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Tortured Beginnings: Police Violence and the Beginnings of Impunity in East Timor

This 60-page report is based on dozens of interviews with witnesses and victims of police abuse in East Timor. It documents excessive force during arrests, torture and ill-treatment of detainees by the National Police of East Timor. It goes over reforms, institutions and practices needed to create police accountability in East Timor, and makes recommendations to the Government of East Timor, and to donors and others providing assistance to the police. (Human Rights Watch, April 2006)

http://hrw.org/reports/2006/easttimor0406/

(Added: Tue May 02 2006   Modified: Thu Jan 18 2007   Hits: 269)

The Battle to Close Guantánamo

President Bush clearly wants out of a program that brought international scorn, but shutting the camp poses legal and practical problems. And according to some, the move has little to do with human rights, but rather a sensible political move towards creating hundreds of small Guantánamo Bays that will not attract attention or serve as such a symbol. (Suzanne Goldenberg, Guardian, 24 June 2006)

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0624-04.htm

(Added: Mon Jun 26 2006   Modified: Thu Jan 18 2007   Hits: 174)

"On Our Watch" - A Documentary About Genocide in Darfur

Three years of fighting in Darfur have destroyed hundreds of villages, displaced 2.2 million and led to more than 400,000 deaths. President Bush has accused the government of Sudan of genocide, but the U.S. has taken few concrete actions to stop the fighting. Narrated by Sam Waterston, this 11-minute documentary tells the story of those who have lost their loved ones to this war, those who are fighting to survive and those who are working to bring peace to the region. (Refugee International, 2006)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1587138622759665645&q=Refugees+International

(Added: Mon Aug 28 2006   Modified: Thu Jan 18 2007   Hits: 206)

A joint statement by 14 local and international NGOs on the present situation in Nepal

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), 7 March 2005. Statement adopted by 14 local, regional and international human rights bodies and academic institutions, who gathered in Bangkok, Thailand at the 4th International Criminal Court (ICC) Campaign Network Regional Meeting regarding the present situation in relation to human rights in Nepal.

http://www.ahrchk.net/ua/mainfile.php/2005/973

(Added: Tue Mar 08 2005   Modified: Thu Jan 18 2007   Hits: 396)

China: Tiananmen 17 years on - the victims deserve justice

Seventeen years after the killings of unarmed civilians and demonstrators in Beijing and elsewhere in China in June 1989, the Chinese government continues to deny justice by refusing to conduct an investigation, give a detailed account of the events, identify the people who were killed or injured, and grant compensation to the victims and families. The government also continues to refuse to release the people still detained after all these years, despite the summary and unfair nature of their trials and the excessive length of their detention ... Take Action!

http://www.amnesty.ca/take_action/actions/china_tiananmen_2006.php

(Added: Thu Oct 05 2006   Modified: Thu Jan 18 2007   Hits: 197)

Colombia - Fear and Intimidation: The dangers of human rights work

This report - which includes numerous case studies - highlights the difficulties faced by scores of individuals and organizations in cities and in remote areas of Colombia who work to protect civilians and to end impunity. It criticizes the Colombian government for giving a "green light" to attacks against human rights defenders in the country and calls on the international community to support local activists more effectively. (Amnesty International, September 2006)

http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR230332006

(Added: Tue Sep 12 2006   Modified: Thu Jan 18 2007   Hits: 169)

Country Reports on Human Rights Practices

US Department of State, February, 2005. The Country Reports on Human Rights Practices provide a key framework that the United States and others around the world use in assessing the state of human freedom and in marshalling efforts to advance it. The conscientious compiling of these reports equips us to more effectively stand against oppression and for human dignity and liberty. Our embassies and Washington staff work closely with local citizens, human rights and other organizations, and community leaders to identify, investigate, and verify information. These volumes, available in the languages of most of the world's peoples, foster discussion, promote advocacy, permit the measurement of progress, and show where improvements are needed.

http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/

(Added: Mon Mar 07 2005   Modified: Fri Dec 02 2005   Hits: 378)

Crackdown in Burma: Targeted Sanctions Needed

In August and September 2007, Burmese democracy activists, monks and ordinary people took to the streets of Rangoon and elsewhere to peacefully challenge nearly two decades of dictatorial rule and economic mismanagement by Burma's ruling generals. While opposition to the military government is widespread in Burma, and small acts of resistance are an everyday occurrence, military repression is so systematic that such sentiment rarely is able to burst into public view; the last comparable public uprising was in August 1988. As in 1988, the generals responded this time with a brutal and bloody crackdown, leaving Burma's population once again struggling for a voice (Human Rights Watch, December 2007).

http://hrw.org/reports/2007/burma1207/burma1207webwcover.pdf

(Added: Tue Jan 29 2008   Hits: 44)

Dead on Time - arms transportation, brokering and the threat to human rights

The report shows how increasingly sophisticated freight transport and brokering operations now deliver hundreds of thousands of tons of weapons around the world with an ever-greater proportion going to developing countries where they have fed some of the most brutal of conflicts. Chronically weak and outdated arms controls urgently need strengthening to stop an ever-expanding chain of arms brokers, logistic firms and transporters from fuelling massive human rights abuse around the world. Amnesty International's report illustrates the unregulated, secretive and unaccountable nature of many arms transporting and brokering operations with a series of shocking case studies including the sea freighting of large quantities of arms to Liberia from China by a Dutch arms broker in contravention of a UN arms embargo on Liberia and despite evidence of the widespread killing, rape and displacement of thousands of civilians. (Amnesty International and TransArms, 10 May 2006)

http://amnesty-news.c.topica.com/maaeMW1abqsXlckuuzKb/

(Added: Wed May 17 2006   Hits: 216)

Ending the Waiting Game: Strategies for Responding to Internally Displaced People in Burma

Burma is experiencing one of the most neglected humanitarian and human rights crises in the world. No less than half a million people are internally displaced in the eastern part of the country and at least one million more have fled to neighboring nations. This report provides an in-depth look at the causes of displacement in Burma, the acute needs of the internally displaced population and the current response to those needs. (Refugees International, 2006)

http://www.refugeesinternational.org/content/publication/detail/8705/

(Added: Wed Sep 13 2006   Modified: Thu Jan 18 2007   Hits: 162)

Fact Sheet: Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances

Fact Sheet No.6 (Rev.2), UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Some men arrive. They force their way into a family's home, rich or poor, house, hovel or hut, in a city or in a village, anywhere. They come at any time of the day or night, usually in plain clothes, sometimes in uniform, always carrying weapons. Giving no reasons, producing no arrest warrant, frequently without saying who they are or on whose authority they are acting, they drag off one or more members of the family towards a car, using violence in the process if necessary.* This is often the first act in the drama of an enforced or involuntary disappearance, a particularly heinous violation of human rights.

http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu6/2/fs6.htm

(Added: Thu Sep 02 2004   Modified: Thu Jan 25 2007   Hits: 271)

Genocide in Slow Motion

In this New York Review of books article American journalist Nicholas Kristof reviews two books on the Dafur genocide - Darfur: A Short History of a Long War (by Julie Flint and Alex de Waal) and Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide (by Gerard Prunier). In doing so Kristof provides a detailed history of the conflict as well as outlining the ongoing tragedy. Kristof ends his review with a plea for UN intervention to halt the ongoing crisis before it becomes just another name in the long list of crimes against humanity that have taken place while the rest of the World has looked away.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18674

(Added: Fri Jan 27 2006   Modified: Thu Jan 18 2007   Hits: 301)

Howard's New Tampa - Aboriginal Children Overboard

Howard's new Tampa children overboard are our Aboriginal children. The Little Children are Sacred report does not advocate physically and psychologically invasive examinations of Aboriginal children, which could only be carried out anally and vaginally. It does not recommend scrapping the permit system to enter Aboriginal lands, nor does it recommend taking over Aboriginal 'towns' by enforced leases. These latter two points in the Howard scheme hide the true reason for the Federal Government's use of the latest report for blatant political opportunism. It has been an openly stated agenda that Howard wants to move Aboriginal people off their lands, and has made recent attempts to buy off Aboriginal people by offering them millions for agreeing to lease their lands to the Federal Government, e.g. Tiwi Islands and Tangentyere in Alice Springs. There was also the statement by the Federal Government that it could not continue (?!) to provide essential services to remote communities, which raised an uproar of responses in the press. The focus on the sexual abuse of children is guaranteed to evoke the most emotive responses, and therefore command attention, just like the manipulation of the Tampa situation. But while the attention of the media and the public is being emotionally coerced, what is being sneaked in under the covers? (Jennifer Martiniello, Project Safecom.Inc, 25 June 2007).

http://www.safecom.org.au/howards-new-tampa.htm

(Added: Fri Jul 06 2007   Hits: 167)

Human rights: Where is the U.S.?

In this article, the former U.S. representative to the UN Commission for Human Rights, argues that the United States, despite not being a member of the Human Rights Council, must send a high-level envoy to engage in influencing and establishing procedures as the new Council takes form, as it ought not to turn our back on any opportunity to advance human rights throughout the world, having regressed their progress in its so-called 'war on terror'. (Nancy Rubin, International Herald Tribune, 20 June 2006)

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/20/opinion/edrubin.php

(Added: Thu Jun 22 2006   Modified: Thu Jan 18 2007   Hits: 187)

Light a Torch for Human Rights in China

Join the global campaign to call on China to improve its record on human rights by adding a banner to your Web site.

http://hrw.org/campaigns/china/beijing08/torch.htm

(Added: Tue Oct 03 2006   Modified: Thu Jan 18 2007   Hits: 170)

No Safe Place: Burma's Army and the Rape of Ethnic Women [pdf]

"I have waited many years to tell you this story," one Karenni woman lamented as she told of witnessing her thirteen-yearold sister's rape and then described how the Burmese soldiers beat and attempted to rape her. She is just one of countless women from Burma's ethnic minority groups, sometimes known as ethnic nationalities, with a chilling tale of abuse at the hands of her country's army. (Refugeees International, 2003)

http://www.refugeesinternational.org/files/3023_file_no_safe_place.pdf

(Added: Wed Sep 13 2006   Modified: Thu Jan 18 2007   Hits: 187)

Philippines: Political Killings, Human Rights and the Peace Process

Over recent years reports of an increased number of killings of political activists, predominately those associated with leftist or left-orientated groups, have caused increasing concern. Amnesty International believes that the killings constitute a pattern and that a continuing failure to deliver justice to the victims represents a failure by the Government of the Philippines to fulfil its obligation to protect the right to life of every individual in its jurisdiction. Amnesty beleieves thatthe killings constitute a pattern of politically targeted extrajudicial executions taking place within the broader context of a continuing counter-insurgency campaign. They have played a major role in the break-down of a protracted peace process and an accompanying human rights agreement. (Amnesty International, 15 August 2006)

http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engasa350062006

(Added: Wed Aug 16 2006   Modified: Thu Jan 18 2007   Hits: 155)

Raising Voices publications

Raising Voices publishes program tools and articles about violence against women and children and other relevant human rights issues.

http://www.raisingvoices.org/publications.php

(Added: Tue Jan 10 2006   Hits: 277)

Report on the Human Rights Situation in Oaxaca, Mexico

This report is the result of a visit by twenty individuals (including human rights lawyers, journalists, authors, investigators, graduate students, and activists) from the United States and Canada, who came together in Oaxaca out of concern for what appeared to be serious violations of human rights. This report provides some background regarding the roots of the conflict based on presentations and discussions in Oaxaca as well as published accounts in the media, and summarizes the testimony received regarding human rights violations. The killings and beating of people involved in the teachers' struggle at the end of 2006 and only the latest episode in a conflict that has lasted decades. (Robin Alexander, No Sweat, 4 January 2007)

http://www.nosweat.org.uk/node/261

(Added: Mon Feb 19 2007   Hits: 140)

School of the Americas Watch

The US Army School of Americas (SOA), based in Fort Benning, Georgia, trains Latin American security personnel in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics. SOA graduates are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America. In 1996 the Pentagon was forced to release training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution. Among the SOA's nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. Lower-level SOA graduates have participated in human rights abuses that include the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the El Mozote Massacre of 900 civilians the school. The goal of this movement - School of Americas Watch - is to build up publicity to convince Congress to withhold funding for the school.

http://www.soaw.org/

(Added: Thu Jun 08 2006   Hits: 169)

The Crosses of Juarez

Since 1993 over 400 women from Ciudad Juarez, a large city on the US-Mexico border, have been murdered and over 70 are still missing. The victims are young women, generally under 29 years old. They are mostly poor, often workers in the maquiladoras (assembly factories), and live in the marginalized areas of the city. The Mexican authorities, under much pressure from human rights groups and NGOs, have so far failed to carry out proper investigations into the killings, and those responsible for the crimes remain unpunished. In this Open-Democracy piece journalist Carlos Reyes-Manzo documents in images and words a terrible and touching situation that shows no sign of abating.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/arts-photography/crosses_3273.jsp

(Added: Tue Feb 28 2006   Modified: Thu Jan 18 2007   Hits: 293)

The Crushing Burden of Rape: Sexual Violence in Darfur [PDF ]

Médicins sans Frontières (MSF), March 2005. Since early 2003, the people of Darfur have endured a vicious campaign of violence, which has forced almost 2 million people to flee from their destroyed villages in search of safety. Rape against women children and men has sadly been a constant factor in this violence throughout this campaign of terror. More tragically, it continues to this day even long after people have fled from their villages. The stories of rape survivors give a horrific illustration of the daily reality of people in Darfur and especially of women and young girls, the primary victims of this form of violence. It has to stop. MSF Head of Mission Paul Foreman, a British national, was arrested in Khartoum, Sudan. MSF's Head of Mission has been charged with crimes against the state. The charges relate to this MSF report "The Crushing Burden of Rape: Sexual Violence in Darfur" which was published on March 8, 2005. Faced with hundreds of women and girls seeking medical care following rape and sexual violence in Darfur, MSF wrote and published this report in order to raise awareness about the ongoing violence against women. It is noteworthy that the report does not accuse the government of Sudan. MSF defends its right to speak about the humanitarian situation in Darfur and views these baseless charges as intimidation against the humanitarian community by the Government of Sudan.

http://www.msf.ca/press/images/070305_darfur_sexualviolence.pdf

(Added: Tue May 31 2005   Modified: Thu Jan 18 2007   Hits: 419)

To Stay Alive, Iraqis Change Their Names

In Iraq these days, being called Omar or Ali can get you killed. Iraqis say the country is rife with checkpoints where armed men ask for identity cards and then kill people on the spot if their names identify them with a rival religious sect. In the first seven months of this year, 1,000 Iraqis officially changed their names, far more than in any similar period since the American invasion of 2003, a New York Times reporter recently found. (New York Times through Truthout, September 6, 2006)

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090606F.shtml

(Added: Wed Sep 13 2006   Modified: Thu Jan 18 2007   Hits: 150)

Trinidad and Tobago: End police immunity for unlawful killings and deaths in custody

Amnesty International's report looks at the issue of police killings and deaths in custody through cases reported since 2003. The report highlights the authorities' failure to conduct investigations and to bring those responsible to justice. This report argues that structural reforms within the police forces -- including the implementation of a human rights- based Code of Conduct, a transparent chain of command and criminal prosecutions in cases of human rights abuses -- are key to regaining community support, essential for preventing and combating crime. (Amnesty International, 26 April 2006)

http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGAMR490012006

(Added: Wed May 17 2006   Modified: Thu Jan 18 2007   Hits: 187)

USA: Excessive and lethal force? Amnesty International's concerns about deaths and ill-treatment involving police use of tasers

The use of stun gun (electro-shock) technology in law enforcement raises a number of concerns for the protection of human rights. Portable and easy to use, with the capacity to inflict severe pain at the push of a button without leaving substantial marks, electro-shock weapons are particularly open to abuse by unscrupulous officials. Taser use violates international standards prohibiting torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment as well as standards set out under the United Nations (UN) Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials. More than 200 people have died after being shot by a taser. The testimonies in this report serve as a warning for Aotearoa New Zealand, which is set to introduce the taser for police use in September 2006. (Amnesty International, August 2006)

http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engamr511392004

(Added: Wed Aug 16 2006   Modified: Thu Jan 18 2007   Hits: 192)

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