Reports

Russian soldiers went on a rampage in the Chechen village of Alkhan-Yurt in December 1999, looting and burning dozens of homes and summarily executing at least fourteen civilians, according to the 32-page report. The report criticizes Russia's military and political leadership for failing to investigate the crime, and charges that Russia's military command is complicit to the abuses.

As the Asian Development Bank begins its annual meeting in Chiang Mai, Human Rights Watch expressed concern over the worrisome shift in the implementation of Thai refugee policy. Burmese refugees who remain in urban centers are increasingly vulnerable to arrest and, in some cases, forcible return to Burma, where their lives are at risk.

The Rwandan government is using the pretext of security to cover human rights abuses against Rwandan citizens, Human Rights Watch said in this report. The report details cases of assassination, murder, arbitrary detention, torture, and other abuses perpetrated chiefly by soldiers of the Rwandan Patriotic Army, and by members of a government-backed citizens' militia called the Local Defense Force.

The Serbian and Yugoslav governments have consistently used repressive measures-unfair trials, harassment, and violence-against opposition politicians, street demonstrators, and independent domestic critics.

The individuals responsible for the killing, mass destruction, and forced expulsions that convulsed East Timor last September must be brought to justice. The United Nations and its member states, actively involved in East Timor at the time of the carnage, have a particular obligation to see that justice is done.

Human Rights Watch began investigating the use of rape and other forms of sexual violence by all sides in the conflict in 1998 and continued to document rape accounts throughout the refugee crisis in 1999.

Local human rights defenders play a crucial role in promoting the rule of law. They are a lifeline of information, tying victims of government abuse to the rest of society, and providing the first recourse for victims in their search for redress and justice.

The trial of Tunisia's most outspoken human rights lawyer, Radhia Nasraoui, and twenty co-defendants was attended by jurists representing Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (a joint program of the International Federation of Human Rights [FIDH] and the World Organization Against Torture [OMCT]), and other organizations.

Six parties will contest elections to the lower chamber of a new bicameral parliament in Tajikistan on February 27, 2000. The vote will mark the first multiparty elections since the June 1997 peace agreement that ended Tajikistan's civil war, and are seen as the culmination of the peace process.

In the early 1990s, when the Turkish government's conflict with Kurdish separatists was at its most fierce, a right-wing organization called "Hizbullah" began attacking suspected sympathizers of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK). Young assassins operated in broad daylight in the mainly Kurdish cities of southeast Turkey.

Since the election of President Khatami in May 1997, Iranian reformists have spoken openly of respecting basic freedoms and the rule of law. In Iranian society generally, many petty social restrictions have been eased. The atmosphere surrounding the current parliamentary election campaign in Iran is notably freer than the last time around, in March 1996.

This report has the limited goal of assessing the number of civilian deaths from NATO attacks, as a step toward assessing NATO forces' compliance with their obligation to make protection of civilians an integral part of any use of military force. The benchmarks to be used for judging NATO's attacks are those of international humanitarian law, also known as the laws of war.

Russian soldiers summarily executed at least thirty-eight civilians in the Staropromyslovski district of Grozny, Chechnya, between late December and mid-January, according to testimony taken by Human Rights Watch. Most of the victims were women and elderly men, and all appear to have been deliberately shot by Russian soldiers at close range.

There are currently more than twenty thousand prisoners in the United States, nearly two percent of the prison population, housed in special super-maximum security facilities or units. Although supermax facilities are ostensibly designed to house incorrigibly violent or dangerous inmates, many of the inmates confined in them do not meet those criteria.

On December 27, 1999, Interfax reported Russian forces were using fuel-air explosive bombs in the fighting in Chechnya.(1) The use of fuel-air explosives (FAEs), popularly known in Russia as "vacuum bombs," represents a dangerous escalation in the Chechnya conflict--one with important humanitarian implications. FAEs are more powerful than conventional high-explosive munitions of comparable size, are more likely to kill and injure people in bunkers, shelters, and caves, and kill and injure in a particularly brutal manner over a wide area. In urban settings it is very difficult to limit the effect of this weapon to combatants, and the nature of FAE explosions makes it virtually impossible for civilians to take shelter from their destructive effect.