Reports

Undercover units of the Israeli army have been responsible for over 120 killings in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip since 1988. Many of the victims were shot while posing no serious imminent threat to soldiers or others.

In August 1993, the Indian government repatriated nearly 7,000 of the more than 80,000 Sri Lankan Tamils then residing in government-run refugee camps in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. The refugees fled northeastern Sri Lanka in June 1990 after fighting broke out between government forces and a guerrilla army.

In a major shift of policy, the Egyptian government in October 1992 began to try in military courts civilians accused of "terrorism" offenses, bypassing the security-court system staffed by civilian judges that has been in place under Egypt's long-standing emergency law.

(From our " Struggling for Ethnic Identity" series) Since the demise of the Communist regime in Hungary, the country’s Gypsy or Roma population has benefited from the suspension of decades of assimilationist, and at times overtly racist, government policy and from an increased tolerance for the expression of Roma identity.

With the bloody conflict in Indian-controlled Kashmir now in its fourth year, Indian troops have embarked on a “catch and kill” campaign against Muslim militants, resulting in a sharp escalation of human rights abuses, including summary executions of hundreds of detainees in the custody of security forces.

Between April 29 and May 28, in a move unprecedented since Lebanon’s civil war, the Hrawi government shut down 4 news organizations and filed criminal charges against 4 journalists for violating Lebanon’s restrictive press regulation. The recent measures recall the fall of 1976, when the newly-arrived Syrian troops forcibly shut down 5 newspapers in Beirut.

A narrative account of the Iraqi government’s organized attempt to eradicate the Kurds living in northern Iraq, this report captures in riveting detail the multiple phases of the Anfal campaign. Anfal, meaning "the spoils," is the name of the eighth sura of the Koran. It is also the name given by the Iraqis to a series of military actions that lasted from February 23 until September 6, 1988.

In Greece, some citizens are paying a heavy price for their government's hard line on Macedonia. In particular, freedom of expression has been abrogated through an intensive campaign which combines propaganda and a series of extraordinary criminal prosecutions for dissenters.

Armenian and Azerbaijani forces are fighting for control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory within Azerbaijan in the former Soviet Union. The Armenians are fighting for self-determination and independence from Azerbaijan; the Azerbaijanis fight for the territorial integrity of their country.

In 1990, the Economic Community Cease-fire Monitoring Group entered Liberia as a peacekeeping force, temporarily stopping the bloodshed and ethnic killing. However, Ecomog has not integrated human rights protection and promotion into its activities, leaving it embroiled in a conflict with few immediate prospects for resolution.

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.

In this report, we examine five of the largest UN field operations in recent years, in Cambodia, El Salvador, Iraq, Somalia and the former Yugoslavia. These operations span a broad range of regions and circumstances. Yet with the exception of El Salvador, they have in common the low priority given to human rights.

More than 300 Tutsi and members of political parties opposed to Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana were massacred in northwestern Rwanda in late January 1993 by private militia at the direction of local and central government authorities.

Prior to the June 12 presidential elections, the Nigerian military government stepped up attacks on civil institutions, raising fears about its intentions to leave office as promised and, if it does leave, about the future stability of the country.

For three years, President Mobutu has blocked a peaceful movement for democratic change in Zaire, dividing the opposition to his rule. His efforts are now bearing fruit as ethnic and regional violence emerge in a number of regions throughout the vast central African country.