How the U Visa Builds Trust, Counters Fear, and Promotes Community Safety
The 50-page report, “‘We Need U’: How the U Visa Builds Trust, Counters Fear, and Promotes Community Safety,” finds that the administration’s deportation policies undermine federal visa programs that provide a pathway for crime victims to obtain legal residency when they cooperate with law enforcement. Changed enforcement guidance, such as allowing Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials to apprehend people in previously safe places like courthouses and health centers, is a strong deterrent for immigrants who might otherwise report crime to police or seek a protective order.
Unaccompanied Children Detained by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service
The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) violates the rights of hundreds of unaccompanied children each year, some as young as eight, contrary to international law as well as INS regulations. Children are arrested, imprisoned, and deported, all by the same agency charged with protecting their rights.
In this document, Human Rights Watch seeks to raise concerns about some disturbing trends in the protection of refugees it has observed in the course of researching human rights abuses.
The National People's Congress took the historic step at its annual session in March of eliminating crimes of "counterrevolution" from the criminal code, a step that at first glance seemed to indicate movement toward greater respect for the rule of law.
U.S Companies and the Production of Antipersonnel Mines
Despite the Clinton Administration's attempts to lay claim to the mantle of global leadership in the effort to ban antipersonnel landmines, the United States has refused to ban or even formally suspend the production of antipersonnel mines. From 1985 through 1996, the U.S. produced more than four million new antipersonnel mines.
Rapid, unplanned growth of Brazil’s urban centers—11 of its cities are home to more than a million people each—has been accompanied in most cases by soaring crime rates and public dissatisfaction with the criminal justice system. In several states, authorities responded with policies that tolerate or promote grave violations of the rights of criminal suspects.
Eastern Slavonia, the only remaining Serb-held region of Croatia, was scheduled to revert to Croatian control by July 15, 1997. Some 120,000 to 150,000 Serbs who lived in that region will come under the authority of their bitter opponent during the war. While the transition of authority in Eastern Slavonia was designed to be carried out peacefully under the auspices of a U.N.
A two-person Human Rights Watch delegation traveled to Guatemala in January 1997. The visit focused on reports of the discriminatory treatment of trade unionists at the assembly plants there of the U.S.-based corporation Phillips-Van Heusen (PVH), and allegations of obstacles posed by the company and the Guatemalan labor ministry to the union's recognition for purposes of collective bargaining.
Human Rights Watch has uncovered evidence that the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) had an extensive and sophisticated chemical weapons program prior to the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991; that the army of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) inherited much of this program; and that the army of the Republic of Bosnia and Hercegovina produced crude chemical munitions during the Bos
China is increasingly exercising its authority over the territory of Hong Kong on a number of issues and has directed, for instance, that all the Vietnamese be cleared from Hong Kong before July 1. Such pressure has spurred the Hong Kong government to redouble its efforts to resolve the Vietnamese situation, which has embroiled the territory in controversy for over twenty years.
Nearly 100,000 people, most of them Rwandans once resident in the camps of eastern Zaire, have fled to a site near Ubundu, where their further flight is blocked by the Zaire River. Among them are thousands of unarmed noncombatants as well as soldiers of the former Rwandan army (ex-FAR, Forces Armées Rwandaises) and militia responsible for the genocide of Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994.
This report documents a pattern of torture—according to internationally recognized definitions of the term—and mistreatment of security detainees by the Anti-Terror Branch (Teror 'le Mucadele Subesi) of the Security Directorate of Turkey’s Ministry of the Interior.
Disproportionate Sentences for New York Drug Offenders
In the past decade, the U.S. Congress and many state legislatures have established harsh criminal penalties for a wide range of drug offenses, often using the vehicle of mandatory minimum prison sentences. As a consequence, drug offenders in the United States face sentences that are uniquely severe among constitutional democracies.
A two-person Human Rights Watch delegation traveled to Guatemala in January 1997. The visit focused on reports of the discriminatory treatment of trade unionists at the assembly plants there of the U.S.-based corporation Phillips-Van Heusen (PVH), and allegations of obstacles posed by the company and the Guatemalan labor ministry to the union’s recognition for purposes of collective bargaining.
