Reports

This report examines gross human-rights abuses in Egypt: torture and long-term detention without charge or trial. It focuses particularly on the use of torture by officers and soldiers of the Ministry of Interior's General Directorate for State Security Investigation (SSI) during the period when political and security suspects are held in incommunicado detention.

Children have suffered greatly as a result of the conflict in Northern Ireland; of the almost 3,000 people who have lost their lives since 1969 in political violence associated with "The Troubles," many have been children killed by paramilitaries or by security forces. Moreover, children in the province are caught between two powerful groups - security forces and paramilitaries.

The May 24 Executive Order authorizing the summary repatriation of Haitian boat people is premised on the view, expressed by President Bush and other U.S. officials, that none of the Haitians risk political persecution upon return to Haiti. That view is principally based on surveys of repatriates conducted by State Department and Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officials.

Between May 29 and June 6, 1992, nine soldiers and one policeman were tried by military or police courts in Bali for their role in the massacre in East Timor on November 12, 1991 when the Indonesian army opened fire on a crowd of unarmed demonstrators. The trials were open to diplomatic observers and the press; the sentences were light, ranging from eight to eighteen months.

The Italian translator of The Satanic Verses, who was the victim of a knife attack last summer; a Peruvian journalist arrested during the recent coup; and numerous Burmese and Chinese writers imprisoned for their roles in their nations' pro-democracy movements are among the writers recognized this year by the Fund for Free Expression for their courage in the face of political persecution.

Despite the reforms following the 1989 revolution in Romania, the laws regulating prison life are largely unchanged and many of the prison personnel remain the same. Not surprisingly, with decades of neglect and the current economic crisis, prison facilities are sorely lacking in basic necessities and overcrowding contributes to violence among inmates.

Examining human rights abuses committed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and its agents during the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws in the four U.S. states that border Mexico, Human Rights Watch finds that beatings, rough physical treatment, and racially motivated verbal abuse are routine during arrests. Unjustified shootings, torture, and sexual abuse, also occur.

The current map of the former Soviet Union is pockmarked with violent conflict, primarily in Transcaucasia, Moldova and Tajikistan. Some of the conflicts are longstanding territorial disputes inherited from the Soviet and pre-Soviet periods; others are born of governmental power struggles that are peculiar to post-putsch politics.

Prisoners in the U.K., which has the highest per capita rate of imprisonment in Western Europe, suffer from unsanitary conditions, extremely poor conditions for remand prisoners, and the lack of useful educational or work activities.

In Andhra Pradesh, one of India’s poorest and least developed states, conflict between government forces and an armed insurgent group known as the Peoples’ War Group, has resulted in massive human rights violations.

This report is the result of an unprecedented joint effort between two leading citizen advocacy organizations: a human rights group, Human Rights Watch; and an environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council. As one who has been for 14 years privileged to be involved with both, I have long believed that a cooperative effort such as this one will enhance both causes significantly.

The people of Peru are caught in a deadly crossfire between government forces and a brutal insurgent movement, chiefly Sendero Luminoso, as they battle for control of the country.

Saddam Hussein's record of brutally suppressing even mild dissent is well-known. When the March 1991 uprising confronted his regime with the most serious internal challenge it had ever faced, government forces responded with atrocities on a predictably massive scale. The human rights repercussions continue to be felt throughout the country.

After nearly 70 years of South African colonial rule, an armed struggle for independence began along the country’s northern border in 1966. South African military and paramilitary forces were deployed to prevent intervention from the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO).

On May 7, 1992, an Egyptian administrative court decided to uphold last year's decree dissolving the Egyptian branch of the Arab Women's Solidarity Association (AWSA), a prominent women's rights organization. The court refused to grant an injunction that would have allowed AWSA to continue operating while it awaits the outcome an appeal on the merits of the government decree.