Reports

The Human Rights Watch Global Report on Prisons summarizes six years of work by the Prison Project and divisions of Human Rights Watch in investigating prison conditions in some twenty countries worldwide.

The greatest obstacle to the transition to a peaceful democracy in South Africa is the political violence that continues to rage in the black townships. The violence, which began in 1984 and gained greater momentum after reform initiatives were undertaken in 1990, has resulted in more than 14,000 deaths.

The violations of human rights taking place in today's Uzbekistan are uncannily familiar. Perhaps most striking is the gulf between the government's stated and legal commitment to human rights protection, and its actual record.

A follow-up on human rights violations along the U.S. border with Mexico, this report concludes that serious abuses by U.S. immigration law enforcement agents continue and that current mechanisms intended to curtail abuses and discipline officers are woefully inadequate.

An update of a 1987 Americas Watch report, Urban Police Violence in Brazil describes incidents of torture and extra-judicial killings by police and updates specific cases previously reported.

Describing serious human rights abuses leading up to the elections in May 1993, this report criticizes the international community and the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia for tolerating the bombing of opposition party offices and for encouraging members of the Khmer Rouge to participate in the elections despite their having slaughtered ethnic Vietnamese.

Continuing human rights abuses in Northern Ireland include killings by paramilitary groups and security forces, street harassment by security forces, ill-treatment in detention, problems in obtaining a fair trial, the abandonment of normal policing in some troubled areas and harassment by paramilitary organizations.

Since January 1990, the north Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir has been the site of a brutal conflict between Indian security forces and armed Muslim insurgents demanding independence or accession to Pakistan.

For the first time ever, scientists have been able to prove the use of chemical weapons through the analysis of environmental residues taken years after such an attack occurred.

One year after elected President Alberto Fujimori suspended Peru’s constitution, closed down the congress, took control of the judiciary, and began to rule by decree, Peru’s already troubling human rights situation has become significantly worse.

Helsinki Watch has been monitoring human rights abuses and violations of the laws of war in both Croatia and Bosnia- Hercegovina since the conflict began two years ago. The original volume in this series documented the appalling brutality inflicted on the civilian population and called on the U.N.

The Indian state of Assam, located south of Bhutan and east of Bangladesh, is geographically almost cut off from the rest of India, with its only physical link a narrow land corridor to West Bengal. Home to a number of tribes and ethnic groups, Assam has been the site of separatist movements and violent insurgencies since India's independence in 1947.

The trial of Xanana raised several important human rights issues. It should be noted at the outset that Asia Watch has never taken a position on the political status of East Timor nor on the jurisdiction of Indonesian courts there.

On June 29, 1992, police surrounded a Gypsy neighborhood in Pazarszhik, a town 120 km. east of Sofia, and attacked its inhabitants, conducted abusive house searches, damaged property and confiscated possessions. Many Gypsies suffered serious injuries as well as significant property damage as a result of the police conduct.

This report concerns the application of the death penalty, the conditions in prisons and lockups, and police violence, including acts of coercion to obtain evidence that amount to torture and the excessive use of deadly force.