Abuses, Unanswered Questions, and US-Ecuador Security Cooperation
The 94-page report, "A Dangerous Partnership: Abuses, Unanswered Questions, and US-Ecuador Security Cooperation," documents serious human rights violations in a rural community on the Colombia-Ecuador border, as well as attacks on and the disappearance of fishermen at sea near the Galápagos Islands. Each incident either clearly implicates the US-Ecuador security partnership or surfaces questions about responsibility. Ecuadorian forces tortured and arbitrarily detained four farm workers, and later burned and struck a dairy farm, during what the United States called a “partnered operation.” And drones of unknown origin attacked two fishing vessels, injuring several crew members. A third vessel remains missing.
This report examines the response of Indonesia’s National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) to a massacre in Aceh that occurred in August 2001. Thirty men and a two-year-old child, all ethnic Acehnese, were shot and killed by a group of armed men who suddenly appeared on the grounds of the Bumi Flora rubber and palm oil plantation in Julok, East Aceh.
Togo has been under the dominance of a single ruler, Gnassingbe Eyadema, since 1967, when he came to power in a military coup. A single party, the Rassemblement du Peuple Togolais [Togolese Peoples' Rally] (RPT) ruled Togo during most of the past 30 years. Independent political parties were authorized in 1991.
Each year over one million children between the ages of seven and twelve are hired by Egypt's agricultural cooperatives to take part in cotton pest management. Employed under the authority of Egypt's agriculture ministry, most are well below Egypt’s minimum age of twelve for seasonal agricultural work.
State-sponsored national human rights commissions represent a new vogue among governments, and particularly in Africa. The number of state human rights commissions has multiplied across the continent in the past decade, spreading from one country in 1989 to two dozen by 2000.
The Greek Government should as a matter of urgency take measures to alleviate the extreme overcrowding and otherappalling conditions of detention for foreigners held in police facilities in Greece.
The Yugoslav republic of Serbia has an opportunity to hold free and fair parliamentary elections on December 23, for the first time since a multiparty system was introduced in 1990.
Afghanistan has been at war for more than twenty years. During that time it has lost a third of its population. Some 1.5 million people are estimated to have died as a direct result of the conflict. Throughout the war, all of the major factions have been guilty of grave breaches of international humanitarian law.
How countries treat those who have been forced to flee persecution and human rights abuse elsewhere is a litmus test of their commitment to defending human rights and upholding humanitarian values.
Widespread torture of detainees is common in criminal investigations in Uzbekistan, and has become an unmistakable feature of the government's crackdown against independent Islam.
The November 24-25 summit in Zagreb, with the participation of fifteen European Union (E.U.) states and Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia, provides a unique opportunity for the E.U.
While dissent is seriously punished by isolation of critics and through a legal system that is highly politicized, Human Rights Watch notes that there have been areas of gradual improvement in Vietnam in recent years. Restrictions on everyday life for most citizens have eased noticeably as the market economy has taken hold.
Parliamentary elections scheduled for November 5 were to have been a test of Azerbaijan's commitment to the rule of law and to its obligations as a country seeking accession to join the Council of Europe.
Human Rights Watch welcomes the Justice Ministry's apparent abandonment of plans to impose a regime of isolation in its new F-type high security prisons. However, the organization believes that further work on the draft laws issued last week will be necessary in order to allay fears among prisoners and their families.
Elections for Egypt´s 454-member People´s Assembly began on October 18, 2000. Fifteen political parties are contesting 444 parliamentary seats, the remaining ten seats to be filled by presidential appointment. These are the first parliamentary elections in the country´s history to be held under full judicial supervision.
