Reports

Britain has historically been a society with great respect for the tradition of freedom of the press. In recent years, however, there has been a significant increase in restrictions on liberty. Not only have press freedoms been threatened with greater restrictions, but broadcasting has faced similar challenges, and the right to protest has been limited.

In 1992, 16 people died in the custody of police or gendarmes. An extraordinarily high percentage of these suspects were said by police to have committed suicide and three of the alleged suicides were children between the ages of 13 and 16.

In late November 1992, a long-simmering conflict broke out in the open over the leadership of the Batak Protestant Christian Congregation (Huria Kristen Batak Protestan or HKBP) in north Sumatra.

During the period of Ethiopian rule in Eritrea (1962-91), a systematic policy of denying educational freedoms to Eritreans was followed. This ranged beyond stifling freedom of thought to a sustained attempt to dismantle the educational system and block the emergence of a university serving Eritreans.

The vicious conflict in Kashmir, now in its fourth year, is characterized by the Indian army’s and other security forces’ blatant disregard for international norms of medical neutrality.

Landmines have rendered large areas of arable land and pasture, many roads, bridges, river banks, villages, and some important economic installations unfit for the people of Angola.

Bowing to intense pressure from the international community, President Milosevic released opposition leader Vuk Draskovic and his wife Danica from prison on July 9, 1993. Serbian authorities had held the couple for over a month for allegedly leading demonstrators to commit violent acts in the demonstration against the Parliament on June 1.

The first such report by a human rights organization including on-site inspections and extensive interviews with current inmates, Prison Conditions in Egypt documents appalling conditions and practices.

Throughout Peru’s twelve-year internal war, women have been the targets of sustained, frequently brutal violence committed by both parties to the armed conflict often for the purpose of punishing or dominating those believed to be sympathetic to the opposing side.

Just as the Iran-Iraq War was coming to an end in 1988, the Iraqi government and army embarked on a vengeful campaign against Kurdish villagers living in Iraqi Kurdistan. Taken from a Koranic verse, Anfal refers to "the plunder of the infidel," and evidently was intended to give the campaign the veneer of religious justification, though the Kurds are Muslim, and Iraq is a secular state. Using a similarly destructive pattern throughout northern Kurdistan, the Iraqi army first attacked a chosen village — often with chemical weapons — captured the villagers as they tried to flee, then pulverized their dwellings. Many villagers were later killed. The Kurdish village of Koreme serves as a case study of this campaign, showing how the policies of Saddam Hussein’s government were implemented. Some of Koreme’s captured men and boys were executed on the spot, the remainder were taken to a local army fort or Ba’ath Party office where they disappeared while in the hands of security agents. Surviving Koreme villagers — starving women, children and the elderly — were transferred by truck to bleak camps. Middle East Watch and Physicians for Human Rights conclude that the Iraqi government’s Anfal campaign, constituting murder, forcible disappearance, involuntary relocation, the refusal to provide minimal conditions of life to detainees, chemical weapons attacks against civilians, and the physical destruction of Kurdish villages, are at a minimum, crimes against humanity. Ultimately, they may form the basis for a case of genocide.

A year has passed since Prime Minister Demirel’s coalition government, committed to human rights reforms, took office in Turkey — a period long enough to produce significant change. But the promised reforms have not come about; on the contrary, killings, torture and other human rights abuses in Turkey have become significantly worse.

Political detainees in Syria have the distinction of being some of the most isolated in the world. Most have no contact whatsoever with their families; security services for their part, seldom acknowledge having them in their custody.

The question of accountability has become increasingly important around the world in recent years, as different states attempting to make a transition to democracy have struggled to achieve a balance between retribution and forgetfulness in the interests of national reconciliation.

With the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, world attention has focussed on the brutal warfare that erupted first in Croatia and, more recently, in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Most of the human rights violations being committed in both conflicts stem from the use of force and terror by Serbian authorities to assert control over territory and to expel or marginalize the non-Serbian population.

At the end of August, Tunisian military courts pronounced verdicts against 279 Islamists in the most closely watched trials to take place since 1987, when many of the same persons had been put on trial. The 1992 trials were seen as a test of the government's commitment to human rights at a time of growing repression that has affected not only the Islamist opposition, but much of civil society.