The 48-page report, “‘I Escaped with Only My Life:’ Abusive Forced Evictions in Pakistan,” documents widespread and abusive forced evictions that disproportionately affect the most economically and socially marginalized communities in Pakistan. The authorities have evicted thousands of people without adequate consultation, notice, compensation, resettlement assistance, or means of redress in violation of their basic rights.
Gao Yu, 51, one of China’s most prominent journalists, was sentenced to six years in prison on November 10, 1994, for “illegally providing state secrets to institutions outside [China’s] borders” in a series of four articles in Mirror Monthly and Overseas Chinese Daily, both Hong Kong-based publications.
Bolivia, one of the world’s leading producers of coca leaf and refined cocaine, is also the largest recipient of U.S. counter-narcotics aid. The aid has led to new legislation, institutions and antinarcotics strategies in Bolivia that are shaped by U.S. concerns and dependent on U.S. funding.
Throughout Pakistan employers forcibly extract labor from adults and children, restrict their freedom of movement, and deny them the right to negotiate the terms of their employment. Employers coerce such workers into servitude through physical abuse, forced confinement, and debt-bondage.
Human Rights Developments and the Need for Continued Pressure
Since 1990 we have documented an ongoing pattern of abuse in Burma, including arbitrary detention, denial of the right of freedom of expression and association, forced labor, abuses of humanitarian law in the course of military operations against insurgents, and discrimination against ethnic minorities.
Following the outbreak of the third phase of the Sri Lankan civil war on April 19, 1995, the Sri Lankan armed forces and the LTTE engaged in acts of violence that had by July claimed the lives of hundreds of civilians. Among these were a massacre of 42 Sinhalese villagers in eastern Sri Lanka by the LTTE on May 26; the killing of five Muslim civilians in northern Trincomalee district by soldiers on May 6; and on July 9, the deaths of over 100 persons, including at least 13 infants, in a bombing of a church crowded with refugees displaced by “Operation Leap Forward,” a major military offensive launched on the Jaffna Peninsula that day.
The creation of a system of faceless courts to prosecute those accused of terrorism—justified as a temporary emergency measure—stands out as anti-democratic and in violation of basic human rights principles. Together with the impunity granted to government forces who torture, rape, and murder citizens, justice under Fujimori is two-faced: benevolent to soldiers, punitive to civilians.
Millions of workers in Pakistan are held in contemporary forms of slavery. Throughout the country employers forcibly extract labor from adults and children, restrict their freedom of movement, and deny them the right to negotiate the terms of their employment. Employers coerce such workers into servitude through physical abuse, forced confinement, and debt-bondage.
This report focuses on Syria’s state security court and the continuing trials of individuals accused of membership in unauthorized political groups. It also examines the practice of torture in Syria, and the pressure and punishment placed on political prisoners after release.
On May 1, 1995, Croatian Army troops launched an offensive aimed at regaining control of Serb-held lands in western Slavonia, an area designated as a "United Nations Protected Area." By May 4, Croatian government troops had recaptured the area. During the week of May 8, we traveled to Croatia to assess the behavior of Croatian troops during and immediately after the offensive.
A Case-Study of Military Repression in Southeastern Nigeria
Two years after the annulment of the June 1993 presidential election, which was widely viewed to have been won by Chief Abiola, the Nigerian political climate was volatile and human rights violations pervasive. The repressive tactics of the government of Gen.
Rights Abuses Follow Renewed Foreign Aid Commitments
Since December 1994, there has been a notable deterioration in the human rights situation in Kenya, evidenced by Pres. Moi's crackdown against human rights activists, opposition politicians and internally displaced persons.
Trafficking of Nepali Girls and Women to India’s Brothels
Hundreds of thousands of women and children are employed in Indian brothels—many of them lured or kidnapped from Nepal and sold into conditions of virtual slavery. The victims of this international trafficking network routinely suffer serious physical abuse, including rape, beatings, arbitrary imprisonment and exposure to AIDS.
On April 8, 1995, senior Mexican army officers invited us to discuss the human rights situation in Chiapas and offered information on the internal investigations conducted by the army into several violent incidents of the 1994 Chiapas uprising of the Zapatista National Liberation Army and its suppression.
By early 1995, the international tribunal established by the U.N. to adjudicate war crimes and crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia had indicted 22 individuals for serious violations of humanitarian law, including the crime of genocide.