Reports

In advance of Albania’s first contested elections under Communist rule on March 31, we took part in a fact-finding mission from March 7 to March 12 as part of the first team of independent human rights investigators to have officially visited the country.

Despite the checks and balances inherent in India’s democratic structure designed to curb government lawlessness, the institutional basis for the prison system has become grossly unfair.

For more than a decade, Argentina has commanded the attention of the international community for two widely divergent reasons: atrocious human rights violations, and subsequent efforts to punish those responsible.

Shortly after the December 1989 revolution in Romania, many of the most repressive practices of the Ceausescu era were abolished. As Romanians looked forward to 1990, there was much to celebrate. However, the initial euphoria was quickly followed by a bitter realization that, although Ceausescu was gone, he had left his mark on every institution and every citizen.

It has been nearly three years since the chemical bombardment of Halabja, a small town on Iraq's northeastern border with Iran in which up to 5,000 civilians, mostly women and children, died a painful and well publicized death.

Middle East Watch is gratified that both sides in the Persian Gulf war have begun to release prisoners of war (POWs) in their custody, and that Allied countries have stated their intention not to repatriate any Iraqi POW who claims to fear persecution in Iraq.

The purpose of this newsletter, the fourth released by Middle East Watch since January 17, is to provide information and analysis concerning compliance by the U.S. and coalition forces under its command with binding restraints on methods and means of combat as they apply to the conduct of air warfare.

This newsletter examines the promises of reform held out by the Ethiopian government one year ago, and assesses whether these promises have been fulfilled. Africa Watch considers that few promises were made in the way of increased respect for civil and political rights, and that the small improvements promised in freedom of association have not in fact been delivered.

Mexico’s prison system is characterized by massive overcrowding, deteriorating physical facilities, poorly trained and vastly underpaid guards and other prison officials, system-wide corruption, and, most fundamentally, lack of money.

The report details a range of human rights violations against the academic community, defined as persons teaching, studying, researching and working at an institution of higher learning.

On January 28, shortly after the start of the Persian Gulf War, the Fund for Free Expression issued "Freedom of Expression and the War," a report on U.S. Defense Department regulations that impede press coverage in the Gulf, and on other U.S. war-related censorship issues. This newsletter updates that information in light of developments to date.

President Fidel Castro's dismissive attitude toward the resolution on Cuban human rights abuses adopted last year by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) reflects the latest chapter in a continuing and disappointing deterioration in Cuban human rights over the past three years.

For the last decade, Afghanistan has been the scene of some of the most serious human rights violations on record. About one half of the country's prewar population are either refugees, internally displaced, or dead. Most of the abuses were at one time attributable to the Afghan government and its Soviet advisers.

War is the most profound action any government can take, and for that reason the decision to wage and conduct it must be subject to the continuing scrutiny of a well-informed public. In recent U.S.

In July and August 1990, some seven months after the end of violence was announced, black townships around Johannesburg erupted in warfare. The conflict which has raged in Natal for several years and which recently spread north to the townships near Johannesburg has pitted supporters of the ANC against supporters of the Inkatha movement, which became a political party in July 1990.