The 148-page report, “‘A Sense of Terror Stronger than a Bullet’: The Closing of North Korea 2018-2023,” documents the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK or North Korea) overbroad, excessive, and unnecessary measures during the Covid-19 pandemic, including quarantines and new restrictions on economic activity and freedom of movement. The government’s new measures have severely affected food security and the availability of products needed by North Koreans to survive that previously entered the country via formal or informal trade routes from China. United Nations Security Council sanctions from 2016 and 2017 limited most exports and some imports, harming the country’s economy as well as people’s ability to make a living and access food and essential goods.
In spite of the peace accord signed in October 1992 between government forces and RENAMO rebels, innocent civilians are maimed and killed by landmines in Mozambique on a daily basis.
While visiting over twenty prisons as well as lockups in at least five different cities throughout South Africa, we found significant improvements had been made since the political climate began to change in 1990.
A campaign to curb pornography has backfired dangerously in Canada, leading not toward its ostensible goal of gender equality, but to a weakening of fundamental liberties for women and gay men. The cornerstone of this campaign is R. v. Butler, an anti-pornography decision issued by the Canadian Supreme Court in 1992 that sets forth a litmus test for determining obscenity and has been used to prosecute a lesbian magazine, to destroy books intended for gay consumers, and to confiscate an array of political and erotic works.
Police and Death Squad Homicides of Adolescents in Brazil
Despite the considerable attention that has been brought to homicides of adolescents, impunity for those responsible for these abuses has in most respects, continued to prevail.
On January 3, 1994, a massacre in a Venezuelan prison left more than one hundred inmates dead and scores injured. While security personnel stood by, a group of prisoners set fire to a prison building, then shot and stabbed prisoners who tried to escape the inferno.
In two separate shipments in May 1992 and August 1993, eighteen tons of official Iraqi state documents captured by Kurdish parties in the 1991 uprising arrived in the U.S. for safekeeping and analysis. Our team has conducted research on these documents and catalogued a large percentage.
On February 22, 1993, the U.N. Security Council promised to create an international tribunal to try accused war criminals in the former Yugoslavia, but a year later the tribunal appeared to be part of a pattern of empty threats and broken promises.
This report provides an update on the human rights situation in Cuba. Again this last year, Human Rights Watch/Americas (formerly Americas Watch) has been handicapped in monitoring Cuba because of the regime's refusal to allow us to visit the country, to conduct inquiries and talk to victims, and to engage in a dialogue with the authorities.
Even as the Indonesian government repealed a controversial decree and stated it's concern for the welfare of workers, we continued to receive reports of labor rights violations. These violations include the harassment of union members and reports of bonded labor in Irian Jaya.
A Report on U.S. Compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
Last year, the United States formally adopted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), undertaking a commitment to ensure the covenant's protections for "all individuals within its territory." the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch have prepared this report - the first of its kind -covering race and sex discrimination, prisoners' rights, police brutality
Twenty-one people died in suspicious circumstances while in police custody in 1993. These deaths took place in police or gendarmarie stations throughout Turkey during the interrogation phase of investigations. They follow on the deaths of at least 17 people who died while under interrogation in police custody in 1992.
The Arms Trade and Human Rights Abuses in the Rwandan War
On October 1990, the Rwandese Patriotic Front launched an invasion from neighboring Uganda, aimed at overthrowing the Rwandan government. While the war has stopped in an uneasy peace, an estimated 4,500 people died in the conflict and nearly one million civilians are refugees.
Facing serious problems, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is making the difficult transition from communism to democracy and a free market economy. It also faces the possibility of the Bosnian war overtaking the region.