HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
UNITED STATES
Human Rights Watch, through its various divisions, increased its work on U.S. human rights and humanitarian law violations in 1991. Government actions relating to the war in the Persian Gulf produced human rights concerns at home and abroad. In January and February, the Fund for Free Expression criticized the Defense Department's policies restricting news-media coverage of the war, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's program of questioning Arab-Americans in the United States. In November, Middle East Watch reported on violations of the laws of war by both sides to the Persian Gulf War which had resulted in needless civilian casualties.
In July, following the videotaped beating of Rodney King by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department, Human Rights Watch released a report criticizing the federal government for its passivity in responding to the problem of police brutality in the United States. In November, Human Rights Watch released a study of prison conditions in the United States, following an Americas Watch newsletter in May on prison conditions in Puerto Rico.
The Fund for Free Expression issued a series of reports on U.S. free expression issues, including "SLAPP" libel suits used to intimidate community and public interest organizations, censorship of the student press, and the erosion of the right to freedom of expression in decisions of the Supreme Court's 1990-91 term. The Fund also criticized the Bush Administration's proposal for secret courts to try suspected alien "terrorists," comparing it with similar provisions in other countries criticized by the State Department in its annual human rights report.
The Fund took part in a national coalition to overturn the Supreme Court's decision upholding federal regulations that barred federally funded family planning clinics from counseling clients on the availability of abortion as an option. Helsinki Watch and the Fund urged Congress to remove from the Immigration and Naturalization Services "lookout list" persons who were listed solely because of their political beliefs.
Prison Conditions
In November, after a year-long study entailing visits to more than twenty institutions in the United States and Puerto Rico, including federal, state and INS institutions, as well as jails, Human Rights Watch issued a report entitled Prison Conditions in the United States. The report raises numerous concerns about the human rights aspects of incarceration in the United States and about the difficulties in securing access to prisons.
One of the most troubling aspects of the human rights situation in U.S. prisons is the use of super-maximum-security facilities (called "maxi-maxis" in prison jargon) to confine inmates deemed especially dangerous. Conditions in these facilities are particularly difficult to bear and often fall below the minimum standards established by the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. In addition to the federal system, currently thirty-six states have such facilities. Inmates confined to maxi-maxis are essentially sentenced twice: once by the court, to a certain period of imprisonment, and the second time by the prison administration, to confinement in maxi-maxis. This second sentencing is open-ended, limited only by the overall length of an inmate's sentence, and is meted out without the benefit of counsel.
Among the violations of the U.N. minimum standards observed by Human Rights Watch in the course of researching the report were:
o Uninterrupted extended confinement in windowless, badly ventilated cells, such as in the Q-Wing of the Florida State Prison at Starke.
o Lack of access to educational programs, as in the elimination in 1991 of all teaching and counseling staff positions at the prison in Southport, New York.
o Denial or sharp reduction of time outdoors, in violation of the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules which mandate at least one hour a day of outdoor exercise.
o The use of handcuffs as a disciplinary measure, as seen in the Broward institution for women in Florida.
o The use of collective punishment at the Krome INS detention center in Florida and the Otis Bantum Center on Rikers Island in New York.
o Maximum-maximum security facilities should be used only under supervision that is independent from correctional administration. Even then, they must meet the test of the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.
o In jails, classification and record keeping must be improved, to avoid situations in which nonviolent offenders are housed with dangerous and predatory criminals. Limits should be imposed on the duration of a sentence that may be served in a jail. In no case should the limit be longer than one year.
o Denial of access to reading matter should never be used as a disciplinary measure.
o Steps should be taken to assure work for all inmates capable of working.
o Prison officials should make every effort to confine inmates as close to their home as possible so as to facilitate the maintenance of family bonds.
o All inmates should have access to telephones.
o Prisons should encourage access for inmates' relatives or friends, since maintaining these bonds gives inmates a better chance of staying out of trouble upon their release.
o The trend in the federal system of granting a diminishing number of furloughs to inmates of minimum security facilities should be reversed, and the granting of furloughs to nonviolent inmates, particularly those serving sentences far from home, should be liberalized.
o In circumstances in which security considerations make it impossible to provide inmates with privacy, guards of the same sex should be used.
o A review of the cases of Cuban inmates in legal limbo all over the country should be undertaken immediately. No inmate should be left in prison without knowing the duration of his or her sentence.
o Incarceration of noncriminal illegal aliens should stop immediately.
o Outside observers should have access to prisons, since access by outside observers is an important way of preventing abuses in prisons.
In May, Americas Watch released a newsletter on prison conditions in the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. The paper found that poor prison conditions stemmed from an overall abdication of authority by prison administrators, that women are singled out for contraband searches, and that the transfer of inmates to prisons in the mainland United States has a detrimental effect on an inmate's bond with relatives and is often used as a disciplinary measure. A version of this paper was presented at a conference on prison conditions in the Caribbean held in May in Trinidad.
Police Brutality
The brutal and unprovoked beating _ fortuitously videotaped by a bystander _ by Los Angeles police officers of motorist Rodney King focused world attention on police practices in the United States. In the wake of this event, Human Rights Watch issued a report on an undercovered aspect of the issue _ the passivity of the federal government in combating such abuse. The report, issued in July, found that "violations of human rights by local police has become a sort of fault-line in United States legal-political life, causing occasional political earthquakes...yet the federal government has never created effective means of monitoring, much less controlling, abuses."
Human Rights Watch argued that this "hands-off" approach _ treating police brutality as a "local" issue _ amounts to an abdication of the federal duty to guarantee respect for basic human and constitutional rights. This stands in sharp contrast to the federal government's active intervention, over the past forty years, in combating other violations of civil rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and international human rights law, in such areas as employment, housing and voting discrimination.
The elements of the passive federal role detailed in the report include:
o extremely narrow federal criminal jurisdiction to prosecute abusive police officials.
o the lack of a recognized right for the Justice Department to seek injunctive remedies against systematically abusive police departments.
o a failure by the federal government, including the Justice Department, to collect pertinent data on the scope and dimensions of the problem.
o a passive Justice Department role in developing standards of command and accountability that would foster respect for human rights.
o an unwillingness to use such means as the withholding of federal funds as a tool to deter systematic abuse by police departments.
The report recommends that steps be taken in each of these areas so that the federal government, particularly the Justice Department, can live up to its duty to enforce respect for the right to be free of violent police abuse.
The Air War in Iraq
In November, Middle East Watch issued a report examining the conduct of both sides to the air war in the Persian Gulf, including an extensive analysis of the U.S.-led military coalition's air campaign against Iraq. The report, Needless Deaths in the Gulf War: Civilian Casualties During the Air Campaign and Violations of the Laws of War, was prepared as a contribution to the public debate about the conduct of the war and as an effort to draw attention to violations and possible violations of humanitarian law. It draws conclusions, and also requests additional information from the U.S. Defense Department and other allied military commands. It is hoped that the information and analysis in the report will be used by the Pentagon to conduct a more thorough examination of its compliance with the rules of law than reflected in its preliminary report about the war submitted to Congress on July 16, 1991. A final report is due to Congress no later than January 15, 1992. Both reports were mandated by legislation.
Throughout the Gulf War, Pentagon and allied commanders repeatedly stressed that all feasible precautions were being taken to avoid harm to civilians, as required by the laws of war. Following the war, Pentagon officials suggested that whatever civilian deaths did occur were the product of inevitable errors rather than any substandard conduct on the part of allied forces. The Middle East Watch report challenges this carefully constructed image of a near-flawless allied campaign. Through interviews conducted during the war with scores of Iraqi residents of various nationalities who had fled the aerial bombardment for the safety of Jordan, and through subsequent research, the report provides a detailed picture of the allied bombardment as it affected Iraqi civilians.
The conduct of the campaign was evaluated under the laws of war, primarily the standards set forth in the First Additional Protocol of 1977 to the 1949 Geneva Conventions (Protocol I). Although the United States has not ratified Protocol I, most of the standards relied on by Middle East Watch to evaluate allied conduct have been declared by the State Department to be binding on all nations as a matter of customary international law. The Pentagon also has largely incorporated these standards into the Air Force manual.
The allies' overwhelming air superiority and their precision weaponry provided an exceptional opportunity to conduct the bombing campaign in strict compliance with legal requirements. Although in many if not most respects the bombing campaign was consistent with the requirements of the laws of war, Middle East Watch concluded that the allies violated these laws in several respects, both in the selection of targets and in the choice of the means and methods of attack. These violation appear not to have been the product of unavoidable miscalculation but a result of deliberate allied decisions to take less than the maximum feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties required by the laws of war.
Middle East Watch found that allies committed the following violations of the laws of armed conflict in the choice of the means and methods of attack:
o The customary legal requirement codified in Article 57 of Protocol I requires parties to a conflict to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties. One obvious way to fulfill this requirement is by adjusting the time of attack to minimize the risk of civilians being present. Attacks on military targets in urban areas where many civilians can be expected to be found during the day should be conducted at night. However, in several attacks in urban areas _ in Nasiriyya, Falluja, Samawa and Hilla _ allied planes dropped their bombs during the day, needlessly killing hundreds.
o The allies appear not to have made full use of precision-guided weapons to minimize civilian casualties in urban areas. These "smart" weapons, according to the Pentagon, had an accuracy rate of ninety percent, while "dumb" bombs were said to have hit their targets only twenty-five percent of the time. Although the allies during the war fostered the impression that only precision weapons were used in urban areas, the Pentagon has since revealed that smart weapons accounted for a mere 8.8 percent of the munitions used. Moreover, some of these precision weapons were used not in urban areas but against hardened targets in the Kuwaiti military theater. The Pentagon and its allies have remained largely silent about where they dropped the dumb bombs that made up the remaining 91.2 percent of the munitions used. For example, while downtown Baghdad, where a small international press corps was present, was said to have been attacked with only precision weapons, Middle East Watch found that Basra and other cities in southern Iraq, which were largely closed to foreign journalists, appear to have suffered considerable damage to civilian structures, suggesting use of less advanced bombs in allied raids.
o Middle East Watch found that under the laws of war, the United States should have issued a warning before attacking the Ameriyya air raid shelter in Baghdad. Failure to do so resulted in the loss of two to three hundred civilian lives. Quite apart from the evidence cited by the Pentagon to suggest that the facility was being used for military purposes, the Pentagon has conceded that it knew the facility had been used as a civilian air raid shelter during the Iran-Iraq war. Article 65 of Protocol I provides that even if a civil defense structure is used for military purposes, it cannot be attacked until a warning is issued and a reasonable amount of time is given for civilians to respond. Although the United States has not stated one way or the other whether it considers Article 65 to be binding as a matter of customary international law, the rule is a fair interpretation of the general duty, codified in Article 57 of Protocol I, to give "effective advance warning" of attacks that may affect the civilian population, which the United States recognizes as customary law.
o Allied bombers hit a number of food, agricultural and water-treatment facilities, including four government food warehouses in Diwaniyya, a new dairy factory north of Basra, flour-milling and grain-storage warehouses, and several water-treatment facilities in Basra. Under the customary rules of war, as reflected in Article 52 of Protocol I, these appear not to have been legitimate military targets because they were making no known contribution to the Iraqi military effort. With food shortages prevalent because of the U.N.-imposed embargo, these attacks also violated the customary principle set forth in Article 54 of Protocol I prohibiting starvation as a means of warfare.
o Although the crippling of Iraq's electrical system impeded the Iraqi military's ability to communicate and to produce war-related goods, it also had a severe cost to the civilian population. Shortages of food due to the U.N. embargo were exacerbated by the lack of refrigeration, the impairment of Iraq's highly mechanized, irrigation-based agriculture, the crippling of the nation's electricity-dependent water-purification and sewage-treatment facilities, and the handicapping of Iraqi hospitals and clinics. The customary-law principle codified in Articles 51 and 57 of Protocol I prohibits attacks when the civilian costs are "excessive" in relation to the "concrete and direct military advantage anticipated." Allied commanders have failed to explain why such massive destruction of the electrical system, with its attendant severe dislocation for the civilian population, was not excessive under the terms of Article 57. One reason for the failure may be reflected in comments made by Pentagon officials since the war ended. They suggested that the extent of the destruction of the electrical system may not have been to achieve a "concrete and direct military advantage" but to demoralize the Iraqi civilian population and encourage it to rise up against Saddam Hussein. Whether or not one shares the goal of overthrowing the Iraqi government, the targeting of civilians to achieve political or military ends _ be it to weaken civilian morale or to induce the civilian population to overthrow its leadership _ clearly violates the customary-law duty to distinguish between military targets and the civilian population, as codified in Article 51 of Protocol I, and thus undermines the principle of civilian immunity that is at the heart of the laws of war.
o Middle East Watch took testimony from witnesses to repeated incidents in which civilian vehicles, including fully occupied passenger buses, were attacked on Iraqi highways, primarily in western Iraq, during the allied effort to locate and destroy Iraqi mobile missile launchers. Even if it is assumed that the allies did not deliberately target these civilian vehicles, the attacks appear to have been indiscriminate in that they failed to distinguish between military and civilian vehicles traveling on the highway, as required by the customary-law principle set forth in Article 48 of Protocol I. Many of the vehicles hit were Jordanian civilian oil tankers. When Jordan publicly protested these attacks, the Pentagon issued public statements stating that civilian tankers were not being targeted and suggesting that its pilots were able to distinguish these tankers from military targets. Yet tanker drivers who relied on these assurances continued to be attacked, at times by low-flying aircraft, suggesting either that pilots did not discriminate between civilian and military targets on the highways or that their senior commanders were deceptive about the pilots' ability to make such distinctions.
o A similar lack of discrimination characterized several allied attacks on Bedouin tents in western Iraq, leaving at least forty-six civilians dead. Bedouin tents, as objects "normally dedicated to civilian purposes," are presumed to be illegitimate targets under the customary-law principle affirmed in Article 52 of Protocol I. The presumption requires that in case of doubt about whether an object is a military target pilots should refrain from attack. Pilots firing on these long black tents may have thought that they concealed Iraqi missiles or war-related materiel, but given the tents' distance from highways (mobile missile launchers are large and presumably would have had considerable difficulty traversing one hundred kilometers of undeveloped desert) and the signs of civilian life surrounding the tents, pilots appear not to have done "everything feasible" to verify that the tents were not civilian objects, as required by the customary-law principle restated in Article 57 of Protocol I.
Needless Deaths in the Gulf War also contains extensive, detailed testimony about the loss of civilian life as a result of the allied bombing campaign, including numerous accounts of bombs and missiles that fell wide of their targets, most often bridges and telecommunications towers, by two or three hundred meters or more, resulting in civilian casualties. The report faults the allies for their apparently deliberate silence regarding the extent of civilian casualties in Iraq attributable to allied bombing. The allies maintained this silence despite substantial evidence indicating that they had the technological capacity to make detailed bomb-damage assessments when it was politically advantageous to do so. The report notes that the Iraqi government has also been inconsistent in its release of information on the number of civilian casualties, with figures varying according to whether it seemed desirable at the moment to inflate or deflate the loss of civilian life. The report concludes that the total number of civilians killed directly by allied attacks did not exceed several thousand with an upper limit of perhaps between 2,500 and 3,000 Iraqi dead. These figures do not include the substantially larger number of deaths that can be attributed to malnutrition, disease and lack of medical care caused by a combination of the U.N.-mandated embargo and the allies' destruction of Iraq's electrical system with its severe delayed effects.
Freedom of Expression and the Gulf War
Operation Desert Storm was characterized by an unprecedented institutionalization of curbs on the right of the news media to cover military operations. Reporters were required to travel in "pools" accompanied by military escorts, and to submit all dispatches for advance review by a military censor. In apparent deference to Saudi Arabia, the staging ground for allied operations, the Defense Department censored publications sent to U.S. troops in the Gulf, imposed restrictions on what they may say or write about a variety of topics, and impeded their freedom to engage in Jewish and Christian worship.
On January 10, the Fund for Free Expression, joined by six other U.S. anti-censorship organizations, wrote to Defense Secretary Richard Cheney to express opposition to the new rules, arguing that no case had been made for the imposition of more onerous restrictions on press coverage than were in place during the entire Vietnam War, when reporters could travel freely on their own and file reports without submitting them to military censors. The letter asserted that "it is precisely in times of national crisis such as war that the freedom of the press and the public's right to know, on which our constitutional system of self-government depends, becomes most vital." No reply was ever received. The Fund also participated as amicus curiae in The Nation Magazine v. U.S. Department of Defense, a challenge to the constitutionality of the rules.
Shortly before the onset of the war, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began to interview Arab-American individuals and organizational officials, ostensibly to gather information about possible terrorist activity in the United States. These interviews were widely criticized by Arab-American groups and by civil rights and liberties organizations, including the Fund for Free Expression, which in a January 15 letter to Attorney General Richard Thornburgh argued that "such an approach presumes the disloyalty of millions of Arab-Americans and persons of Arab origin lawfully residing in the United States, and has a chilling effect on their rights to take part in the public debate over the appropriateness of U.S. actions in the Persian Gulf."
On January 28, less than two weeks after the start of the war, the Fund for Free Expression issued a newsletter, "Freedom of Expression and the War," analyzing the Pentagon's press restrictions, its policies affecting speech and expression by military personnel, and the FBI's questioning of Arab-Americans. On February 27, the Fund issued a supplement, "Managed News, Stifled Views." Among the abuses documented by the Fund newsletters were the detention at gunpoint of reporters who attempted to leave official press pools, excessive delays in approving material that was submitted for prior security review, and excision of material that was deemed embarrassing to the military.
Border Patrol Abuses
Americas Watch and Helsinki Watch are jointly undertaking an investigation of human rights abuses by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) along the U.S.-Mexican border. The report, due for release in early 1992, will address lethal and nonlethal shootings; torture; assaults, including one incident in 1988 in which a Border Patrol agent threw a seventeen-year-old boy to the ground causing fatal injuries; and other serious abuses by Border Patrol agents. It will also examine conditions in INS detention facilities and due process violations during INS proceedings and workplace raids. One section will be devoted to the treatment of children and youth.
One of the most serious problems identified is the failure of the INS or any other government agency to investigate complaints adequately or to prosecute human rights abuses committed by INS agents. For example, the agent involved in the homicide of the seventeen-year-old boy previously had been involved in violent incidents but had not been penalized. In 1983, he killed a Mexican national under circumstances that caused the California Highway Patrol to make a prima facie finding of misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter, but was never prosecuted. Following the boy's death, the agent was transferred out of the state and promoted to a position involving the training of junior officers.
The report will examine criminal penalties and civil remedies available under federal and state law and will recommend steps to ensure that individual INS agents and the agency as a whole are held accountable for human rights abuses.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
In the fall, President Bush submitted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, together with a series of reservations, declarations or understandings, to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for advice and consent to ratification. The Foreign Relations Committee promptly held hearings on ratification of the treaty, which has languished in the Senate since it was first submitted by President Carter in 1977.
While Human Rights Watch supports immediate ratification, we object to many of the limiting provisions proposed by the Administration. The only reservation that we endorse would preserve the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, which provides U.S. citizens with broader protections than those in the treaty.
Our objections to the other proposed limiting provisions fall into three categories. First, while most of the civil and political rights protected by the Covenant are also protected by U.S. law, there are areas in which U.S. law is weaker than the treaty. In these areas, which include the death penalty for persons who committed crimes before reaching age eighteen, and several procedural protections for detained juveniles and adults, the United States seeks to maintain its lower standards rather than to raise U.S. protections to the international level.
This same unwillingness to reform U.S. law when it is weaker than the protections set forth in the Covenant also is reflected in the Administration's understanding on federalism. This understanding seeks to limit federal responsibility for the conduct of state and local governments. Instead, federal oversight of these governmental agencies should be heightened both to ensure full protection within the United States and to prevent other nations with federal forms of government from using the U.S. understanding as an excuse for not adequately monitoring and sanctioning their own state and local abuses.
Second, the package of reservations, declarations and understandings demonstrates the Administration's reluctance to allow international law to be used by U.S. courts to interpret U.S. constitutional and statutory law. This reluctance is most clearly expressed in the Administration's proposed reservation limiting the meaning of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment to that already prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. This reservation would impede U.S. courts from benefiting from the wisdom of courts in other countries and international tribunals that are called upon to interpret the meaning of similar prohibitions, and would deprive Americans of the benefits of evolving international understandings of such prohibitions.
Finally, the Administration's proposal that the normative provisions of the treaty be declared non-self-executing is objectionable. This proposed declaration seeks to deny domestic legal remedies to individuals who seek relief for violations of the treaty in U.S. courts. The terms of the Civil and Political Covenant are specific and could be enforced by a court of law. There is no reason for the executive branch to fear that U.S. courts will apply the human rights norms guaranteed by the treaty in a less fair way than they apply any other U.S. law. Adoption of this declaration would deprive U.S. courts of an important role in ensuring U.S. compliance with the treaty. It would deprive Americans of an avenue of redress for serious violations of internationally recognized human rights. And it would signal to other countries that U.S. ratification of the treaty is for foreign policy purposes only and is not intended to strengthen the human rights protections offered to its own people.
Participation in U.S. Civil Rights Litigation
To bring its international human rights perspective to bear on civil rights and civil liberties problems in the United States, Human Rights Watch participated in a number of amicus curiae briefs filed in U.S. courts, including:
o Hudson v. McMillian. This case, which was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on November 13 and is expected to be decided in 1992, concerns the right to be free of violent physical abuse by government officials. The court of appeals had held that Eighth Amendment guarantees against cruel and unusual punishment were not violated by the behavior of prison guards who shackled an inmate by the wrists and ankles, held him from behind, hit him repeatedly in the face _ loosening his teeth, breaking his dental plate and splitting his lip _ and kicking him in the buttocks, because no "significant injury" resulted. A Human Rights Watch amicus brief outlined international conventions and agreements under which such official abuse would be considered cruel and unusual punishment, and listed occasions in which the U.S. State Department, as part of its annual review of the human rights practices of other countries, has condemned similar conduct by custodial officials abroad.
o U.S. Department of State v. Ray. A Human Rights Watch amicus brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court with the Haitian Refugee Center and other organizations argued for access under the Freedom of Information Act to the names of Haitian citizens interviewed by the State Department in the course of monitoring the Haitian government's compliance with its pledge not to persecute persons returned by the United States to Haiti. The Court rejected this position in a decision on December 16.
o U.S. v. Alvarez Machain. In a brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Human Rights Watch argued that customary international human rights law was violated by U.S. agents who kidnapped a foreign national to bring him to trial in the United States on charges of murder and torture of a U.S. drug enforcement agent. In October the Ninth Circuit ordered that Alvarez Machain be repatriated.
o Trajano v. Marcos. Human Rights Watch filed a brief in the District of Hawaii opposing an effort to curtail suits for human rights abuse under the federal Alien Tort Claims Act. The suit is described at greater length in the chapter on the California Committee and the Los Angeles office.
The Right to Monitor
The United States has numerous independent, non-governmental organizations that monitor human rights and civil liberties and work to combat abuses. They include the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has a broad mandate to deal with violations of the Bill of Rights, and groups that have a more specific focus, such as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the NOW Legal Defense Fund. In the past these groups have relied heavily on federal court litigation to redress abuses of rights, but with the Supreme Court increasingly unreceptive to civil rights and liberties claims, they have relied more heavily on state courts and on legislative and public education campaigns. At various points in the recent history of the United States, domestic human rights monitoring organizations have been subjected to surveillance and other forms of harassment (for example, the FBI kept files on the ACLU from the early 1920s through the early 1970s), but there has been no recent indication that this remains the case. In the 1988 presidential election, then Vice President George Bush attacked his opponent, Michael Dukakis, for his membership in the ACLU, echoing the 1986 charge by then-Attorney General Edwin Meese that the ACLU was a "criminals' lobby." While these verbal attacks reflected a lack of receptivity to rights advocacy, they were not accompanied by any formal restrictions on human rights monitors or advocacy.
THE FUND FOR FREE EXPRESSION
The Fund for Free Expression is the only one of the six divisions of Human Rights Watch focused not on a region but on a theme _ freedom of expression around the world and in the United States. In 1991, the Fund expanded its program to:
o emphasize the relationship between censorship and global social problems.
o investigate and analyze restrictions on freedom of expression in the United States.
o work with the regional divisions of Human Rights Watch and other organizations on freedom of expression issues around the world.
o campaign against human rights abuses involving the academic community.
The Fund also administered a second round of grants, made possible by a legacy from writers Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett, to writers around the world who have been victimized by political persecution.
Censorship and Global Problems
The Fund emphasizes the connection between freedom of expression and global social problems such as AIDS, famine and environmental degradation to establish that censorship and information policies are important elements in the debate about these issues. The first such global study, Off Limits: Censorship and Corruption, was published in July. It documents the extent to which a taboo topic for the press in many countries is the wealth accumulated by heads of state _ and their families and associates _ during their terms in office. Corrupt regimes resort to censorship about their own self-enrichment because they realize that their very maintenance in office is at stake: widespread anger over revelations of corruption played a major role in the downfall of the regime of Erich Honecker in East Germany and the Tiananmen Square uprising in China. The report examines the means by which information is kept from public scrutiny through case studies of six countries around the world, including the bribery of government critics in Zaire, a climate of self-censorship in Paraguay, and expulsions of foreign correspondents in Indonesia.
In the first half of 1992, the Fund will publish two other thematic reports. One concerns the censorship of minority languages around the world _ including the movement to establish English as the official language of the United States. The other, undertaken in cooperation with the Natural Resources Defense Council, will be a series of case studies on the persecution and harassment of individuals and organizations working to protect the environment in a number of countries.
Freedom of Expression and the Gulf War
The Fund played an important role in documenting, analyzing and challenging restrictions on freedom of expression imposed in connection with the war in the Persian Gulf. The U.S. Defense Department imposed severe curbs on the right of the news media to cover military operations. Reporters were required to travel in "pools" accompanied by military escorts, and to submit all dispatches for advance review by a military censor. In apparent deference to Saudi Arabia, the staging ground for allied operations, the Pentagon censored publications sent to U.S. troops in the Gulf, limited what they could say or write about a variety of topics, and impeded their freedom to engage in Jewish and Christian worship.
On January 10, the Fund, joined by six other U.S. anti-censorship organizations, wrote to Defense Secretary Richard Cheney to express opposition to the new rules, arguing that no case had been made for the imposition of more onerous restrictions than were in place during the entire Vietnam War, when reporters could travel freely on their own and file reports without submitting them to military censors. The letter asserted that "it is precisely in times of national crisis such as war that the freedom of the press and the public's right to know, on which our constitutional system of self-government depends, becomes most vital." The Fund also participated as amicus curiae in the lawsuit The Nation Magazine v. U.S. Department of Defense, a challenge to the constitutionality of these rules.
Shortly before the onset of the war, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began to interview Arab-American individuals and organizational officials, ostensibly to gather information about possible terrorist activity in the United States. These interviews were widely criticized by Arab-American groups and civil rights and liberties organizations, including the Fund, which in a January 15 letter to Attorney General Richard Thornburgh argued that "such an approach presumes the disloyalty of millions of Arab-Americans and persons of Arab origin lawfully residing in the United States, and has a chilling effect on their rights to take part in the public debate over the appropriateness of U.S. actions in the Persian Gulf."
On January 28, less than two weeks after the start of the war, the Fund issued a newsletter, "Freedom of Expression and the War," which analyzed the Pentagon's press restrictions and policies affecting speech and expression by military personnel, and the FBI's questioning of Arab-Americans. On February 27, the Fund issued a supplement, "Managed News, Stifled Views." Among the abuses documented by the Fund newsletters were the detention at gunpoint of reporters who attempted to leave the official press pools and excessive delays in approving material submitted for prior security reviews or excision of material that was embarrassing to the military.
The Fund also criticized other governments for managing the news to maintain or manufacture consensus for their role in the war. Iraq imposed government escorts on foreign correspondents, and censors monitored and screened their reports before transmission. No foreign journalist was permitted to visit Kuwait from the August 2 invasion until after the cease-fire. Saudi Arabia banned or censored all foreign publications, with particular attention to articles that mentioned civilian bombing casualties or were deemed to favor the Palestine Liberation Organization. Egypt, Morocco and Turkey _ the other principal U.S. allies in the region which backed the coalition's war effort in the face of substantial popular opposition _ moved to disguise the extent of their role and to quash dissent.
Turkish state television, for example, used much of CNN's material on the war, but when the coverage turned to such matters as U.S. strikes at Iraq from Turkish bases or the shortage of gas masks in Turkey, programming was interrupted for a "commercial break" or footage of a scenic waterfall. Raids from Turkish air bases were never mentioned in any official statement or on state television or radio.
The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights reported that as many as two hundred political activists and students were detained in Egypt. Israel closed press offices in its occupied territories and arrested the Palestinian writer and peace activist Sari Nusseibeh on "spying" charges which were widely believed to be spurious. Fearing mass protests, King Hassan of Morocco ordered sports events canceled and schools closed, and threatened agitators with trials by military tribunals. The newest U.S. ally, Syria, detained eighty writers and intellectuals for expressing support for Iraq.
In Great Britain, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) blocked a documentary on the export to Iraq of British-built superguns, on the grounds that the "tone is wrong." France banned the distribution, publication or sale of three publications deemed pro-Iraq, on the grounds that they "defend interests that are contrary to France's interests" concerning the war, and expelled one of the editors. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation faced a government inquiry following complaints from Prime Minister Bob Hawke about its war coverage.
Virtually every country with a significant Muslim population, whether or not it was a party to the Gulf War, cracked down on dissent. Anti-war demonstrations were banned in Djibouti and Sri Lanka, and peaceful protesters were met with police violence in Nigeria and Pakistan. Tunisia and Algeria went one step further and expelled foreign reporters who had arrived to cover anti-war protests.
U.S. Free Expression Issues
As a U.S.-based free speech group which is a component of an international human rights organization, the Fund attempts to bring a worldwide perspective to bear on American civil liberties issues. For example, a newsletter issued in June, "Secret Trials in America?," compared the Bush Administration's proposal for secret courts to try suspected alien "terrorists" with similar provisions in other countries criticized by the State Department in its annual human rights report.
The Fund also issued several other reports on U.S. free expression issues:
o In September, "SLAPPing Down Critics" documented the use of harassment libel suits and tort actions to intimidate community and public interest organizations.
o In October, "The Supreme Court and Free Speech" analyzed the erosion of free speech protection in two important decisions of the Court's 1990-91 term: Barnes v. Glen Theatre, in which the Court cited public order and morality concerns to justify a state's ban on expressive activity (in this case, nude dancing); and Rust v. Sullivan, in which the Court upheld a federal regulation barring government-funded family-planning clinics from mentioning the availability of abortion as an option.
o In December, "Muzzling Student Journalists" documented the rise in censorship of the student press since the Supreme Court's 1988 decision in Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, which permitted school administrations to restrict student speech on the basis of "legitimate pedagogical concerns."
The Fund participated in a coalition of groups working to overturn the "gag rule" on abortion advice in federally funded family planning clinics. In May, continuing its long-standing concern with protecting "free trade in ideas," the Fund joined Helsinki Watch in writing to Congress on behalf of legislation to remove from the Immigration and Naturalization Service's "lookout list" persons who were listed solely because of their political beliefs.
Joint Projects with Regional Divisions of Human Rights Watch and Other Groups
The Fund expanded its work with the regional divisions of Human Rights Watch on certain reports and projects relating to freedom of expression. In October, the Fund joined Helsinki Watch in releasing Restricted Subjects: Freedom of Expression in the United Kingdom. In November, the Fund joined Africa Watch and the PEN American Center in sponsoring a panel discussion, "Challenging the Politics of Despair: Writers and Human Rights in Africa." The Fund and Africa Watch are preparing, for publication in 1992, a major report documenting limits on literary freedom in Africa. Also in November, with the International Freedom to Publish Committee of the Association of American Publishers, the Fund issued a newsletter, "The Threat Against Salman Rushdie: 1,000 Days Later." With Americas Watch, the Fund is preparing a report documenting limits on freedom of expression in Miami's Cuban exile community.
Committee for International Academic Freedom
The Fund organized and launched a new committee of Human Rights Watch, the Committee for International Academic Freedom, to protest human rights abuses involving academics. In contrast to writers, journalists, scientists, physicians and other professional disciplines, teachers and scholars lack a group to focus on their human rights problems. Yet, educators are heavily represented among the world's political detainees, and universities are at special risk from most repressive regimes. The Committee for International Academic Freedom will send letters and cables of concern to governments on behalf of imprisoned or harassed academics, and oppose censorship and the closing of universities for political reasons. Four university presidents _ Jonathan Fanton of the New School for Social Research, Vartan Gregorian of Brown University, Hanna Holborn Gray of the University of Chicago, and Charles Young of the University of California at Los Angeles _ took the lead in forming this new group. In addition to providing support for endangered scholars in other countries, the committee will keep the U.S. academic community informed about human rights abuses against their peers, and encourage academics to take a greater role in defending the rights of their colleagues worldwide. Among the subjects of the committee's first protests were police attacks on peaceful student demonstrators in Zimbabwe, the firing of four academics and the detention of two student leaders in Tanzania, and the extrajudicial execution of two architecture students in Guatemala.
Hellman/Hammett Grants to Persecuted Writers
The Fund also administers grants to writers in financial need as a result of political persecution, under the terms of legacies from the writers Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett. In 1991, the second year of this program, twenty-one grants _ generally of $10,000 each _ were made. Among the recipients were Alaa Hamed, an Egyptian novelist facing blasphemy charges; Petre Mihai Bacanu, a Romanian editor sentenced to prison by the regime of Nicolae Ceaucescu and harassed under the new government; Byron Barrera Ortiz, a Guatemalan journalist forced to flee the country after a death squad wounded him and killed his wife; and Zargana, a Burmese satirist serving a five-year prison term for his political commentary. Grants were also made to writers from Argentina, China (3), Iran, Liberia, Malawi, Peru, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Togo, Turkey (2), the United States (3) and Vietnam. In addition to these annual grants, for which nominations are solicited in the fall and decisions announced early in the following year, smaller amounts are available from a special emergency fund.
THE PRISON PROJECT
The Prison Project of Human Rights Watch was formed in 1988 to focus international attention on prison conditions worldwide. Its work cuts across the five regional divisions of the organization. The project investigates conditions for sentenced prisoners, pretrial detainees, and those held in police lock-ups. It examines conditions for all prisoners, without limiting its work to prisoners held for political reasons.
In addition to pressing for improvement in prison conditions in particular countries that are studied, the project seeks to place the problem of prison conditions on the international human rights agenda. We believe that a government's claim to respect human rights should be assessed in part on the basis of how it treats its prison population. Our experience so far has shown that a number of democratic countries that are rarely or never a focus of human rights investigations are in fact guilty of serious human rights violations within their prisons.
In previous years, the project conducted studies in Brazil, Czechoslovakia, India, Indonesia, Israel and the Occupied Territories, Jamaica, Mexico, Poland and Turkey. In 1991, studies were conducted in Puerto Rico, Romania, Spain, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States. Reports were published on India, Israel and the Occupied Territories, Mexico, the Soviet Union and the United States. Updates were also published on prison conditions in Poland and Czechoslovakia following political transformations in those countries, and a newsletter was issued on Puerto Rico.
In an effort calling for increased attention to prison conditions within the thirty-eight-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), the Prison Project prepared a document outlining its findings on prison conditions in seven CSCE countries, which was released at the opening of the September CSCE human rights conference in Moscow. Findings from prison studies were also included in a report on human rights in various Commonwealth countries presented by Human Rights Watch during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference, which was held in Zimbabwe in October. The Prison Project was also invited to present a paper on prison conditions in Puerto Rico to a May conference in Trinidad organized by Caribbean Rights and Prison Reform International.
The Prison Project was successful in generating press attention in several of the countries where it investigated prison conditions, including major articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times following the November publication of the report on the United States.
Of the countries where investigations have been undertaken, the Prison Project has been able to secure access to penal institutions in more than half. The project has a self-imposed set of rules for prison visits: the investigators undertake visits only when they and not the authorities can suggest institutions to be visited, when they can be confident that they will be allowed to talk privately with inmates of their choice, and when they can gain access to the entire facility. These rules are adopted to avoid being shown model institutions or their most presentable parts. When no access is possible, reporting is based on interviews with former prisoners, prisoners on furloughs, relatives of inmates, lawyers, prison experts and prison staff, and on documentary evidence. Prison investigations are usually conducted by teams composed of a staff member and a member of the Prison Advisory Committee, which guides the work of the project. Occasionally, the project invites an outside expert to participate in a particular investigation.
The Prison Advisory Committee is chaired by Herman Schwartz, of the American University Law School. Other members are Nan Aron, Vivian Berger, Haywood Burns, Alejandro Garro, William Hellerstein, Edward Koren, Sheldon Krantz, Benjamin Malcolm, Diane Orentlicher, Norman Rosenberg, David Rothman and Clarence Sundram. The director of the project is Joanna Weschler. Lamia Matta is the associate.
WOMEN'S RIGHTS PROJECT
The Women's Rights Project was established in 1990 to work in conjunction with Human Rights Watch's five regional divisions to monitor violence against women and discrimination on the basis of gender worldwide. The Project grew out of Human Rights Watch's recognition of the epidemic proportions of violence and gender discrimination around the world and of the past failure of human rights organizations to hold governments accountable for abuse of women's basic human rights.
The Project monitors the performance of specific countries in securing women's human rights, highlights individual cases with international significance, and serves as a link between the women's rights and human rights communities at both a domestic and international level.
In 1991, the Women's Rights Project undertook investigations in two countries. The first mission, in collaboration with Americas Watch, documented violence against women in the home in Brazil and the failure of the Brazilian government to prosecute such abuse and guarantee its female citizens equal protection of the law. The report of that mission, Criminal Injustice: Violence Against Women in Brazil, was released in November.
The report found that it is still possible for a man to kill his wife in Brazil and be acquitted by the courts on the grounds of honor. It also found that while reports of domestic violence greatly increased as a result of the creation of police stations specifically designed to address crimes of violence against women, efforts to impose criminal penalties for such abuse remain woefully inadequate. Of over two thousand cases of violence against women reported to the main women's police station in Rio de Janeiro in 1991, none resulted in punishment of the accused. The report called on the Brazilian government to apply the law fully and fairly in Brazil, to disavow publicly the honor defense, and to train both the police and judges in the importance of applying criminal sanctions to domestic abuse.1
In November, the Women's Rights Project, together with Asia Watch, traveled to Pakistan to investigate violence against women in police custody and the role of gender discrimination in the incarceration of women. The delegation found that over seventy percent of women in police custody report sexual abuse by police officials. It investigated several cases of rape and sexual torture of women by police officials and found no case that had resulted in criminal penalties for the accused officers. Basic protections _ including requirements that all detainees are charged with a specific crime and are produced before a magistrate within twenty-four hours and that women detainees are interrogated in the presence of a female officer _ are routinely violated.
The delegation found that over sixty percent of women in Pakistani jails are there for offenses under the Hudood Ordinances, which were introduced by General Zia ul-Haq in 1979 as part of an "Islamization" campaign designed to consolidate his support from an increasingly powerful fundamentalist minority. The ordinances enforce punishments for adultery, fornication and rape; all three crimes are defined as "sexual intercourse outside of marriage," with rape requiring the added element of a lack of consent.
Women are often imprisoned in Pakistan because they were unable to prove a rape charge (lack of consent) and were thus themselves charged with adultery or fornication. This bizarre transformation occurs largely because evidentiary laws are explicitly biased against women and, in the absence of evidence other than the female victim's own testimony, male defendants find it easy to deny the charge. In such cases medical reports introduced by the victim in support of her rape charge (pregnancy or signs of forced penetration) are often used against her to prove that impermissible sex occurred. As no such medical evidence exists regarding the accused rapist, he is often released for lack of evidence while female rape victims are charged with fornication or adultery and sent to prison pending trial.
The delegation also found increasing numbers of Bangladeshi women in Pakistani jails. According to a recent nationwide survey in Pakistan, some 150 to 200 Bengali women are brought by traffickers each month from Bangladesh to Pakistan. These women are often lured across the border by promises of work and find themselves forcibly sold into prostitution or domestic servitude. If discovered by the police, they are arrested as illegal immigrants and imprisoned. The survey estimated that 1,400 Bangladeshi women are currently in Pakistani jails.
The delegation's report on the mission to Pakistan is scheduled for release in early 1992.
In addition to these completed missions, the Women's Rights Project is working with Helsinki Watch on two additional reports on women's rights in Czechoslovakia and Poland and with Middle East Watch on gender discrimination under the Family Code in Algeria.
The Women's Rights Project also has begun to investigate individual cases of international significance. The Project's first effort in this area involved a collaboration with Middle East Watch to protest the closing by the Egyptian government of the Arab Women's Solidarity Association (AWSA). The Egyptian authorities closed the Association, known in Egypt and worldwide for its work on women's rights, without warning or justification. The legality of the closing is being challenged by AWSA in court. The Women's Rights Project together with Middle East Watch and the Urban Morgan Institute for Human Rights of the University of Cincinnati College of Law filed an amicus curiae brief protesting the closing on the grounds that it violated international guarantees of freedom of expression and association.
Another important objective of the Women's Rights Project's is to build ties between domestic and international human rights and women's rights groups to raise the visibility of violence against women and discrimination on the basis of gender as human rights violations, and to strengthen the mechanisms for making governments accountable for such practices. In addition to the Project's field work, which often involves linking women's and human rights groups, the Project has participated in and sponsored several meetings designed to bring the women's rights and human rights communities together. For example, in November 1991, the Women's Rights Project hosted a meeting between international women's rights monitors and representatives of several international human rights organizations as a step toward improved collaboration in the future. The report from this meeting was released in December.
The Women's Rights Project is directed by Dorothy Thomas and staffed by Dionne Morris. For the academic year 1991-1992, Michele Beasley, having received a Women, Law and Public Policy Fellowship from the Georgetown University Law Center, has joined the Project as staff attorney. The Women's Rights Project is based in Human Rights Watch's Washington office.
THE CALIFORNIA COMMITTEE
AND THE LOS ANGELES OFFICE
Nineteen ninety-one was the second full year of operation for the Los Angeles office of Human Rights Watch. The office opened in May 1989 to complement the work of the California Committee of Human Rights Watch _ a group of concerned Californians who actively promote and participate in our work. The Los Angeles office is responsible for the research on Mexico and the U.S.-Mexican border area performed by Americas Watch. The office also sponsors educational programs on international human rights in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and is available to carry out research and campaign tasks for all components of Human Rights Watch.
Research on Mexico continued to be the cornerstone of the Los Angeles office's work in 1991. Two reports were produced: Prison Conditions in Mexico and Unceasing Abuses: Human Rights in Mexico One Year After the Introduction of Reforms. Both received substantial press coverage in Mexico and contributed to prodding the Mexican government to intensify human rights reforms. In March, the office prepared testimony on human rights in Mexico which was presented to the Senate Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs. In October, a representative from the office spoke at the U.S.-Mexico Center of the University of California at San Diego on human rights in Mexico one year after the introduction of reforms. Also in October, an office representative addressed the newly formed Mexican National Association of Democratic Lawyers about documenting human rights abuses.
During 1991 Human Rights Watch, through the Los Angeles office, joined the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California in litigation against the estate of Ferdinand Marcos on behalf of three victims of human rights abuses in the Philippines during his presidency. The cases are precedent-setting because they are the first human rights cases under the Alien Tort Claims Act that are scheduled to go to trial on their merits.
The Los Angeles office helped to prepare briefs for and participated in key hearings on the case in January, July and October. In April, Human Rights Watch participated in depositions in New York of Imelda Marcos and her son Ferdinand Romauldez Marcos. In May, an office representative traveled to Manila for three weeks to gather evidence for the litigation. In October, Human Rights Watch, under the direction of the Los Angeles office, filed an amicus curiae brief in Trajano v. Marcos; a parallel case to Sison v. Marcos. The brief challenged an attempt to limit the scope of the Alien Tort Claims Act to prevent damage suits for gross abuses committed abroad.
Research continued on abuses by the U.S. Border Parol and by other agencies of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) during the arrest and detention of undocumented aliens in the United States. A report is scheduled for release in early 1992.
During its research on INS abuses, the office learned of a case in which Border Patrol agents used torture to elicit information from two Guatemalan men who had entered the United States without inspection. According to the men, Border Patrol agents in Falfurrias, Texas used a cattle prod on one of them and threatened to rape him with it; both men were severely beaten. Through the efforts of the Los Angeles office, Human Rights Watch has joined Texas Rural Legal Aid (TRLA) in representing the men. TRLA will handle their lawsuit against the individual agents, while Human Rights Watch, in cooperation with volunteer attorneys in Texas, will assume responsibility for their Federal Tort Claims Act proceedings against the INS.
The Los Angeles office filed Freedom of Information Act requests on behalf of Antonio Valenzia Fontes, a Mexican lawyer, and four others who were detained, tortured and held incommunicado for five days before being officially "arrested" on trumped-up drug charges. The five men allege that U.S. law enforcement agents were present during their torture, and that in two cases, the torture was stopped to allow the U.S. agents to interrogate the men, and then resumed.2
In February, the Los Angeles office prepared a memorandum on freedom of expression during political campaigns. The research was incorporated into a letter from Helsinki Watch calling on the Polish Helsinki Committee to withdraw its support for the prosecution of losing presidential candidate Stanislaw Tyminski. Tyminski was charged with "publicly insulting, ridiculing and deriding the Polish Nation" under laws that dated from Poland's repressive past.
During June and July, several members of the California Committee participated in visits to four jails and prisons in Southern California and contributed to the Human Rights Watch Prison Project's comprehensive nationwide report, Prison Conditions in the United States.
In September, a California Committee member served as a public member of the U.S. delegation to the Moscow meeting of the Conference on the Human Dimension, part of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. In addition to working to promote human rights through the U.S. delegation, she participated in independent activities organized by Helsinki Watch in Moscow at the time.
As part of its public education program, the California Committee and Los Angeles office helped to organize several well attended events. In January, Fang Lizhi, China's most prominent astrophysicist and outspoken human rights activist, was our guest for a series of public and private meetings in Los Angeles and San Francisco. In April, Andrew Whitley, just back from a fact-finding mission to Kuwait, made presentations in both cities. In May, Holly Burkhalter spoke to members of the California Committee on Human Rights Watch's work in Washington. In October, Jose Zalaquet, a distinguished lawyer and longtime human rights activist from Chile, and Juan Méndez, executive director of Americas Watch, addressed a small gathering in San Francisco. Aryeh Neier, executive director of Human Rights Watch, was the featured speaker at the California Committee's November annual meeting.
Jane Olson and Stanley Sheinbaum are co-chairs of the California Committee. Its Executive Committee includes Raquel Ackerman, Mike Farrell, Paul Hoffman, Joseph and Donna LaBonte, Daniel Levy, Lynda Palevsky, Lucille Polachek, Clara A. "Zazi" Pope, Hon. Phillip R. Trimble, Francis Wheat and Diane Wittenberg. The remainder of the California Committee is composed of Lynn Alvarez, Edward Asner, Geoffrey Cowen, Dolores A. Donovan, Sandy Elster, Brenda Freiberg, Jonathan M. Gordon, Arthur N. Greenberg, Kristin Hubbard, Lucy Hubbard, Rosanne Keynan, Clifford L. Klein, Abraham F. Lowenthal, Beatriz Manz, Felicia Marcus, Hon. Dorothy W. Neslon, Hon. James F. Nelson, Steven A. Nissen, Claire Pollack, Cruz Reynoso, David W. Rintels, Vicki Riskin Rintels, Ramona Ripston, William Rothbard, Orville Schell, Pippa Scott, Nancy Wheat, Stanley Wolpert and Zohreh Zarnegar.
Ellen L. Lutz is the California director of Human Rights Watch and heads the Los Angeles office. Jean Hessburg is the outreach coordinator and Colleen Rafferty is an associate. Eugene Chao and Rudy Guyon were full-time law-student interns who assisted with Sison v. Marcos and other projects. Ivan Arrellanes is a research intern who assists with work on Mexico.
CONGRESSIONAL CASEWORK
Human Rights Watch continued to work closely with two casework groups composed of members of Congress _ the Congressional Friends of Human Rights Monitors and the Congressional Committee to Support Writers and Journalists. Both groups are bipartisan and bicameral. Human Rights Watch initiated the formation of these groups to enable concerned members of Congress to write letters and urgent cables to governments that violate the basic rights of human rights monitors, writers and journalists. Human Rights Watch supplies the groups with information about appropriate cases of concern; the groups, in turn, determine which cases they would like to act upon.
The goals of the congressional casework groups are three-fold. Most important, their letters and cables help to pressure governments to end the persecution of human rights monitors, journalists and writers. Second, the material submitted by Human Rights Watch informs the members of the groups about such persecution. Finally, copies of letters and cables are sent to U.S. ambassadors in the relevant countries to inform them about cases of concern to the congressional members.
The Congressional Friends of Human Rights Monitors, which was formed in 1983, is composed of thirty-seven senators and 144 representatives. The five members of the steering committee for the group are Senators Dave Durenberger, James Jeffords and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Representatives Tony Hall and Constance Morella.
In 1991, the committee took up the cases of dozens of human rights monitors who had been killed, disappeared, arrested arbitrarily, assaulted or harassed. Among these cases were: the murder or disappearance of several human rights activists in Guatemala; the assault on Philippine human rights lawyer Vidal Tombo; the murder of Marco Tulio Hernández, a human rights activist in Honduras; the arbitrary arrest of human rights lawyer Paul Muite of Kenya; the arrest and harassment of Cuban human rights monitors; the detention of Dr. Nguyen Dan Que, a Vietnamese human rights activist; the murder of Colombian human rights monitor Alcides Castrillon and death threats against other Colombian monitors; and the murder of South African human rights lawyer Bheki Mlangeni.
The Congressional Committee to Support Writers and Journalists was formed in 1988 and is composed of nineteen senators and eighty-five representatives. In 1991, the members of the steering committee for the group were Senators Bob Graham and Mark Hatfield, and Representatives Bill Green and John Lewis.
During the year, the committee denounced attacks against individual journalists and writers, as well as acts of censorship. Among these cases were: the arrests in March and November of Kenyan editor Gitobu Imanyara and the arrest and intimidation of several other Kenyan journalists; the temporary disappearance of a CBS news crew and a British film crew and the murder of photographer Gad Schuster Gross in Iraq; attacks against the independent press in Cameroon; the murder of Colombian journalist Julio Daniel Chaparro Hurtado and photographer Jorge Enrique Torres Navas; the Salvadoran military's harassment of foreign journalists; the arrest and mistreatment of Palestinian journalist Taher Shritah in Israel; the murder of Philippine journalist Nesino Paulin Toling; the sentencing of South African journalist Patrick Lawrence; and the harassment of journalists working for the newspaper al Fajr in Tunisia.
FINANCES
Human Rights Watch is an independent, nongovernmental organization. To maintain that independence, Human Rights Watch does not accept funds from any government or government-funded agency. It supports its activities entirely through grants from private foundations and contributions from private individuals and corporations.
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH MISSIONS IN 1991
Africa Watch
February Senegal to interview Mauritanian refugees
March Nigeria to attend a session of the African Commission on Human and People's Rights
June-August South Africa to conduct research on conditions in Ciskei and Bophuthatswana
August Liberia/Ivory to research human rights
October Zimbabwe to attend meeting of African nongovernmental organizations from Commonwealth countries, to attend the Summit of Commonwealth Heads of State, and to research general human rights conditions
November Belgium to interview refugees from Burundi and Rwanda and to meet with representatives of the European Economic Community and European Parliament
Rwanda to research human rights conditions since the outbreak of the war
France to interview Mauritanian refugees and to meet with journalists, academics, activists and others knowledgeable about French human rights policy toward Africa
December Somalia to investigate landmines in Northern Somalia
Americas Watch
January Guatemala to conduct exhumations in San Antonio Sinaché and fact-finding in Santiago Atitlán (with Physicians for Human Rights)
January- El Salvador to conduct fact-finding for
February March report, The Challenge of Reform
February Argentina to gather facts pertaining to the issues of truth and justice
Dominican to conduct follow-up
Republic investigations of the use of forced labor on state-run sugar plantations (with National Coalition for Haitian Refugees and Caribbean Rights)
Mexico to meet with government officials, human rights activists and victims, labor leaders and others in Mexico City, and to investigate the December 1990 police killing of six civilians in Angostura, Sinaloa
Panama to investigate developments affecting the rule of law since the Endara administration came into office following the December 1990 U.S. invasion
Paraguay to present "New Outbursts of Violence in Land Disputes," and to meet with government officials
March Puerto Rico to investigate prison conditions (Human Rights Watch Prison Project)
March-April Nicaragua to conduct fieldwork on political violence and the condition of demobilized contra fighters
April Brazil to investigate violence against women (HRW's Women's Rights Project)
May Colombia to present the Spanish-language version of The Drug War in Colombia and to investigate general conditions
May Uruguay to investigate general conditions and the case of the identification of child who had been kidnapped from his "disappeared" mother
May-June Nicaragua to prepare July report, Fitful Peace
July Argentina to investigate police killings and torture
Chile to present Human Rights and the "Politics of Agreements"
Dominican to investigate the mass forced
Republic deportation of Haitians and Dominico-Haitians (with National Coalition for Haitian Refugees and Caribbean Rights)
Ecuador to investigate general conditions, especially the issue of violence in rural areas related to land conflicts
Guatemala to present the Chunimá case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San José, Costa Rica
Nicaragua to present Fitful Peace
Peru to meet with government officials, journalists and human rights activists
August Brazil to present the Portuguese version of Rural Violence in Brazil, meet with government officials, and investigate police violence in São Paulo
August- Guatemala to investigate conditions of
September, displaced villagers in northern
November, Quiché organized as the
December Communities of Population in Resistance
September El Salvador to observe the trial of military personnel in the Jesuit killings
October Colombia to investigate general conditions
November Brazil to investigate violence employed by the police in Rio de Janeiro
November- Brazil to investigate rural violence
December
December Haiti to investigate violations since the September coup d'etat (with National Coalition for Haitian Refugees)
Asia Watch
February Japan to meet with government officials, nongovernmental organizations, representatives of the business community and others to discuss Japan's domestic and foreign human rights policies.
April Cambodia/ to interview soldiers,
May-June Indonesia/ to investigate reports of
July China to collect research materials and investigate general conditions
November Pakistan to investigate violence against women in police custody and the role of gender discrimination as a reason for women's incarceration (with the Human Rights Watch Women's Rights Project)
December Burma/China to investigate human rights conditions on the Sino-Burmese border
Helsinki Watch
January Northern to research human rights
January- Baltics to meet with government
February officials and eyewitnesses in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania while investigating the January 1991 violence in the Baltics
February- Romania to do a follow-up investigation
March of the June 1990 events and take a further look into the problems of the Romanian Gypsies
February- Yugoslavia to investigate the
April demonstrations in Belgrade in March and the situation of the Serbs in Croatia
March Soviet Union to investigate general conditions in Moldavia
March-April Bulgaria to continue research on the situation of the Gypsies
April United States to visit three federal prisons in Pennsylvania as part of an investigation of U.S. prison conditions. (Human Rights Watch Prisons Project)
April-May Romania to continue the Gypsy project
May-June Yugoslavia to research freedom of the press in Serbia, Kosovo, Vojvodina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Slovenia, and to investigate the deaths of seventeen people after recent interethnic violence in Vukovar
May-July Soviet Union to attend a minority rights conference in Leningrad; to interview Armenian officials, refugees from Azerbaidzhan, Azerbaidzhani officials and refugees from Armenia in Armenia and Azerbaidzhan; to make contacts in Turkmenia; and to do follow up work in Tadzhikistan on Helsinki Watch's report on Tadzhikistan JuneSoviet Unionto research conditions in Soviet pretrial prisons, labor camps and other penal facilities by visiting twenty-one facilities in all and interviewing current and former prisoners, prison officials, defense attorneys, procurators and prison rights activists
July Soviet Union to research the "punished peoples," those who had been deported under Stalin
July- Yugoslavia to investigate ethnic tensions
September and army abuses in Croatia and Slovenia
August Germany to do preliminary research for a report on treatment of the Gypsy population
August- Soviet Union to interview Azerbaidzhani and
September Kurdish refugees in Baku and to establish contacts with government officials and human rights activists in Georgia
September Soviet Union to attend the CSCE Meeting in Moscow and run independent seminars, on eight incidents of the unjustified use of force by the Soviet government against civilians, and the current plight of ethnic minorities deported under Stalin
October Albania to investigate general conditions
October- Romania to investigate prison conditions
November
November Turkey to investigate reports of torture of children in detention
November- Soviet Union to set up the Helsinki Watch
December office in Moscow, and to observe the situation of the South Ossetians in North Ossetia and Georgia
Middle East Watch
February- Jordan to interview foreign nationals
March fleeing Iraq
March Kuwait to investigate the Iraqi record in occupied Kuwait and post-liberation abuses against non-Kuwaitis
April-May Iran to investigate Iraqi human rights abuses against Kurds and to determine the extent of the refugee crisis
May London to interview Kurdish refugees
May-June Kuwait to observe collaborator trials and to research continuing post-liberation abuses
June Israel to investigate Iraqi missle attacks on Israel during the Gulf war
September Paris to meet with Iranian human rights activists and exiled Kurds
September Iran to attend human rights conference and to meet with government officials concerning current human rights policies
October- Madrid to attend Middle East Peace
November Conference to lobby participants to include human rights on the agenda
December Iraq to examine mass graves in northern Iraq (with Physicians for Human Rights)
Africa Watch
Academic Freedom and Human Rights Abuses in Africa, April
Angola
"Civilians Devastated by l5 Year War," February
Angola: Violations of the Laws of War by Both Sides, April
Cameroon
"Attacks Against Independent Press," February
Ethiopia
"Mengistu's Empty `Democracy'-One Year After Reform Is Announced, No Improvements in Civil and Political Rights," March
"Human Rights Crisis as Central Power Crumbles-Killings, Detentions, Forcible Conscription and Obstruction of Relief," April
Ethiopia: Evil Days - 30 Years of War and Famine in Ethiopia, September
Ghana
"Government Denies Existence of Political Prisoners; Minister Says Detainees `Safer' in Custody, August
Kenya
Kenya: Taking Liberties, August
Liberia
"The Cycle of Abuse-Human Rights Violations Since the November Cease-Fire," October
Malawi
"Government Releases Many Political Prisoners-Jack Mapanje and Others Still Held," April
Mauritania
"More Than 200 Black Political Detainees Executed or Tortured to Death," May
Mozambique
"New Constitution Protects Basic Rights But Political Prisoners Still Suffer Unfair Trials," February
Nigeria
"Behind the Wall - The Civil Liberties Organisation Releases a Damning Report on Prison Conditions Nationwide," April
Nigeria: On the Eve of `Change,' A Transition to What?, October
South Africa
The Killings in South Africa - The Role of the Security Forces and the Response of the State, January
"Out of Sight-The Misery in Bophuthatswana," September
"Ciskei: Challenging the Fiction of Independence," December
Sudan
"Inside Al Bashir's Prisons: Torture, Denial of Medical Attention and Poor Conditions," February
"New Islamic Penal Code Violates Basic Human Rights," April"
"Sudanese Human Rights Organizations," November
"Destroying Ethinic Identity and The Secret War Against the Nuba," December
Americas Watch
Argentina
Truth and Partial Justice in Argentina, An Update, April (Also in Spanish).
Police Violence in Argentina: Torture and Police Killings in Buenos Aires, December
Brazil
Rural Violence in Brazil, February (Also in Portuguese).
"The Search for Brazil's Disappeared: The Mass Grave at Dom Bosco Cemetery," (with Physicians for Human Rights and the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the American Association for the Advancement of Science), March.
Criminal Injustice: Violence Against Women in Brazil, (with the Women's Rights Project of Human Rights Watch), October.
Chile
Human Rights and the "Politics of Agreements," Chile During President Aylwin's First Year, July.
Colombia
La 'Guerra' contra las drogas en Colombia: La olvidada tragedia de la violencia política, (Spanish-language version of Americas Watch's October 1990 report), April.
Cuba
"Attacks Against Independent Associations March 1990-February 1991," February.
"Behind a Sporting Facade, Stepped-up Repression," August.
Dominican Republic
Half Measures: Reform, Forced Labor and the Dominican Sugar Industry (with National Coalition for Haitian Refugees and Caribbean Rights), March.
El Salvador
El Salvador and Human Rights: The Challenge of Reform, March.
"Extradition Sought for Alleged Death Squad Participant," August.
El Salvador's Decade of Terror: Human Rights Since the Assassination of Archbishop Romero, ("Human Rights Watch Books" series of Yale University Press), September.
"The Jesuit Trial: An Observer's Report," December.
Guatemala
"Slaying of Rights Activists, Impunity Prevails Under New Government," April.
Getting Away with Murder (with Physicians for Human Rights), September.
Haiti
"The Aristide Government's Human Rights Record" (with the National Coalition of Haitian Refugees and Caribbean Rights), November.
Return to the Darkest Days: Human Rights in Haiti Since the Coup, (with the National Coalition for Haitian Refugees and Physicians for Human Rights), December.
Honduras
"Torture and Murder by Government Forces Persist Despite End of Hostilities," June.
Mexico
Prison Conditions in Mexico (with the Prison Project of Human Rights Watch), March.
Unceasing Abuses: Human Rights in Mexico One Year After the Introduction of Reform, September.
Nicaragua
Fitful Peace, July.
Panama
"Human Rights in Post-Invasion Panama: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied," April.
Paraguay
"New Outbursts of Violence in Land Disputes," February.
Peru
Into the Quagmire: Human Rights and U.S. Policy in Peru, September.
Puerto Rico
"Prison Conditions in Puerto Rico," (with the Prison Project of Human Rights Watch), May.
Suriname
"Human Rights Conditions on the Eve of the Election," (with Caribbean Rights), May.
Uruguay
"Judiciary Bars Steps to Identify Child Kidnapped During Military Regime," September.
Asia Watch
Afghanistan
Afghanistan: the Forgotten War, February.
"Afghanistan: Towards A Political Settlement" August.
Burma
"Burma: Time for Sanctions," February.
Cambodia
Land mines in Cambodia, September.
China
"China: Rough Justice in Bejing," January.
"China: Update on Arrests in China," January.
"China: The Bejing Trials," February.
"China: Update on Arrests in China," February.
"China: The Case of Wang Juntao," March.
"China: Chinese Workers Receive Harsh Sentences," March.
"China: Guilt By Association," March.
"China: Update on Arrests in China," April.
"China: Prison Labor in China," April.
Two Years after Tiananmen, May.
Crackdown in Inner Mongolia, July.
"China: Forced Labor Exports from China, Update #1," September.
"China: Forced Labor Exports From China, Update #2," November.
"China: Persecution after Prison," November.
Freedom of Religion in China, December.
Hong Kong
"Hong Kong: Indefinite Detention," December.
India
Human Rights in India: Kashmir Under Siege, May.
Prison Conditions in India, May.
Human Rights in India: Punjab in Crisis, August.
"India: Encounter in Philibhit," September.
Indonesia
"Indonesia: Indonesia's Salman Rushdie," April.
"Indonesia: Criminal Charges For Political Caricatures,"
"Indonesia: Continuing Human Rights Violations in Aceh," June.
"East Timor: The November 12 Massacre and its Aftermath," December.
Malaysia
"Malaysia: Detaines in Sabah," October.
"Malaysia: Malaysian Government Moves to Stifle Independent Bar," November.
Sri Lanka
"Sri Lanka: Human Rights In Sri Lanka, An Update," March.
Tibet
"Tibet: 81 Political Prisoners held in Drapchi Prison, Lhasa," January.
Vietnam
"Vietnam: Repression of the Dissent," March.
"Vietnam: Citizens Detained For Peaceful Expression," June.
Helsinki Watch
Albania
"Albania." March.
"Albania." April. (update of March 27 report).
Bulgaria
"Destroying Ethnic Identity: Selective Persecution of Macedonians in Bulgaria," February.
Destroying Ethnic Identity: The Gypsies of Bulgaria, June.
Czechoslovakia
Prison Conditions in Czechoslovakia, September.
Northern Ireland
Human Rights in Northern Ireland, A Helsinki Watch Report, October.
Poland
Prison Conditions in Poland, An Update. January.
Romania
Since the Revolution/ Human Rights in Romania, March.
"Romania: Aftermath to the June Violence in Bucharest." May.
Destroying Ethnic Identity: Persecution of the Gypsies in Romania, September.
Turkey
"Turkey: Five Deaths in Detention in January," February.
"Update: Two More Deaths in Detention in Turkey in January," February.
"Crackdown on Anti-War Demonstrations in Turkey," February.
"Turkey: New Restrictive Anti-Terror Law," June.
"Freedom of Expression in Turkey: Abuses Continue," June.
"Turkey: Human Rights Activist Killed; Police Shoot and Kill Three at His Funeral; Human Rights Association Attacked," July.
"Turkey: Torture, Killings by Police and Political Violence Increasing," July.
"Turkey: Fifteen Deaths Suring Police Detention Since January," December.
United States
"Police Brutality in the United States: A Policy Statement on the Need for Federal Oversight," Human Rights Watch, July.
Prison Conditions in the United States, November.
Soviet Union
"Pattern of Violence/Lithuania is Latest Example of Soviet Army's Use of Lethal Force," January.
Glasnost in Jeopardy/ Human Rights in the USSR, April.
Conflict in the Soviet Union: Black January in Azerbaidzhan, May.
"USSR: Continuing Violence in the Baltics," June.
Conflict in the Soviet Union: Tadzhikistan, July.
Punished Peoples of the Soviet Union: The Continuing Legacy of Stalin's Deportations, September.
United Kingdom
Restricted Subjects: Freedom of Expression in the United Kingdom, October.
Yugoslavia
"Human Rights in a Dissolving Yugoslavia," January.
"Yugoslavia: The March 1991 Demonstrations in Belgrade," May.
"Yugoslavia: Human Rights Abuses in the Croatian Conflict," August.
Middle East Watch
Egypt
"Government Moves to Dissolve Prominent Arab Women's Organization," September.
"Authorities Clamp Down on Dissent," February.
Great Britain
"Great Britain Holding 35 Iraqi Residents as Prisoners of War," February.
Iran
"Political Dissidents Reportedly Sentenced," September.
Iraq
Needless Deaths in the Gulf War, November.
"POWs, Wounded and Killed Soldiers in the Gulf War," March.
"The Bombing of Iraqi Cities during the Gulf War," March.
Israeli Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip
"Truth-Telling: Killings at Temple Mount One Year Later," September.
Prison Conditions in Israel, April.
"Reuters' Gaza Correspondent Enters Fifth Week in Detention," February.
"West Bank Palestinians Under the Toughest Curfew Since 1973," January.
Kuwait
"Nowhere to Go: The Tragedy of the Remaining Palestinian Families in Kuwait," October.
A Victory Turned Sour: Human Rights in Kuwait Since Liberation, September (summary published in Arabic).
Middle East (General)
"Madrid Peace Conference: Human Rights Records of the Principal Regional Parties," October.
Morocco
"Travel Restrictions on Ex-Political Prisoners," September.
Syria
Syria Unmasked: The Suppression of Human Rights by the Asad Regime, August.
The Fund for Free Expression
"Fund Cites Persecuted Writers," May.
Off Limits: Censorship and Corruption, July.
Iran
"The Threat Against Salman Rushdie: 1,000 Days Later," November (with the Association of American Publishers).
United Kingdom
Restricted Subjects: Freedom of Expression, September.
United States
"Freedom of Expression and the War," January.
"Managed News, Stifled Views," February.
"Secret Trials in America?," June.
"SLAPPing Down Critics," September.
"The Supreme Court and Free Speech," October.
"Muzzling Student Journalists," December.
Human Rights Watch
Executive Committee
Robert L. Bernstein, chair; Adrian W. DeWind, vice chair; Roland Algrant, Lisa Anderson, Peter D. Bell Robert L. Bernstein, Alice L. Brown, William Carmichael, Dorothy Cullman, Adrian W. DeWind, Irene Diamond, Jonathon Fanton, Jack Greenberg, Alice H. Henkin, Stephen L. Kass, Marina Pinto Kaufman, Jeri Laber, Aryeh Neier, Bruce Rabb, Harriet Rabb, Kenneth Roth, Orville Schell, Gary G. Sick, Robert Wedgeworth.
Staff
Aryeh Neier, executive director; Kenneth Roth, deputy director; Holly J. Burkhalter, Washington director; Ellen Lutz, California director; Susan Osnos, press dfirector; Jemera Rone, counsel; Dorothy Q. Thomas, Women's Rights Project director; Joanna Weschler, Prison Project director; Allyson Collins, research associate; Nicola Jefferson, Judge Leonard T. Sandler fellow; Julie Triedman and John White, Orville Schell fellows; Michele Beasley, Legal fellow, Women's Rights Project; Eric Stover, consultant; Hamilton Fish, managing director; Stephanie C. Steele, operations director; Rachel Weintraub, special events director; Sonia Singh, accounting manager; Bruni Burres, Film Festival coordinator; Suzanne Guthrie, publications manager; Robert Kimzey, editor; Laura McCormick and Elisabeth Socolow, office managers; Mark Rector, computer specialist; Lemuel Thomas, mail room supervisor; Esther Kaufman, Linda D. Long, Lamia Matta, Dionne Morris, Colleen Rafferty, Karen Rose, Scott Turner and Carline Windall, associates; Anderson Allen, Philip Dixon and Vanessa Jimenez, receptionists; Frederick Evan and Joffrey Rachel, mailroom assistants; Jamay Biaz, clerical staff.
Africa Watch
Committee
Roland Algrant, Robert L. Bernstein, Julius Chambers, Michael Clough, Roberta Cohen, Carol Corillon, Alison L. DesForges, Adrian W. DeWind, Thomas M. Franck, Gail Gerhart, Jack Greenberg, Alice Henkin, Richard A. Joseph, Thomas Karis, Russell Karp, Stephen Kass, Randal Kennedy, John A. Marcum, Gay McDougall, Toni Morrison, James C.N. Paul, Robert Preiskel, Norman Redlich, Randall Robinson, and Claude E. Welch, Jr.
Staff
William Carmichael, chairman; Alice B. Brown, vice chair; Rakiya Omaar, executive director; Alex de Waal, associate director; Janet Fleischman and Karen Sorensen, research associates; Ben Penglase, Urmi Shal and Barbara L. Baker, associates.
Americas Watch
Committee
Peter D. Bell, chair; Stephen Kass and Marina Pinto Kaufman, vice chairs; Roland Algrant, Kenneth Anderson, Robert L. Bernstein, Albert Bildner, Paul Chevigny, Dorothy Cullman, Peter W. Davidson, Drew S. Days, III, Patricia Derian, Adrian W. DeWind, Stanley Engelstein, Tom J. Farer, Jamie Fellner, Alejandro Garro, Wendy Gimbel, John S. Gitlitz, Robert K. Goldman, James Goldston, Jack Greenberg, Wade J. Henderson, Alice H. Henkin, Anne M. Johnson, Russell Karp, Margaret A. Lang, Jocelyn McCalla, Theodor Meron, Marshall Meyer, David E. Nachman, John B. Oakes, Victor Penchasadeh, Clara A. "Zazi" Pope, Michael Posner, Bruce Rabb, Jeanne Richman, Tina Rosenberg, Jean-Marie Simon, Sanford Solender, George Soros, Alfred Stepan, Rose Styron, Arturo Valenzuela, Jorge Valls.
Staff
Juan E. Mendéz, executive director; Cynthia Arnson and Anne Manuel, associate directors; David Holiday, director, San Salvador office; Mary Jane Camejo, research associate; Cynthia Brown, representative, Santiago; Ben Penglase, Patricia Pittman, representative, Buenos Aires; Clifford C. Rohde and Patricia Sinay, associates.
Asia Watch
Committee
Jack Greenberg, chair; Harriet Rabb and Orville Schell, vice chairs; Maureen Aung-Thwin, Floyd Abrams, Edward J. Baker, Robert L. Bernstein, Julie Brill, Jerome A. Cohen, Adrian DeWind, Clarence Dias, Dolores A. Donovan, Timothy A. Gelatt, Adrienne Germaine, Merle Goldman, Deborah Greenberg, Charles Halpern, David Hawk, Paul Hoffman, Virginia Leary, Perry Link, The Rt. Rev. Paul Moore, Sheila Rothman, Barnett Rubin, James Scott, Ivan Shapiro, Judith Shapiro, Elizabeth Vorenberg, Maya Wiley.
Staff
Sidney Jones, executive director; Mike Jendrzejczyk, Washington representative; Patricia Gossman, Robin Munro, Ji Won Park, research associates; Dinah Pokempner, Marianne Spiegel, Consultants; Jeannine Guthrie, Lydia Lobenthal, Emily Sewell, associates.
Helsinki Watch
Committee
Robert L. Bernstein, chair; Jonathan Fanton and Alice Henkin, vice chairs; M. Bernard Aidinoff, Roland Algrant, Kenneth Anderson, Hans A. Bethe, Charles Biblowit, Gladys Chang-Brazil, Roberta Cohen, Lori Damrosch, Drew S. Days, III, Istvan Deak, Adrian W. DeWind, Ed Doctorow, Fr. Robert Drinan, Stanley Engelstein, Frances Tarlton Farenthold, Alan R. Finbery, Bernard D. Fischman, Marvin E. Frankel, Ellen Futter, Willard Gaylin, John Glusman, Victor Gotbaum, Hanna Gray, Jack Greenberg, John Gutfreund, Rita E. Hauser, John Hersey, Elizabeth Holtzman, Lawrence Hughes, Susan Jacoby, Tamar Jacoby, Robert James, Anne M. Johnson, Russell Karp, Rhoda Karpatkin, Stephen Kass, Bentley Kassal, Marina Pinto Kaufman, Joanne Landy, Margaret A. Lang, Norman Lear, Leon Levy, Leon Lipson, Wendy Luers, Elizabeth J. McCormack, Theodor Meron, Arthur Miller, Toni Morrison, Daniel Nathans, Matthew Nimetz, Eleanor Holmes Norton, John B. Oakes, Jane Olson, Yuri Orlov, Bruce Rabb, Stuart Robinowitz, Felix G. Rohatyn, Donna Shalala, Stanley K. Sheinbaum, Jerome J. Shestack, Sanford Solender, George Soros, Susan Weber Soros, Michael Sovern, Svetlana Stone, Rose Styron, Jay Topkis, Liv Ullman, Gregory Wallance, Rosalind Whitehead, Jerome R. Wiesner, Roger Wilkins.
Staff
Jeri Laber, executive director; Lois Whitman, deputy director; Catherine Cosman, Washington representative; Holly Cartner, staff counsel; Rachel Denber and Ivana Nizich, research associates; Sarai Brachman, Pamela Cox and Elisabeth Socolow, associates.
Middle East Watch
Committee
Gary G. Sick, chair; Lisa Anderson and Bruce Rabb, vice chairs; Naseer H. Aruri, Shaul Bakhash, M. Cherif Bassiouni, Hyman Bookbinder, Paul Chevigny, Patricia Derian, Stanley Engelstein, Edith Everett, Mansour Farhang, Robert K. Goldman, Reverend J. Bryan Hehir, Russell Karp, Marina Kaufman, Samir Khalaf, Judith Kipper, Pnina Lahav, Ann M. Lesch, Richard Maass, Stephen P. Marks, David K. Shipler, Sanford Solender, Bishop Joseph M. Sullivan, Sir Brian Urquhart, Napoleon B. Williams, Jr.
Staff
Andrew Whitley, executive director; Eric Goldstein, research director; Virginia N. Sherry, associate director; Aziz Abu Hamad, senior researcher; Christina Derry, associate.
The Fund for Free Expression
Officers and Staff
Gara LaMarche, executive director; Lydia Lobenthal, associate.
Committee
Roland Algrant, chair; Aryeh Neier and Robert Wedgeworth, vice-chairs; Alice Arlen, Robert L. Bernstein, Tom A. Bernstein, Hortense Calisher, Geoffrey Cowan, Dorothy Cullman, Patricia Derian, Adrian DeWind, Irene Diamond, E.L. Doctorow, Norman Dorsen, Jack Greenberg, Vartan Gregorian, S. Miller Harris, Alice H. Henkin, Pam Hill, Joseph Hofheimer, Lawrence Hughes, Anne M. Johnson, Mark Kaplan, Stephen Kass, William Koshland, Jeri Laber, Anthony Lewis, William Loverd, Wendy Luers, John Macrae, III, Michael Massing, Nancy Meiselas, Arthur Miller, The Rt. Rev. Paul Moore, Jr., Toni Morrison, Peter Osnos, Bruce Rabb, Geoffrey Cobb Ryan, John G. Ryden, Steven R. Shapiro, Jerome Shestack, Nadine Strossen, Rose Styron, Hector Timerman, John Updike, Luisa Valenzuela, Nicholas A. Veliotes, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Gregory Wallance and Roger Wilkins.
For more on the report, see the above chapter on Brazil.
For more on this case, see the above chapter on Mexico.
Book-length reports are listed in italics; shorter newsletters are in roman-type.
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