Human Rights Developments

Defending Human Rights

The Work of Human Rights Watch

The Role of the International Community

Staff and other representatives of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division travelled during the year to Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, and Yemen. The missions were multifocused, involving research, coordination and cooperative work with local human rights activists and lawyers, and dialogue with government officials wherever possible. Thematically, the major concerns of Human Rights Watch included violations of freedom of expression and association, women's rights, the absence of due process in legal proceedings in civilian and military courts, and minority rights and statelessness. In Algeria and Lebanon, the focus included accountability for past human rights abuses, including "disappearances" and extrajudicial executions at the hands of state agents and armed militia groups. Human Rights Watch covered from the field the Israeli military withdrawal from occupied south Lebanon and closely monitored and publicized subsequent developments, including the kidnapping of Lebanese civilians by Hizballah operatives. In Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip Human Rights Watch investigated excessive and indiscriminate use of force by Israeli security services in clashes with Palestinian civilians, failures to protect civilians by Palestinian security forces, and attacks on civilians by civilians.

Human Rights Watch's requests for access to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Syria, some of them longstanding, were all pending with their respective governments at this writing.

Human Rights Watch representatives presented concerns to governments in the region, and met with senior government officials in Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Israel and Kuwait, as well as with officials in the Palestinian Authority. In Egypt and Israel, Human Rights Watch brought its concerns about detention, torture, and prison conditions to the ministries of justice. In Iran, a Human Rights Watch researcher met with the judge presiding over the trial of thirteen Iranian Jews in Shiraz to discuss due process and fair trial issues: It was the first time since 1979 that a revolutionary court judge had accepted to meet with a representative of an international human rights organization. In Kuwait, Human Rights Watch met with Ministry of Interior officials to discuss that ministry's discriminatory treatment of the Bidun, Kuwait's stateless long-term residents, and met with parliamentarians to express concerns about proposed legislation which discriminated against women and Bidun, and restricted freedom of expression. Human Rights Watch observed the military court trials in Lebanon of former South Lebanon Army soldiers and officers as well as civilians who were charged with criminal offenses under Lebanese law for contact with Israel, and collected information from Lebanese families whose relatives were known or believed to be "disappeared" in Israel or Syria.

In January 2000 Human Rights Watch wrote to the U.N. Security Council urging that the sanctions in force against Iraq be radically restructured to remove restrictions on non-military trade and investment while tightening controls on Iraq's ability to import weapons-related goods. The letter was accompanied by a memorandum addressing the impact of the sanctions on the humanitarian situation in Iraq. Human Rights Watch also called on the Security Council to set up an international tribunal to try top Iraqi leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The letter acknowledged the high degree of responsibility of the Iraqi government for the unfolding humanitarian emergency, but insisted that the United States and other powers also face up to their share of the responsibility and take action to improve conditions.

Together with five other international organizations and religious groups, Human Rights Watch in March and August again urged the Security Council to address the grave humanitarian consequences of the sanctions, and in September Human Rights Watch wrote to both the Security Council and the government of Iraq setting out urgent steps necessary to alleviate the humanitarian crisis.

Human Rights Watch did not forget that other war crimes or crimes against humanity had been committed in the region and that to date no one has been held accountable in courts of law with local or international jurisdiction. It was eighteen years ago, in September 1982, that at least 700 to 800 Palestinians, and possibly as many as several thousand, were slaughtered in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut by the Israeli-armed and -allied Lebanese Phalange (Kata'eb) militia while nearby Israel Defense Forces (IDF) personnel looked on and did nothing to stop the sixty-two-hour indiscriminate carnage. In December 1999, we wrote to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to condemn the appointment of Maj. Gen. (Reserves) Amos Yaron as director-general of Israel's Ministry of Defense and urge his immediate dismissal from public service. While serving as an IDF division commander during Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, his actions and omissions facilitated the massacre in the camps. By all accounts, the perpetrators of this indiscriminate slaughter were members of the Phalange (or Kata'eb, in Arabic) militia, a Lebanese force that was armed by and closely allied to Israel since the outbreak of Lebanon's civil war in 1975, but the killings were carried out in an area under IDF control. An IDF forward command post, commanded by Amos Yaron, was situated on the roof of a multi-story building located some 200 meters southwest of the Shatila camp.

Human Rights Watch noted in the letter that the Sabra and Shatila massacre was a grave violation of international humanitarian law and a crime against humanity, and urged that General Yaron-as well as the other Israelis and Lebanese with direct or indirect responsibility for the killings-should face criminal investigation and prosecution. Human Rights Watch also sent a letter to Lebanese president Emile Lahoud that raised the same point and inquired about legal or administrative measures that the government of Lebanon initiated or was contemplating with respect to investigation and prosecution of Lebanese citizens who are known or suspected to have had direct responsibility for the killings in Sabra and Shatilla. Human Rights Watch did not receive replies from either government.

In the lead up to the February parliamentary elections in Iran, Human Rights Watch issued a short briefing on current human rights conditions. Noting that the atmosphere surrounding the election campaign was notably freer than at the time of the last elections in March 1996, Human Rights Watch pointed to a number of human rights issues as still impeding a free and fair election in the Islamic Republic, and said little had changed in the legal framework relating to the enjoyment of rights in Iran.

In March, Human Rights Watch published the findings of international observers who attended the trial of Tunisia's outspoken human rights lawyer, Radhia Nasraoui, and twenty co-defendants, most of them students, on charges related to membership in or activities on behalf of an unauthorized left-wing political association, the Tunisian Communist Workers Party (Parti Communiste des Ouvriers Tunisiens, PCOT). The trial dramatized many aspects of Tunisia's human rights situation. In addition to government measures to harass and impede the work of human rights defenders like Nasraoui, the case illustrated the use of repressive laws to imprison Tunisians who engage in peaceful political activity deemed critical of the country's present government. It also demonstrated the commonplace nature of torture during interrogations in Tunisia and the judicial system's disregard of this abuse and its failure to provide defendants with basic guarantees of a fair trial.

In advance of the Israeli withdrawal from occupied south Lebanon, Human Rights Watch disseminated a briefing paper that identified the human rights issues that were largely being neglected by the international media, and briefed Israeli and international journalists in Jerusalem.

In its 38-page report, "Promises Betrayed: Denial of Rights of Bidun, Women, and Freedom of Expression," released in October, Human Rights Watch detailed Kuwaiti laws and practices that systematically discriminate against women and stateless Bidun, and that criminalize free expression by journalists, academics, and writers. Human Rights Watch called on Kuwait to amend its Penal Code and Printing and Publications Law to protect freedom of expression and to revoke laws that discriminate against women and long-term non-citizens of Kuwait.

Also in October Human Rights Watch published the results of a week-long fact-finding investigation into the unlawful use of force against civilians by security and police forces in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. The organization condemned a pattern of repeated Israeli use of excessive lethal force during clashes between its security forces and Palestinian demonstrators in situations where demonstrators were unarmed and posed no threat of death or serious injury to the security forces or to others. In cases that Human Rights Watch investigated where gunfire by Palestinian security forces or armed protesters was a factor, use of lethal force by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was indiscriminate and not directed at the source of the threat. Human Rights Watch also documented a pattern of IDF disregard for and targeting of Palestinian medical personnel and ambulances evacuating or treating injured civilians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip In the report, Human Rights Watch also criticized the failure of the Palestinian police to act consistently to prevent armed Palestinians from shooting at Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) from positions where civilians were present and thus endangered by the Israeli response.

In a six-page briefing published in October as the first round of People's Assembly elections were getting underway in Egypt, Human Rights Watch noted several factors not conducive to a free and fair election. These included restrictions on freedom of association and assembly, including the ability to form political parties and to hold public rallies as part of an electoral campaign; arrests and prosecution before military and state security courts of political opponents, in particular members of the Muslim Brotherhood; restrictions on freedom of expression, including banning of books and newspapers and the use of criminal charges against journalists; and harassment of human rights activists and others preparing to monitor the elections.

Throughout the year Human Rights Watch sought to defend those who were persecuted for their human rights work and to protect and enlarge the political space in which independent institutions of civil society could express diverse-and dissenting- views. In the case of Tunisia, Human Rights Watch spoke out repeatedly in opposition to the government's systematic efforts to intimidate that country's human rights activists and to silence its most outspoken writers. In Egypt, Human Rights Watch intervened to criticize a restrictive NGO law and to condemn threatened prosecution of activists under military orders. Following the Palestinian Bar Association's decision to remove the names of Palestinian lawyers associated with human rights groups from its list of practicing lawyers, Human Rights Watch intervened to urge the Palestinian Authority to ensure that human rights lawyers did not face threats, intimidation or professional sanctions because of their human rights activities. In Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Yemen Human Rights Watch wrote to the governments to protest arrests or harassment of journalists, writers, artists and academic, and to urge that the fundamental right to freedom of expression be respected.

The division also devoted time and resources to advocacy efforts within the United Nations. For example, in July Human Rights Watch attended the U.N. Human Rights Committee's review of Kuwait's implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, where we briefed committee members on the results of our investigation into violations of women's rights, rights of Bidun residents, and freedom of expression. In October, we called for the creation of an independent panel of experts to investigate human rights violations committed during clashes between Israelis and Palestinians that began on September 29, and urged the creation of a standing body ofindependent international criminal justice investigators to be available for deployment by the U.N. at short notice whenever the need arises for independent, impartial investigations of a criminal justice nature.

In our continuing efforts to maximize communication with activists and others throughout the region, we translated public statements and press releases into Arabic and made these widely available. The Arabic section of Human Rights Watch's web-site continued to grow and provided access to key documents produced by the organization in its global coverage of human rights violations. Traffic to this section tripled during the year, up from about 650 page-views per day during 1999 to about 2,000 pages per day in September 2000. During September close to 250 users each day visited this section of the web-site.