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Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, February 1995.
TITLE: OVERVIEW OF HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES, 1994
AUTHOR: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DATE: FEBRUARY 1995
OVERVIEW
The Changing Nature of Human Rights Problems
During the Cold War, threats to human rights were seen as
coming primarily from centralized authorities--strong
governments ruling with an iron hand. In response, the human
rights community developed the forms of advocacy with which we
are now familiar--monitoring, reporting, publicizing cases,
advocacy on behalf of individual victims of human rights abuse,
and advocacy of sanctions against strong governments.
Today, in the post-Cold War world, much has changed. Human
rights abuses are still committed by strong central
governments. But we have become all too familiar with abuses
in countries with weak or unresponsive governments, committed
by ethnic, religious, and separatist extremists, as well as
governments themselves, and in extreme cases fanned into
genocide by cynical political leaders, and made harder to
resist by enormous economic, environmental, and demographic
pressures. These conflicts present us with a devastating array
of new human rights problems.
At the same time, the post-Cold War environment offers
opportunities for structural change both within countries and
in the international community that could give internationally
recognized human rights greater force than ever before. This
is due in large part to the fall of Soviet Communism, but also
to a powerful global movement for human rights and democratic
participation. This movement has been under way for some two
decades. The past 5 years have been especially dramatic,
changing the political face of many parts of the world, from
the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to South Africa,
Zambia, Cambodia, El Salvador, Chile, Mongolia, and elsewhere.
The movement for human rights and democracy is even beginning
to show strength in diverse and unlikely places. As the 1993
U.N. World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna dramatically
demonstrated, this global movement is among the strongest
grassroots forces in the world today. Increasingly assertive
and effective indigenous forces are pressing worldwide for
government transparency and accountability, for basic
democratic freedoms, and for internationally recognized human
rights.
All this is taking place at a time when states are engaging
with each other in a growing range of challenges that transcend
national borders--trade, the environment, security, population,
migration--issues that are creating powerful forces of
integration in some cases and increasing conflict in others.
In this new multipolar world, the traditional human rights
"sticks" of sanctions and other punitive measures directed
against abusive regimes still have an important role to play.
But sanctions need to be complemented by broader means of
promoting human rights in countries that are in the midst of
wrenching change, and as a consequence are often mired in
internal conflict.
In short, with the passing of the Cold War we find ourselves in
a new international strategic environment. The human rights
abuses of governments are accompanied by ethnic tension,
breakdown of authority, and environmental destruction. As a
result, human rights promotion must synthesize familiar forms
of pressure and advocacy with long-term structural reform and
the support of grassroots movements for change.
Indeed, we see a growing emphasis on multilateral action to
support these movements: First, through negotiated settlements
of conflict, which often include provisions for internationally
supported democratic elections; second, through institutions of
accountability for human rights abuses such as war crimes
tribunals, truth commissions, and judicial assistance programs;
and third, through scores of peacekeeping operations and
humanitarian assistance programs.
Institutions of Accountability
The appalling slaughter in Rwanda and the "ethnic cleansing" in
the former Yugoslavia have cast into high relief the new human
rights problems of our age. These catastrophes have urgently
demonstrated the need to develop a spectrum of institutions
that will hold political leaders accountable to their
constituents and to the international community as a whole.
The mass murders in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia did not
arise spontaneously. They were fomented by persons who sought
to gain political ends through these violent and hideous
means. Unless those persons are called to account for
genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, justice will
not be served, and reconciliation and reconstruction will not
be possible. This is why the United States supported the U.N.
Security Council's creation of war crimes tribunals for the
former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda.
The tribunals are also necessary to lift the burden of
collective guilt that settles on any society whose leaders have
directed such terrible violence. The assignment of
responsibility enables the international community to
differentiate between victims and aggressors, and it helps
expunge the cynical illusion that conflicts with an ethnic
dimension are hopelessly complex and therefore insoluble.
Moreover, the tribunals are essential if future crimes are to
be deterred. If basic human rights can be massively violated
with impunity in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, the world is
fair game for every conceivable form of terror.
In addition to war crimes tribunals, a spectrum of institutions
of accountability have contributed to reconciliation in a
number of countries. The Truth Commissions of Nicaragua, El
Salvador, and Haiti, the U.N. Verification Mission in
Guatemala, and the National Human Rights Commissions
established in India and Mexico represent new and diverse ways
of providing accountability for human rights abuses.
Accountability is also being furthered in a number of countries
by assistance programs aimed at developing the administration
of justice and the rule of law. For example, the recently
established U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights placed
human rights monitors in Rwanda and is planning to work with
the U.S. and other countries to help rebuild the Rwandan legal
system.
Armed Conflict
Around the world, a number of hard-fought conflicts have moved
toward long-sought resolution. A cease-fire was negotiated in
Northern Ireland and is holding, despite several incidents
which could have led to renewed violence. Despite increasing
violence and terror, Israel and the Palestine Liberation
Organization began to implement their Declaration of Principles
through their agreement on the Gaza and Jericho areas. We also
witnessed the beginnings of Palestinian self-government in
these areas. For the first time, this human rights report will
examine Palestinian human rights practices in areas under
Palestinian jurisdiction. Israel and Jordan signed a treaty
formally establishing peace. In Mozambique, a U.N.-negotiated
peace accord led ultimately to elections and the installation
of a new government. And in El Salvador, the U.N.-sponsored
peace accord moved closer to full implementation with the
dissolution of the former National Police and creation of a new
civilian police force.
Even so, armed conflict continued to generate significant human
rights abuse, most visibly in Rwanda and in the former
Yugoslavia, but in many other places as well.
To prevent Chechnya's secession from Russia, Russian troops
crossed into Chechnya on December 11, 1994. This action
included massive aerial and artillery bombardment of civilian
areas in Chechnya's capital, Grozny, resulting in a major
humanitarian and human rights crisis.
In Angola, the bloody civil war which erupted anew after the
failed 1993 election, raged throughout much of 1994, with
perhaps 100,000 dead, mostly civilians.
Guerrilla violence and military actions continued to give
Colombia one of the highest violent death rates in the world.
The Turkish Government's continued armed struggle against the
terrorist Kurdistan Workers Party (or PKK) has resulted in
violence against civilians and abuses of rights within Turkey,
including the arrest and trial of Turkish parliamentarians and
many other citizens for expressing their views, while the
widespread use of torture in prisons and detention facilities
has continued with impunity.
Since 1992 Algeria has been embroiled in civil strife, pitting
armed Islamist groups and their sympathizers against the
Government, with killings and other human rights abuses on both
sides.
The dismal human rights situation in the Sudan further
deteriorated in the face of intensified civil war, as both the
Government and insurgents engaged in massacres, extrajudicial
killings, kidnapings, forced conscriptions, and the obstruction
of humanitarian aid.
Much of Kabul was destroyed as the Afghan civil war was renewed
in early 1994. The Red Cross estimated from its clinical
records that 34,000 civilians were killed or wounded in street
fighting and heavy weapons attacks on Kabul alone. Over 1
million more Afghans were displaced by the fighting.
Torture, Arbitrary Detention, Impunity of Abusers
Flagrant and systematic abuses of basic human rights continued
at the hand of the world's authoritarian and repressive
regimes, such as China, Iraq, Iran, Burma, North Korea, and
Cuba. In those and other countries, denial of basic freedoms
of expression, association, and religion, persecution of
minorities, and the suppression of civil society remain the
norm.
In a departure from a recent trend toward openness, the
Indonesian Government revoked the licenses of three prominent
publications. Security forces serving in East Timor and
elsewhere continued to be responsible for significant abuses,
and the Government prepared a draft decree which, if
implemented, could severely curtail the activities of many
Indonesian nongovernmental organizations.
Nigeria's military regime, which annulled that country's 1993
elections, continued to crack down on the opposition, despite a
massive strike by the labor force. The regime killed and
wounded protesters, employed arbitrary detention and mass
arrest, perpetrated extrajudicial killings and torture, and
engaged in other abuses.
In Saudi Arabia abuses including torture, incommunicado
detention, restrictions on freedom of speech and religion,
suppression of ethnic and religious minorities, and pervasive
discrimination against women continued.
In several less thoroughly repressive countries, including some
with functioning democratic institutions, significant human
rights abuses occurred.
The Government of Singapore continued to intimidate opposition
parties and their leaders and regularly restrict freedoms of
speech, association, and assembly.
In Egypt, the Government's security services and terrorist
groups remained locked in a cycle of violence; and there
continued to be widespread human rights violations.
India has a longstanding democracy with a free press,
independent judiciary, and active political and civic life.
Nonetheless, significant human rights abuses are committed by
military and security forces in areas of unrest, particularly
Kashmir. These include extrajudicial killings and other
political killings; torture, deaths in custody; and violence
against women.
Despite the inauguration of a former human rights ombudsman as
President in 1993, the human rights situation in Guatemala
remained troubling, with both sides in the civil war committing
major violations, including extrajudicial killing, kidnaping,
and torture.
Economics and Human Rights
An increasingly important issue placed squarely in the public
eye in 1994 was the relationship between economic development
and trade on the one hand, and the promotion of human rights
and democracy on the other. This was most vividly the case
with regard to the U.S. decision to delink China's Most Favored
Nation status from China's human rights performance.
The relationship between trade and human rights has taken on
special salience as extensive networks of international trade
have emerged, and as nations have lifted trade barriers that
have inhibited full exchange among their peoples. The
suggestion in some quarters that there is an inescapable
trade-off between economic development and human rights
promotion is ultimately false.
It is precisely because the United States has an interest in
economic development, political stability, and conflict
resolution around the world that it promotes human rights and
accountable government. As President Clinton said last
November on the eve of his departure for Southeast Asia, "In
societies where the rule of law prevails, where governments are
held accountable to their people and where ideas and
information freely circulate, we are more likely to find
economic development and political stability." And as we have
seen in nations undergoing economic transformation, market
reformers who enjoy popular legitimacy are more likely to win
popular support for tough economic choices. Trade relations by
themselves are no substitute for vigorous human rights
advocacy. Moreover, as the world trading system grows
increasingly robust, care must be taken to incorporate the
promotion of worker rights into bilateral and multilateral
trade agreements.
Economic growth, trade, and social mobility may not be
sufficient conditions for political pluralism, but they do
create powerful pressures for political change. Open trade can
support the movement toward freedom by strengthening
independent institutions of civil society, by exposing isolated
nations to the possibility of other ways of life, and because
of the inescapable truth that free and open markets can only be
meaningfully sustained over the long haul by open societies
that respect basic rights and the rule of law.
Worker Rights
With the expansion of global trade, worker rights take on
renewed urgency. The new World Trade Organization will have to
face the effects of worker rights on trade.
The universal right most pertinent to the workplace is freedom
of association, which is the foundation on which workers can
form and organize trade unions, bargain collectively, press
grievances, and protect themselves from unsafe working
conditions. In many countries, workers have far to go in
realizing their rights. Restrictions on workers range from
outright state control of all forms of worker organization to
webs of legislation whose complexity is meant to overwhelm and
disarm workers.
In 1994 we continued to see practices of forced and bonded
labor and child labor in a number of places. In Burma citizens
are taken off the streets and pressed into slave labor. Small
children work on carpet looms, in garment factories, and myriad
other occupations in India, Pakistan, and in dozens of other
countries around the world. Trade unions are banned outright
in a number of countries, including several in the Middle East,
and in many more there is little protection of worker efforts
to organize and bargain collectively. Some protesting workers
have paid with their lives; others, most notably in China and
Indonesia, have gone to jail simply for trying to inform fellow
workers of their rights. We also see inadequate enforcement of
labor legislation, especially with regard to health and safety
in the workplace.
Democracy
Democracy is by definition a system which provides for the
participation of ordinary citizens in governing their country,
and depends for its success on the growth of democratic culture
along with democratic institutions. Elections are one
essential dimension of participation and accountability.
Democracy's most stirring triumphs of the year were Nelson
Mandela's election as President in South Africa and the
restoration of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the
democratically elected Government of Haiti.
In South Africa, concerted efforts by all sides eventually
brought all parties into the political process, resulting in
profound structural change that has ended institutional
apartheid and sharply decreased the violence it engendered. In
Haiti, President Aristide was peacefully returned to power
through U.S. leadership and the international community's
resolute stand against the violent usurpers who had deposed him
and perpetrated massive human rights abuses on the people.
Away from the headlines, democracy has also made strides in
little-noticed places:
In Malawi, voters defeated former President-for-Life H. Kamuzu
Banda in free elections in May.
The countries of the former Soviet bloc continued their halting
transitions from closed to open societies. The newly
independent states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and
Uzbekistan held elections with varying degrees of freedom and
fairness and in the shadow of continuing significant human
rights abuse. The picture was brighter in the countries of
Central Europe, though dimmed in some places by disturbing
encroachments on freedom of speech and the press.
Democracy is not a one-time event but a process of governance
and of history. As President Aristide said upon his return to
Haiti, "The true test of a democracy is its second free
election when power is transferred freely and
constitutionally." These important milestones in democratic
development were passed in a number of countries.
Several Latin American countries such as Uruguay, Chile, and
Brazil, which were formerly ruled by the military, held new
rounds of elections and inaugurated new presidents in 1994,
further consolidating their democracies.
After Nepal's second parliamentary election since its
democratic revolution in 1990, an opposition party formed a
coalition government and peacefully assumed power.
There were significant setbacks for democracy as well. The
long-delayed return of democracy to Nigeria was again blocked
by a military dictatorship's refusal to accept the outcome of
elections. In Gambia, the military overthrew the elected
civilian Government. In Burma, the military regime continued
its refusal to abide by the results of the 1990 elections,
keeping Nobel Peace Prize Winner Aung San Suu Kyi under house
arrest and silencing all opposition.
Civilian Control of the Military and Law Enforcement
As countries make the transition from authoritarian government
to open societies, few issues become more crucial than the
civilian control of the military and law enforcement
authorities. Indeed, in many countries, human rights abuses
and democratic setbacks resulted from the inability of civilian
authorities to control armed forces and security services. In
other countries, there were examples of progress.
In Argentina the Senate rejected the promotion of two navy
commanders because of their admitted role in torture during the
years of military rule. In Guatemala, the Congress held
hearings on the killing of a student by security forces during
rioting in November, marking a step forward in congressional
oversight.
In Sri Lanka, the Government set up regional commissions to
investigate allegations of disappearances and began prosecution
proceedings against accused extrajudicial killers.
While members of Colombia's security forces and guerrilla
groups continue to commit serious human rights abuses, the new
administration has taken a number of steps aimed at reducing
the incidence of official abuses and punishing those who commit
them.
In Nigeria, on the other hand, the military regime that seized
power after annulling the free and fair elections of 1993
continued to ride roughshod over the opposition and ruin hopes
for political or economic progress.
Rights of Women
This year saw an increased international focus on women's human
rights and the advancement of the status of women. The
International Conference on Population and Development, held in
Cairo in September 1994, the World Summit for Social
Development, to take place in Copenhagen in March 1995, and the
Fourth World Conference on Women, to be held in Beijing in
September 1995 encourage greater attention to and understanding
of human rights abuses against women. Unfortunately, such
abuses persisted in 1994.
Of particular concern is the problem of violence against
women. In early 1994, the U.N. Human Rights Commission
established a Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women to
examine its causes and consequences. The 1994 Human Rights
Reports document that physical abuse of women, including
torture, systematic rape, female genital mutilation, domestic
violence, sexual abuse, harassment, exploitation and
trafficking of women, and female feticide continued throughout
the world.
In addition to physical abuse, the political, civil and legal
rights of women continue to be denied. In 1994 women in many
countries were subjected to discriminatory restrictions of
their fundamental freedoms regarding voting, marriage, travel,
property ownership and inheritance, custody of children,
citizenship, and court testimony. Women also faced sex-based
discrimination in access to education, employment, health care,
financial services including credit, and even food and water.
Looking Forward
The emergence of nongovernmental human rights organizations
around the world is one of the most hopeful and arresting
developments of the post-Cold War era. These organizations
hold the key to the future if nations are to begin to hold each
other accountable for human rights abuse. They have an
especially vital role to play in the growth of human rights and
democracy, precisely because they arise in, and reflect, the
unique features of their respective societies. With the
changing times, grassroots groups have taken on new roles, such
as election monitoring, active negotiation as part of
democratic transitions, serving as ombudsmen, and creating
institutions of accountability and reconciliation.
Human rights violations span the globe, and no region has a
monopoly on abuses.
The drive for realization of basic rights is a universal
work-in-progress, and the story is not always grim. My
counterpart in the Russian Government, Vyacheslav Bakhmin, was
a Soviet prisoner of conscience on whose behalf I once
campaigned. He, like other human rights activists in scores of
countries, risked their lives to bear witness, and are now
using their freedom to reform and rebuild their societies.
One of those activists-turned-leaders, Vaclav Havel, has
powerfully expressed what it means to make a commitment to
human rights in this complex new world, where the triumph of
freedom can so quickly be overshadowed by the horror of
genocide, where the inauguration of Nelson Mandela can take
place in the same month as the mass murders of Tutsis in Rwanda:
"I am not an optimist because I am not sure that everything
ends well. Nor am I a pessimist, because I am not sure
everything ends badly. Instead, I am a realist who carries
hope, and hope is the belief that freedom and justice have
meaning...and that liberty is always worth the struggle."
John Shattuck
Assistant Secretary for
Democracy, Human Rights
and Labor
(###)
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