Reports

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.

Two Indonesian college students who emceed a rock concert in Yogyakarta, Central Java, were sentenced to two a half years on charges of blasphemy and insulting a group in public for a brief exchange in front of a student audience in which they punned on several phrases from the Quran.

Human rights have suffered seriously in Rwanda since the beginning of the war there on October 1, 1990.

Fifteen Nigerians are currently imprisoned, awaiting death by hanging for their supposed participation in ethnic-religious riots in northern Nigeria in May 1992.

The testimonies presented here-of abductions, clandestine detentions, and physical or psychological mistreatment and torture-comprise just a few examples of which Americas Watch is aware. Two occurred in 1992, while a third occurred during the government of Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo (1986-1991).

While the deployment of a large international military force in Somalia has produced a dramatic improvement in the ability of relief agencies to reverse the terrible famine that was causing massive death among civilians, it does not adequately address the underlying causes of the destruction of Somalia's social fabric that ultimately led to the famine.

The military forces that overthrew Haiti’s first freely elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, have consolidated their rule by ruthlessly suppressing Haiti’s once diverse and vibrant civil society — the range of civic, popular and professional organizations that had blossomed since the downfall of the Duvalier dictatorship seven years ago.

This report describes some of the events that have taken place since Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel’s coalition government took office in November 1991 and their effects on the Turkish Kurds in southeast Turkey.

The Sudanese Copts are a small but prominent minority who are now threatened by an Islamic fundamentalist government that seems determined to drive them out of their country. They are subjected to a wide range of discriminatory practices.

This report covers a broad spectrum of human rights abuses that occurred in the region of the Dniester River in Moldova. The most egregious are those committed in connection with the armed conflict that erupted in the first half of 1992, including indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian structures and extrajudicial killings.

Cubans are all too familiar with their government’s perennial campaigns to “perfect” all aspects of Cuban society. Yet after more than three decades in power, Fidel Castro’s government has succeeded in perfecting nothing so much as its pervasive system of control.

Britain has historically been a society with great respect for the tradition of freedom of the press. In recent years, however, there has been a significant increase in restrictions on liberty. Not only have press freedoms been threatened with greater restrictions, but broadcasting has faced similar challenges, and the right to protest has been limited.