during an otherwise peaceful demonstration of children protesting the decision to terminate secondary schooling for asylum-seekers; officials denied the allegations but again refused to release videotapes they had made of the incident.

Hong Kong remains one of the most hospitable environments in the region for local human rights and civil liberties advocates. In October, approximately a dozen nongovernmental organizations lobbied and observed GreatBritain's report to the U.N. Human Rights Committee on its application to Hong Kong of the ICCPR. To emphasize the urgency of China assuming the reporting requirement, the Legislative Council also dispatched a delegation to the Geneva hearing.

The government continued to restrict press access to detention centers for Vietnamese asylum-seekers, and in August banned reporters from observing deportation actions as well. Lawyers for asylum-seekers continued to have access to their clients, but under highly restricted conditions.

The Role of the International Community

The U.S. administration tended to frame its interest in Hong Kong in terms of achieving a "smooth transition," a term raised repeatedly by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kent Wiedemann before a House hearing on July 27. The administration generally supported Hong Kong government positions, from the electoral reforms to the compromise on the Court of Final Appeal, and tended to gloss over human rights issues and the Chinese government's threats to reconstitute basic governmental arrangements in favor of expressing confidence in the territory's future. Members of Congress were more forceful in reflecting the concerns raised by Hong Kong residents and legislators, with Senator Craig Thomas and Representatives Benjamin Gilman and Howard Berman taking particular interest in transitional arrangements and the continuity of the legislature.

The administration continued to support Hong Kong's deportation policy regarding Vietnamese asylum-seekers and expressed no concern at the increasingly forceful measures used and the violence they provoked. It was taken by surprise when a legislative measure to facilitate U.S. resettlement of boat people proposed by Representative Chris Smith passed the House by a wide margin. The measure, premised on concerns that the screening process to identify genuine refugees was flawed or corrupt, would have made reintegration assistance for returnees in Vietnam conditional on the re-screening of the more than 40,000 Vietnamese asylum-seekers in the region for determination of their refugee status. The bill had an immediate effect in both Asia and Washington: voluntary repatriation dropped sharply as asylum-seekers waited to see the fate of the legislation, and the administration then produced an alternative proposal whereby Vietnamese who volunteered to return home would be eligible for resettlement screening by U.S. officials in Vietnam.

The Sino-British agreement over the Court of Final Appeals marked one of the first significant points of cooperation between the two countries since Governor Patten's proposals for electoral reform in 1993. At an October meeting the foreign ministers of China and the U.K. agreed on further measures, including the establishment of liaison structures between Chinese officials and Hong Kong government offices and civil servants, an agreement to resolve disputes over port development, and a committee to oversee the transition ceremonies. Critical issues such as the survival of the current legislature, however, did not come up at the talks, although Britain did agree to provide China with approximately $150 million in soft infrastructure loans. In September, Governor Patten mentioned that Britain ought to give the 3.2 million holders of British Dependent Territories Citizen passports in Hong Kong the right of abode in Britain, a proposal immediately ruled out by Home Secretary Michael Howard.

At the conclusion of its hearing in October, the U.N. Human Rights Committee told a joint U.K.-Hong Kong government delegation that it considered China obligated to continue to report on the application of the ICCPR to the territory, and called on the delegation to return next year to explain exactly how this responsibility would be transferred. Members of the committee stated that China should maintain Hong Kong's Bill of Rights and the recently elected legislature, and also criticized the British administration's treatment of Vietnamese asylum-seekers.

The government renewed its crackdown on freedom of expression with the arrest of two journalists and an office assistant from the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) in March 1995. The journalists, Ahmad Taufik and Eko Maryadi, both officers of AJI, and staff member Danang Kukuh Wardoyo were charged with "spreading hatred against the government" and publishing the AJI newsletter, Independen, without a government license. Independen was cited by the prosecution for printing articles critical of President Soeharto and other government officials. In September 1995, Taufik and Maryadi were sentenced to two years and eight months each in prison; Danang Kukuh Wardoyo earlier received a sentence of twenty months.

Also in September, Tri Agus Susanto, a journalist who edited a newsletter for the Pijar Foundation, a Jakarta-based nongovernmental activist organization, was sent to prison for two years after being convicted of insulting the president. The newsletter, Kabar dari Pijar, had published an article in 1994 quoting a human rights lawyer's criticisms of Soeharto.

Freedom of expression was also curbed through the break-up of seminars and other public discussions. For example, in June 1995, the police broke up a seminar on democracy and detained seven people, including the sole speaker, Robert Hefner, an American professor from Boston University; they were held overnight for questioning.

Gag orders were issued in an attempt to silence controversial speakers, such as Abdurrahman Wahid, leader of the largest Islamic organization, Nahdatul Ulama, who was banned twice from giving speeches in East Java. Coordinating Minister for Political Affairs and Security Soesilo Soedarman stated in June 1995 that the government would pass new regulations on permits for public speaking, declaring that many of the bans imposed by security forces represented an effort to prevent actions that might jeopardize national stability.

The government tried to prosecute some of its most outspoken critics. Sri Bintang Pamungkas, a parliamentarian from the United Development Party, was charged with "defaming the president" for a lecture he delivered in Berlin in April 1995. The lecture coincided with demonstrations against Soeharto, who was visiting Germany at the time. In October, it was announced that the case would come to trial in November. In May, the president issued an executive order terminating Bintang's term as a member of parliament, and he was banned from all foreign travel. Bintang filed a lawsuit challenging the international travel ban in July; in a separate suit, he demanded reinstatement in the parliament. As of November, neither case had yet been heard.

Similar tactics were used against Permadi, a lawyer, NGO activist and mystic who was accused of blasphemy for remarks he made about the Prophet Mohammed during a 1994 seminar. He was arrested in May 1995, tried and convicted in September and released on a technicality immediately after the verdict. It was widely believed that his arrest and conviction stemmed more from critical remarks he made about government leaders than from his references to Islam. George Aditjondro, a lecturer at Satya Wacana University and frequent critic of government policy in East Timor was accused in April 1995 of insulting the government during a lecture he gave in 1994 at the Indonesian Islamic University in Yogyakarta. When the charges were announced, Aditjondro was in Australia as a guest lecturer and Canberra said it had no plans to return Aditjondro.

In a positive development of at least symbolic value, the Jakarta Administrative Court ruled in May that the ban by Minister of Information Harmoko on the popular magazine Tempo in June 1994 was arbitrary and illegal. Harmoko, backed by Soeharto, said he would appeal the verdict at a higher court. The Semarang (Central Java) AdministrativeCourt made a similarly courageous ruling that dissident Arief Budiman, sacked by Satya Wacan University for his outspokeness, had been fired illegally.

In a move apparently aimed at quelling complaints about the government's limits on openness, the government announced in August 1995 that it planned to abolish the practice of requiring permits for public gatherings, including political gatherings. It said that police notification would still be required, and a 1965 law on political activities still gave the government great discretion in defining and repressing "political gatherings."

In an effort to dampen criticism of its worker rights record, the government implemented various labor reforms announced in 1994, including an increase in the minimum daily wage which took effect in April 1995. But these reforms failed to address the core issues of the denial of freedom of association and the widespread intervention of the military in peaceful labor disputes.

In May, Mochtar Pakpahan, chairman of the banned Serikat Buruh Sejahtera Indonesia (SBSI, or Prosperous Workers Union), an independent labor union, was released from prison while an appeal was pending with the Supreme Court. Pakpahan had been arrested in 1994 and sentenced to four years in prison in January 1995. He was charged under Article 160 of the Penal Code with inciting a riot in conjunction with a huge rally in Medan, Sumatra, in April 1994, although he was not even in the area at the time. The Supreme Court overturned Pakpahan's conviction in October 1995. Other SBSI leaders sentenced for their alleged involvement in the Medan riot were also released.

Throughout the year, SBSI and other independent labor organizations were harassed, unable to organize meetings without military interference, and detained and interrogated.

There was no perceptible change in the widespread involvement by the security forces in labor negotiations or peaceful demonstrations by workers. For example, a strike and demonstration by workers at the Great River Garment Company took place in Bogor, West Java, in July 1995. Security forces used sticks to beat demonstrators and prevent workers from reaching the nearby provincial parliamentary compound where they planned to meet with representatives after attempts at negotiation had failed. Police later charged seven students-members of a nongovernmental labor rights organization, Pusat Perjuangan Buruh Indonesia (PPBI or Center for Worker's Struggle)-with instigating and organizing the protests. As of November, their trials had not yet taken place.

In a surprise move in May 1995, the Supreme Court ordered the release of eight individuals convicted and sentenced for the torture and murder of Marsinah, a young labor organizer. The defendants were all company staff at the watch factory where Marsinah worked before her abduction and murder in 1993. Indonesian human rights groups had long suspected military involvement in the murder. The Supreme Court's decision prompted a reopening of the investigation into the case. The police finally named five new suspects, but did not reveal whether any of them were members of the military.

In October, the chief of staff of the armed forces, Lt. Gen. Soeyono, began warning of the "latent threat" of communism, saying that the communist-inspired "formless organizations" were gaining in influence, using the struggle for human rights and democracy as their cover. Others in the government and military picked up the theme, and by the year's end, it seemed as though a witch hunt of known dissidents might be underway.

Human rights conditions in East Timor deteriorated significantly following the APEC conference in Indonesia in November 1994. There were several riots and demonstrations early in 1995, all of which were broken up violently by the Indonesian military. The most egregious case occurred in Liquica, outside of Dili, on January 12, when six East Timorese civilians were shot and killed by Indonesian troops.

Initially the army reported that six guerrillas had been killed in cross fire during an army clash with a Fretilin rebel group. This report was contradicted by local clergy, who said that the victims were innocent civilians. Internationalattention to the killings spurred President Soeharto to order a military investigation, and the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas) announced it would conduct its own investigation. Both the military's report and the Komnas inquiry, announced in March 1995, concluded that the six men had been summarily executed. But the military was adamant in insisting that the six men were guerrillas, while Komnas maintained that the victims were all civilians who had been tortured prior to being killed. A lieutenant and a private under his command were tried by a military court; in June 1995, they received sentences of four years and six months and four years in prison respectively. However, the soldiers were punished not for the killings, but for violating an order from a superior and for failing to report the incident.

In September, riots broke out in Maliana and in Dili, sparked by religious and ethnic tensions. Dili's Roman Catholic bishop, Carlos Belo, said an underlying cause was the government's failure to address the underlying problems in East Timor, a view echoed by Komnas.

In the Timika area of Irian Jaya, a remote province dominated by copper and gold mining interests, a series of incidents took place between October 1994 and May 1995, involving the detention, torture, killing and disappearance of indigenous