Reports

Just as the Iran-Iraq War was coming to an end in 1988, the Iraqi government and army embarked on a vengeful campaign against Kurdish villagers living in Iraqi Kurdistan. Taken from a Koranic verse, Anfal refers to "the plunder of the infidel," and evidently was intended to give the campaign the veneer of religious justification, though the Kurds are Muslim, and Iraq is a secular state. Using a similarly destructive pattern throughout northern Kurdistan, the Iraqi army first attacked a chosen village — often with chemical weapons — captured the villagers as they tried to flee, then pulverized their dwellings. Many villagers were later killed. The Kurdish village of Koreme serves as a case study of this campaign, showing how the policies of Saddam Hussein’s government were implemented. Some of Koreme’s captured men and boys were executed on the spot, the remainder were taken to a local army fort or Ba’ath Party office where they disappeared while in the hands of security agents. Surviving Koreme villagers — starving women, children and the elderly — were transferred by truck to bleak camps. Middle East Watch and Physicians for Human Rights conclude that the Iraqi government’s Anfal campaign, constituting murder, forcible disappearance, involuntary relocation, the refusal to provide minimal conditions of life to detainees, chemical weapons attacks against civilians, and the physical destruction of Kurdish villages, are at a minimum, crimes against humanity. Ultimately, they may form the basis for a case of genocide.

A year has passed since Prime Minister Demirel’s coalition government, committed to human rights reforms, took office in Turkey — a period long enough to produce significant change. But the promised reforms have not come about; on the contrary, killings, torture and other human rights abuses in Turkey have become significantly worse.

Political detainees in Syria have the distinction of being some of the most isolated in the world. Most have no contact whatsoever with their families; security services for their part, seldom acknowledge having them in their custody.

The question of accountability has become increasingly important around the world in recent years, as different states attempting to make a transition to democracy have struggled to achieve a balance between retribution and forgetfulness in the interests of national reconciliation.

One year after a bloodless coup toppled Thailand’s government and the military took control, protestors staged a rally and demanded freedom. The government responded with violence. This report reveals the truth behind allegations of excessive force and violations of medical neutrality during the events of May 17-20, 1992.

With the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, world attention has focussed on the brutal warfare that erupted first in Croatia and, more recently, in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Most of the human rights violations being committed in both conflicts stem from the use of force and terror by Serbian authorities to assert control over territory and to expel or marginalize the non-Serbian population.

At the end of August, Tunisian military courts pronounced verdicts against 279 Islamists in the most closely watched trials to take place since 1987, when many of the same persons had been put on trial. The 1992 trials were seen as a test of the government's commitment to human rights at a time of growing repression that has affected not only the Islamist opposition, but much of civil society.

The Dominican government's human rights practices on its state-owned sugarcane plantations in 1992 were shaped by two events in the Dominican Republic and Haiti in 1991.

The following report sets out the background to the latest violence in Germany. It focuses primarily on violent attacks in the former German Democratic Republic, but some information is included on West Germany as well.

After twelve long, exhausting years, the war in El Salvador has come to an end. The January 16, 1992 peace accord signed by the Salvadoran government and the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) in Chapultepec, Mexico, lays out sweeping institutional reforms designed to enable the FMLN to demobilize its forces and participate in the political life of El Salvador.

The advocacy of civil and political rights is often perceived as neglect of social and economic rights. Many governments argue that their primary concern must be to address concerns such as hunger, poverty and illiteracy, implying that rights such as freedom of expression and association are somehow secondary.

The four-year struggle for control over Nagorno-Karabakh has escalated in recent months to full-scale conflict, leaving in its wake hundreds of civilian casualties. Both parties to this tragic conflict have systematically violated the most basic rules of international humanitarian law.

The United Nations has embarked on its most ambitious project ever in terms of both expense and scope in Cambodia, and the exercise will undoubtedly exert great influence on how the U.N. is used in the settlement of other conflicts around the world.

On July 21, in the most important political trial in China in twelve year, a three-judge panel of the Beijing Intermediate People's Court sentenced Bao Tong had been taken into custody on May 28, 1989 and held without charge, incommunicado for much of the time, for over three years. The trial took less than six hours. Asia Watch has obtained the verdict attached as Appendix I.

Full-scale war, marked by appalling brutality inflicted on the civilian population and extreme violations of international humanitarian law, has been raging in Bosnia-Hercegovina since early April 1992. Mistreatment in detention, the taking of hostages and the pillaging of civilian property is widespread.