Reports

The trial of nine Salvadoran army soldiers and officers accused in the November 1989 murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter took place in San Salvador on September 26-28, 1991, in front of a host of international observers including Americas Watch.

On November 12, 1991 in Dili, the capital of East Timor, anywhere from 75 to 200 people are estimated to have been killed when Indonesian troops opened fire on a demonstration. The demonstrators were calling for the independence of East Timor, the former Portuguese colony of some 700,000 people on the eastern half of the island of Timor, off the north Australian coast.

A decade ago, on December 4, 1981, the South African government declared that the Ciskei, an arbitrarily defined area in the south east of the country, had joined three other "national states" in receiving "independence." No other state recognizes the independence of Ciskei or of the other homelands.

Dr. Mohamed Mandour, an Egyptian medical doctor and psychiatrist, was administratively detained by the Egyptian security authorities for sixteen days in February 1991. He was brought from his home after midnight to State Security Intelligence headquarters at Lazoughly, Cairo. He was held there for ten days, from the early morning hours of February 8 until the morning of February 17.

While torture by the police in Argentina is viewed as a serious problem by its citizens, and efforts have been made to curb its use, it is still widespread.

The Cairo-based Arab Women's Solidarity Association (AWSA) was ordered dissolved by an administrative decree dated June 15, 1991. The action was taken pursuant to the 1964 Law of Associations which regulates private voluntary organizations in Egypt. AWSA actively promotes women's rights in Egypt and the Arab world. The founder and president of AWSA, Dr.

The United States imprisons more than a million of its citizens at any given time, a larger number than anyother country. After visits to more than twenty institutions in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, including state, INS, and federal prisons as well as jails, Human Rights Watch concludes that the most troubling aspect of the human rights situation in U.S.

The government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide compiled a record on human rights which showed much promise but which was also marked by certain troubling practices.

On November 28, 1990, Liberia's warring factions signed a cease-fire agreement, theoretically ending 11 months of fighting that had ravaged the country.

The Brazilian government is failing to prosecute violence against women in the home fully and fairly. Despite ever-increasing domestic violence (particularly wife-murder, battery and rap) impunity and discriminatory treatment in favor of the perpetrators of domestic violence are still the rule in the Brazilian justice system.

On or before October 1, 1992, Nigeria’s government will hand over the reins to civilian leaders of the Third Republic. In this report, Africa Watch shows how years of military rule have sapped the courts of the power to play a vital role in shaping a new democratic society. Bannings and detentions have brought Nigeria’s once lively universities to their knees.

This report includes the four governments that are coming to Madrid to negotiate peace agreements, as well as Egypt -- an observer at the conference -- and the Palestinian leadership.

The most comprehensive account now available on human rights violations in El Salvador, A Decade of Terror documents the civil war between an armed insurgency and the military-backed government, and explains how it has led to a decade of ferocious political violence that has cost thousands of civilian lives.

Heads of state of Commonwealth nations meet this month in Harare, Zimbabwe. Their gathering is an important opportunity to take tangible steps to recognize the importance of human rights in the member states and to commit the Commonwealth to an initiative that would significantly enhance its role in combatting human rights abuses.