Reports

The Vietnamese government's recent detention of two prominent senior monks is the latest step in its campaign to suppress the Unified Buddhist Church, the main Buddhist organization in south and central Vietnam prior to unification of the country in 1975.

As the multinational force prepared to turn over operations to the U.N. Mission in Haiti (UNMIH) on March 31, 1995, political tensions increased and far from having brought stability, the U.S.-led force pointed only to a fragile security that impending parliamentary and presidential elections may rupture.

Economic and political changes in Russia have left many Russians staggering under the burdens of rising unemployment, high rates of inflation, disappearing social services and the encroaching threats of corruption and organized crime.

Human Rights Watch opposes the imposition of the death penalty on all criminal offenders in all circumstances because of its inherent cruelty. In addition, Human Rights Watch is concerned that the death penalty is most often carried out in a discriminatory manner on racial, ethnic, religious or political grounds.

Prisoners in Japan face routine violations of human rights from the moment of arrest through the end of their prison term. After being apprehended, Japanese suspects are placed in police detention (daiyo-kangoku) where they face severe pressure, often involving physical abuse, in order to obtain confessions.

There has been a marked deterioration in relations between Albania and Greece since 1993. At the center of the dispute is the treatment of the Greek minority living in Albania and this report documents their situation.

In April 1992, China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) formally approved the “Resolution on the Construction of the Yangtze River Three Gorges Project,” marking the conclusion of decades of controversy within the Chinese leadership in favor of supporters of the world’s biggest-ever river dam project.

This is the first report by a human-rights organization about Egyptian prisons based on on-site inspections. Beginning on February 12, 1992, Middle East Watch inspected six prisons in an eight-day period. These facilities housed approximately 9,800 inmates, over twenty-seven percent of Egypt's prison population.

Abuses in East Timor, involving possible extrajudicial executions, torture, disappearances, unlawful arrests and detentions and denials of freedom of association, assembly and expression, continue unabated. The perpetrators are the police and army, as well as a group operating in civilian dress, locally known as “ninjas,” who operate as masked gangs reportedly organized by the military.

This report is the third in a series on the conflict in Chechnya. As the war in the breakaway republic enters its third month, Russian forces continue to commit gross abuses against the civilian population.

The perilous state of human rights in the Palestinian self-rule areas is among the key factors — along with continuing political violence, Jewish settlement activity and economic development — that will determine the long-term success of any peace process in the region.

This report is an urgent update on violations in a criminal trial of 19 men charged with crimes carrying the penalty of death, and was issued as the trial drew to a close after 16 months in court. In a detailed report released in August 1994 (see D611), we compiled the evidence that some, and likely all, of the defendants in case no.

The existence of confidential Chinese government blacklists barring overseas-based pro-democracy and human rights activists from returning to China has long been suspected by the exiled Chinese dissident community and other concerned observers. Until now, however, no conclusive documentary evidence confirming the operation of such a policy has ever come to light.

Since 1992, Egypt has faced continuing political violence and a corresponding rise in human rights abuses committed by both government security forces and armed Islamist militants.

The first in a series of reports that document violations of humanitarian law by all sides in the war in Chechnya, it describes how Russian forces have shown utter contempt for civilian lives in the breakaway republic of Chechnya.