Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes Against Humanity in El Geneina, West Darfur, Sudan
The 218-page report, “‘The Massalit Will Not Come Home’: Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes Against Humanity in El Geneina, West Darfur, Sudan,” documents that the Rapid Support Forces, an independent military force in armed conflict with the Sudan military, and their allied mainly Arab militias, including the Third-Front Tamazuj, an armed group, targeted the predominantly Massalit neighborhoods of El Geneina in relentless waves of attacks from April to June. Abuses escalated again in early November. The attackers committed other serious abuses such as torture, rape, and looting. More than half a million refugees from West Darfur have fled to Chad since April 2023. As of late October 2023, 75 percent were from El Geneina.
This report, based on a five-week visit to Mindanao in January and February 1992, provides fresh evidence that the military has failed to control its militia, the Citizen Armed Force — Geographical Units (CAFGU).
Helsinki Watch urges the Spanish government to end its secretive policy with respect to prisons and describes problems ranging from overcrowding and periodic violence to forced idleness for inmates and very limited visiting privileges for a significant group of prisoners.
The Human Cost of the Conflict & The Struggle for Relief
"The worst humanitarian disaster in the world today," were the words used to describe Somalia by Andrew Natsios, the former director of the U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA).1 The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which is spending 20% of its entire worldwide budget on assistance to Somalia, has come to the same conclusion.
With the negotiated cease-fire agreement signed on January 16, 1992, in Mexico City, the twelve-year-old conflict in El Salvador has formally come to an end.
Israel's Supreme Court to Rule on Legality of Interrogation Guidelines
The death of Palestinian detainee Mustafa Akawi on February 4 illustrates the untenable nature of Israel's claim that its use of "moderate physical pressure" during interrogation does not lead to torture. This claim is being challenged in an important Israeli Supreme Court case that is scheduled for argument next month.
Middle East Watch (MEW) conducted a fact-finding mission to Egypt in January and February 1992, to investigate arrest and detention practices and allegations of torture of individuals held in the custody of the security forces. Participating in the mission were Virginia N. Sherry, associate director of MEW, and John Valery White, an attorney and Orville Schell Fellow with Human Rights Watch.
The Greek community in Turkey is dwindling, elderly and frightened. Its population has declined from about 110,000 at the time of the signing of the Lausanne Treaty in 1923 to about 2,500 today. Its fear stems from an appalling history of pogroms and expulsions suffered at the hands of the Turkish government.
This report provides an overview of human rights developments since the declation of a 12-month state of emergency on February 9, 1992, after factions of the Algerian participated in a military coup of the government.
As the international community condemned the massacre in East Timor on November 12, 1991 and pressed the Indonesian government to account fully for the killings, other human rights abuses attributed to the Indonesian military went largely ignored.
New lists of prisoners supplied by former inmates and smuggled out of the Tibet Autonomous Region substantially increase the known number of political prisoners in Tibet. In this report, Asia Watch and the Tibet Information Network present the cases of some 275 prisoners with all extant biographical material.
Across northern Iraq, Kurds, freed for now from President Saddam Hussein's grip, have begun revealing the horrors of nearly a quarter of a century of repressive rule. In former Iraqi police stations and prisons, Kurdish officials have discovered torture chambers and execution sites where they say thousands of political prisoners died under torture or were shot in the 1980s.
Abuse of the Legal System Under the PNDC Government
Soon after it came to power, Ghana's ruling Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) established a "revolutionary" court system. Consisting of Public Tribunals which operate within the country's judicial system, this parallel system for the administration of justice has shown a cavalier disregard for normal judicial procedures.
Major human rights violations go far to explain the ouster of Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia. Helsinki Watch hopes that the new rulers of Georgia are mindful of these violations as they consolidate power and establish a new government. There are, however, several disturbing incidents which suggest that this may not be the case.
Over 60 East Timorese, many of them students, remain in detention in Jakarta and Dili, capital of East Timor in the aftermath of the November 12 massacre in Dili in which upwards of 75 demonstrators were killed when Indonesian troops opened fire. All are facing trial, some on criminal charges, some on charges of subversion.
Asia Watch has studied the preliminary report of the National Commission of Inquiry prepared by the seven-person team appointed by President Suharto to investigate the killings in Dili, East Timor on November 12, 1991, when Indonesian armed forces opened fire on unarmed demonstrators.