Special Collections
Human Rights Collection
- Table View
- List View
State of Pain
by Human Rights WatchThe use of torture as a tool of interrogation is foremost among an escalation in human rights violations by Ugandan security and military forces since 2001. In what most victims consider a state-sanctioned campaign of political suppression, official and ad hoc military, security and intelligence agencies of the Ugandan government have proliferated, practicing illegal and arbitrary detention and unlawful killing/extrajudicial executions, and using torture to force victims to confess to links to the government's past political opponents or current rebel groups. These abuses are not acknowledged by the Ugandan government that instead fosters an enabling climate in which such human rights abuses persist and increase while perpetrators of torture, rather than be held accountable, act with impunity.
Spreading Despair
by Human Rights WatchThe brutality of the four-year armed conflict in Chechnya has started spilling across the border to the neighboring republic of Ingushetia. In the summer of 2003, Russian forces based in Chechnya and the forces of the pro-Moscow Chechen administration conducted a series of operations in Ingushetia, in which they replicated many of the same abuses as those they committed during operations in Chechnya. Alerted to these developments, Human Rights Watch conducted a research mission to Ingushetia from July 5 to 11, 2003. Through interviews with more than forty victims, witnesses, and government officials, we documented the abuses committed by federal and local military, security, and police forces on the territory of Ingushetia in June and early July 2003. Until recently, Ingushetia remained a relatively safe refuge for tens of thousands internally displaced persons who had fled the fighting in Chechnya. In 2002, claiming the situation in Chechnya had "normalized," Russian authorities started pressuring internally displaced persons living in Ingushetia to return home. Federal and local migration officials employed various methods to pressure displaced persons to go back-they threatened displaced Chechens with the imminent closure of tent camps in the middle of winter; removed hundreds of people from the camp registration lists effectively denying them aid and causing them to be evicted. Additionally, they blocked the construction of alternative shelters in Ingushetia.
Some Transparency, No Accountability
by Human Rights WatchThis report analyzes the IMFs overall relationship with the government and successes and failures of the Oil Diagnostic to date. It examines what the Oil Diagnostic and failed efforts at reform can tell us about Angolan government oil revenue mismanagement, and what continuing difficulties in obtaining basic information from the government and major gaps in the data tell us about the ground still to be covered before the Angolan government can meaningfully be said to embrace transparency and accountability. It also analyzes how much money is missing in comparison to how much has been spent on activities and institutions that could facilitate Angolans enjoyment of their civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights.
So Long as They Die
by Human Rights WatchThis 65-page report reveals the slipshod history of executions by lethal injection, using a protocol created three decades ago with no scientific research, nor modern adaptation, and still unchanged today. As the prisoner lies strapped to a gurney, a series of three drugs is injected into his vein by executioners hidden behind a wall. A massive dose of sodium thiopental, an anesthetic, is injected first, followed by pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes voluntary muscles, but leaves the prisoner fully conscious and able to experience pain. A third drug, potassium chloride, quickly causes cardiac arrest, but the drug is so painful that veterinarian guidelines prohibit its use unless a veterinarian first ensures that the pet to be put down is deeply unconscious. No such precaution is taken for prisoners being executed.
Small Change
by Human Rights WatchMillions of children in India toil as virtual slaves, unable to escape the work that will leave them impoverished, illiterate, and often crippled by the time they reach adulthood. These are India's bonded child laborers. A majority of them are Dalits, so-called untouchables. Bound to their employers in exchange for a loan, they are unable to leave while in debt and earn so little they may never be free of it. The Indian government knows about these children and has the mandate to free them. Instead, for reasons of apathy, caste bias, and corruption, many government officials deny that they exist at all.
Setting an Example? Counter-Terrorism Measures in Spain
by Human Rights WatchThe March 11, 2004 deadly attack in Madrid focused the world's attention and compassion on Spain. In ten virtually simultaneous explosions on four different commuter trains, 191 people lost their lives and over 1,400 people were injured. While the Popular Party government of José María Aznar initially blamed Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), the police investigation quickly pointed to the involvement of Islamic fundamentalists. In a videotape located two days after the attacks, a purported spokesman for al-Qaeda claimed responsibility. However, the extent of coordination between the militants in Spain who perpetrated the attacks and al-Qaeda remains unclear. Spanish authorities had long considered Spain a recruitment and logistical operations site for al-Qaeda. Soon after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the United States, Spanish authorities launched a multi-phased police operation to dismantle an alleged al-Qaeda cell located in Spain; most of those detained had been under police surveillance for several years. That Spain should become a direct target for al-Qaeda shocked a nation already weary from four decades of internal political violence. Since the 1960s, ETA has waged a violent campaign to establish an independent state in what is now the autonomous Basque region in northern Spain and a part of southwestern France. The March 11 bombings - referred to in Spain as 11-M - added an international dimension to Spain's struggle against terrorism. Spain's strict antiterrorism measures, shaped by years of grappling with ETA violence, have been applied to all those arrested for alleged links to al-Qaeda as well as for alleged participation in the March 11 bombings.
The Road to Abu Ghraib
by Human Rights WatchSince late April 2004, when the first photographs appeared of U.S. military personnel humiliating, torturing, and otherwise mistreating detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the United States government has repeatedly sought to portray the abuse as an isolated incident, the work of a few "bad apples" acting without orders. On May 4, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, in a formulation that would be used over and over again by U.S. officials, described the abuses at Abu Ghraib as "an exceptional, isolated" case. In a nationally televised address on May 24, President George W. Bush spoke of "disgraceful conduct by a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values." In fact, the only exceptional aspect of the abuse at Abu Ghraib may have been that it was photographed. Detainees in U.S. custody in Afghanistan have testified that they experienced treatment similar to what happened in Abu Ghraib -- from beatings to prolonged sleep and sensory deprivation to being held naked -- as early as 2002. Comparable -- and, indeed, more extreme -- cases of torture and inhuman treatment have been extensively documented by the International Committee of the Red Cross and by journalists at numerous locations in Iraq outside Abu Ghraib. This pattern of abuse did not result from the acts of individual soldiers who broke the rules. It resulted from decisions made by the Bush administration to bend, ignore, or cast rules aside. Administration policies created the climate for Abu Ghraib in three fundamental ways.
Rigging the Rule of Law
by Human Rights WatchWhen Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Frías faced a coup d'état in April 2002, advocates of democracy in Venezuela and abroad roundly condemned the assault on the country's constitutional order. Today Venezuela faces another constitutional crisis that could severely impair its already fragile democracy. This time, though, the threat comes from the government itself. Over the past year, President Chávez and his allies have taken steps to control the country's judicial branch, undermining the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary in ways that violate basic principles of Venezuela's constitution and international human rights law.
Rhetoric and Risk
by Human Rights WatchThis report documents how draconian drug laws and routine police abuse of injection drug users - the population hardest hit by HIV/AIDS in Ukraine - keep them from receiving lifesaving HIV information and services that the government has pledged to provide.
A Return To The New Order?
by Human Rights WatchOn October 24, 2002, Nanang and Muzakkir, two young political activists, were found guilty by a Jakarta court and sentenced to one year in prison. Their case gained widespread domestic media coverage and prompted much editorial debate about the validity of the prosecution. Unlike the protagonists of many other high profile news stories in contemporary Indonesia, Nanang and Muzakkir were neither suspected terrorists nor disgraced military figures. Rather, they were ordinary Indonesians, frustrated by Indonesia's political system, eager for reform. They became politically engaged and attended a non-violent, anti-government protest a few months earlier. Their crime? They expressed their dissatisfaction with the Indonesian government by stamping on pictures of President Megawati Sukarnoputri and Vice-President Hamzah Haz.
Restrictions on AIDS Activists in China
by Human Rights WatchThis 57-page report based on on-the-ground interviews with Chinese AIDS activists, gay rights activists, activists working with drug users, and website managers shows that while senior officials have said they want to encourage China's emerging civil society, many AIDS activists face state harassment and bureaucratic restrictions. First-hand accounts provided to Human Rights Watch reveal that activists conducting AIDS information workshops or working with those at high risk of HIV have been harassed or detained, and that pornography laws are used to censor websites providing AIDS information to gay men and lesbians under pornography laws.
Rehabilitation Required
by Human Rights WatchIn this 110-page study, Human Rights Watch found that the treatment offered at state drug treatment clinics in Russia was so poor as to constitute a violation of the right to health. The report concluded that drug dependent people in Russia who want to overcome their dependence are left virtually to their own devices in their battle with this serious and chronic disease.
Ravaging the Vulnerable
by Human Rights WatchBangladesh is stoking an emerging AIDS epidemic with violent police abuse of sex workers, injection drug users and men who have sex with men. In this 51-page report, Human Rights Watch documents rapes, gang-rapes, beatings and abductions by both police officers and powerful criminals known as mastans. Their targets -- sex workers, men who have sex with men and injection drug users -- are both at high risk of HIV infection and the people most capable of bringing AIDS information and services to their peers. In a direct blow to the fight against AIDS, some of the abuses are committed against AIDS outreach workers. In one region of Bangladesh, HIV prevalence among injection drug users jumped from 1.7 percent in 2001 to 4 percent in 2002. While HIV prevalence in the population overall is reportedly still low, the country's poverty, gender inequality, and proximity to raging epidemics in India and Southeast Asia point to the possibility of an AIDS explosion. Human Rights Watch urged Bangladesh to institute civilian review of police officers, to prosecute police and mastans who perpetrate abuses, to bring its criminal procedures in line with international standards, and to support peer-driven AIDS prevention services among persons at high risk of HIV.
Presumption of Guilt
by Human Rights WatchA report on abuses that occurred after September 11, 2001.
Positively Abandoned
by Human Rights WatchAs Russia's HIV/AIDS epidemic spreads, thousands of HIV-positive mothers and their children face pervasive discrimination and abuse. This 41-page report focuses on the discrimination that these women face, as do their children, many of whom are abandoned to the care of the state. Today, as Russia's escalating HIV/AIDS epidemic reaches beyond high-risk groups to the general population, a growing number of expectant mothers and infants have been placed in the path of the virus. Since the Federal AIDS Center in Moscow first started recording these statistics annually in 1997, nearly 10,000 HIV-positive women have given birth, the vast majority of whom had their children since 2002.
"Political Shari'a"? Human Rights and Islamic Law in Northern Nigeria
by Human Rights WatchSince 2000, twelve states in northern Nigeria have added criminal law to the jurisdiction of Sharia (Islamic law) courts. Sharia has been in force for many years in northern Nigeria, where the majority of the population is Muslim, but until 2000, its scope was limited to personal status and civil law. The manner in which Sharia has been applied to criminal law in Nigeria so far has raised a number of serious human rights concerns. It has also created much controversy in a country where religious divisions run deep, and where the federal constitution specifies that there is no state religion.
Political Freedoms In Kazakhstan
by Human Rights WatchKazakhstan's vast energy wealth has, in recent years, made it an important geostrategic partner for many countries. It has also raised the political stakes inside the country significantly. As a consequence, throughout the past two years the government has undermined freedoms to shield itself from public scrutiny and political rivals, and to protect its substantial control over the hydrocarbon sector. Unless the government and international community act now to protect political freedoms, the country's parliamentary elections, scheduled for October 2004, are unlikely to meet international standards.
Policy Paralysis
by Human Rights WatchThis 90-page report documents human rights abuses that women and girls suffer at each stage of their lives and that increase their risk for HIV infection. Girls face sexual abuse and violence, in and out of school. Women in long-term relationships risk violence if they insist on condom use or refuse sex. Widows are discriminated against in property and inheritance rights. And women and girls are raped in war and civil conflict, where rape is used strategically as a weapon.
“Please, do not make us suffer any more…”
by Human Rights WatchIn this 47-page report Human Rights Watch said that countries could significantly improve access to pain medications by addressing the causes of their poor availability. These often include the failure to put in place functioning supply and distribution systems; absence of government policies to ensure their availability; insufficient instruction for healthcare workers; excessively strict drug-control regulations; and fear of legal sanctions among healthcare workers.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
by Human Rights WatchThe policy of the Royal Thai Government towards Burmese refugees and migrants is in a state of flux. On the one hand, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatras forging of closer economic and political ties with the Burmese government has resulted in an increasingly hardline stance by Thailand towards Burmese exiles, refugees, and migrantsespecially those who are visibly and vocally opposed to the military government in Rangoon. This has included the arrests and intimidation of Burmese political activists living in Bangkok or along the border, harassment of Burmese human rights and humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs), deportations of Burmese asylum seekers, migrants, and refugees to Burma, and the governments suspension of screening of new applicants for asylum from Burma by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).At the same time, Thailand has signaled a new receptivity to pressure by the United States and the United Nations to broaden resettlement opportunities for Burmese refugees now living in Bangkok and other urban centers in Thailand. While this should help to improve the situation, Human Rights Watch is concerned that Thailand may offset its agreement to resettle urban refugees by intensifying its crackdown on undocumented Burmese migrants and sealing the border to new asylum seekers from Burma. In addition, with the January 2004 ceasefire agreement between Rangoon and one of the main rebel factions, the Karen National Union (KNU), Thai authorities may begin to pressure increasing numbers of the 142,000 Burmese living in refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border to voluntarily repatriate to Burma.
The O'odua People's Congress
by Human Rights WatchNigeria has witnessed an increase in the activities of ethnic and regional militia, vigilantes, and other armed groups in the last few years. One of the better-known of these groups is the O'odua People's Congress (OPC), an organization active in the southwest of Nigeria which campaigns to protect the interests of the Yoruba ethnic group and seeks autonomy for the Yoruba people. The OPC is a complex organization, which has taken on several different roles as it has adapted to the changing political and security environment in Nigeria. One of several Yoruba self-determination groups, it was established in 1994 with the aim of overcoming what it alleged was the political marginalization of the Yoruba. It has since evolved in several different directions. Its activities have ranged from political agitation for Yoruba autonomy and promotion of Yoruba culture to violent confrontation with members of other ethnic groups, and, more recently, vigilantism and crime-fighting. In its two main spheres of activity-ethnic militancy and vigilantism-the OPC has been responsible for numerous human rights abuses and acts of violence, and its members have killed or injured hundreds of unarmed civilians. However, OPC members have been victims as well as perpetrators of human rights abuses. Hundreds of real or suspected OPC members have been killed by the police; many others have been arbitrarily arrested, tortured, and detained without trial for extended periods.
Not Enough Graves
by Human Rights WatchThis 60-page report provides fresh evidence of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and other human rights violations by Thai authorities. The report contains first-hand testimony from relatives of people killed during the drug war, as well as drug users who endured beatings, forced confessions and arbitrary arrests at the hands of Royal Thai Police. The government's anti-drug campaign has resulted in as many as 3,000 killings and has driven drug users underground and away from lifesaving HIV prevention services.
No Second Chance
by Human Rights WatchDecent and stable housing is essential for human survival and dignity, a principle affirmed both in U.S. policy and international human rights law. The United States provides federally subsidized housing to millions of low-income people who could not otherwise afford homes on their own. U.S. policies, however, exclude countless needy people with criminal records, condemning them to homelessness or transient living. Exclusions based on criminal records ostensibly protect existing tenants. There is no doubt that some prior offenders still pose a risk and may be unsuitable neighbors in many of the presently-available public housing facilities. But U.S. housing policies are so arbitrary, overbroad, and unnecessarily harsh that they exclude even people who have turned their lives around and remain law-abiding, as well as others who may never have presented any risk in the first place.
No Rest
by Human Rights WatchHuman Rights Watch conducted research for this report in El Salvador in February 2003 and subsequently by telephone and electronic mail from New York. During the course of our investigation, we spoke with fifteen current and former domestic workers and over fifty teachers, parents, activists, academics, lawyers, and government officials. We assess the treatment of child domestic workers according to international law, as set forth in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and other international human rights instruments. These instruments establish that children have the right to freedom from economic exploitation and hazardous labor, the right to freedom from discrimination based on their gender, and the right to an education, among other rights.
No Easy Answers
by Human Rights WatchThis 146-page report is the first comprehensive study of US sex offender policies, their public safety impact, and the effect they have on former offenders and their families. During two years of investigation for this report, Human Rights Watch researchers conducted over 200 interviews with victims of sexual violence and their relatives, former offenders, law enforcement and government officials, treatment providers, researchers, and child safety advocates.