Following the liberation of Kuwait, the thirst to avenge the horrors of the Iraqi occupation spawned a new round of human rights victims this time at Kuwaiti hands. Despite calls to defend human rights in rallying support for the war against Iraq, the reinstated Kuwaiti government has trampled on those rights at nearly every turn, often with the use of violence.
Ethnic hatred and violence directed against Gypsies in Romania has escalated dramatically since the 1989 revolution: rarely a month passed without another Gypsy village being attacked. Gypsy homes have been burned, their possessions destroyed, they have been chased from their villages, and often not allowed to return.
The government of President Alberto Fujimori has been seriously challenged by insurgent threat from Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA); both groups having been responsible for civilian casualties and other gross violations of the laws of war.
In 1989, Helsinki Watch severely criticized conditions in the Czech prison system. The criticism was in a report prepared by Professor Herman Schwartz, Chairman of the Human Rights Watch Prison Project Advisory Committee, and was based on numerous interviews in early 1988 with recently released prisoners.
In spite of a surge in human rights activity in Mexico during the past year, the human rights situation does not seem to have improved: the volume and severity of reported abuses remain unchanged.
On May 21, 1991, the Secretary General of the United Nations issued a public statement outlining in very broad terms the framework for a political settlement of the conflict in Afghanistan.
On August 16, 1991, a federal magistrate in San Antonio, Texas will rule on a request by the government of El Salvador to extradite César Vielman Joya Martínez, a former soldier in the intelligence unit of the First Infantry Brigade of the Salvadoran Army, for his alleged involvement in the murder of two young men in El Salvador in July 1989.
Ghana's ruling Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC), chaired by Flt. Lt. Jerry Rawlings, has claimed -- for the third time in as many years -- that Ghana has no political prisoners. In a radio interview on May 31, Secretary for Foreign Affairs Obed Asamoah, argued that some detainees -- whom he characterized as "subversives" -- are being kept in custody for their own good.
An analysis of the Soviet army’s use of lethal force against initially peaceful protestors in the Soviet Central Asian republic of Tadzhikistan in mid-February 1990, this report is based on numerous interviews with local sources conducted in the republic in May and November 1991.
Violence between separatist Sikh militants and government forces in Punjab has escalated to unprecedented levels, claiming thousands of civilian lives. Since 1984, the security forces have adopted increasingly brutal methods to stem the militant movement, resulting in widespread human rights violations.