Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes Against Humanity in El Geneina, West Darfur, Sudan
The 218-page report, “‘The Massalit Will Not Come Home’: Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes Against Humanity in El Geneina, West Darfur, Sudan,” documents that the Rapid Support Forces, an independent military force in armed conflict with the Sudan military, and their allied mainly Arab militias, including the Third-Front Tamazuj, an armed group, targeted the predominantly Massalit neighborhoods of El Geneina in relentless waves of attacks from April to June. Abuses escalated again in early November. The attackers committed other serious abuses such as torture, rape, and looting. More than half a million refugees from West Darfur have fled to Chad since April 2023. As of late October 2023, 75 percent were from El Geneina.
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.
eginning in June 1994, the government of Iraq issued at least nine decrees that establish severe penalties, including amputation, branding and the death penalty for criminal offenses such as theft, corruption, currency speculation and military desertion.
Haiti faced its first opportunity for genuine, democratic elections since the 1990 contest that brought Pres. Aristide to office with the parliamentary and local elections held on June 25, 1995.
One year after President Clinton unconditionally renewed Most Favored Nation status for China and international pressure on China to improve its human rights practices dropped off dramatically, the Chinese government continues to impose tight controls on dissent and to engage in a pattern of systematic abuse of prisoners.
