2004 REPORTS

Angola: Some Transparency, No Accountability

This 93-page report details how much money was generated by oil, how much disappeared from public coffers, and how this shortfall undermined Angolans’ civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.

El Salvador: No Rest

Tens of thousands of girls in El Salvador work as domestics, a form of labor that makes them particularly vulnerable to physical abuse and sexual harassment. This 35-page report calls on the Salvadoran government to include domestic workers, who are almost exclusively girls and young women, in its program to address hazardous child labor. Girls as young as nine work as domestics in El Salvador and may labor 12 hours or more, up to six days a week, for wages of $40 to $100 a month. They are particularly vulnerable to physical abuse and sexual harassment from members of the household in which they work.

Azerbaijan: Crushing Dissent

This 61-page report documents hundreds of arbitrary arrests, widespread beatings and torture, and politically motivated job dismissals of members and supporters of the opposition following the October 15 presidential election, which was widely condemned by the international community as fraudulent. Human Rights Watch found that the complete dominance of the presidency was one of the root causes of human rights abuses in Azerbaijan. The report also contains recommendations to the Azerbaijani government and the international community.

World Report 2004

This 407-page report includes 15 essays on a variety of subjects related to war and human rights, from Africa to Afghanistan, from sexual violence as a method to warfare to the new trends in post-conflict international justice.

Liberia: How to Fight, How to Kill

This 43-page report documents how more than 15,000 child soldiers fought on all sides of the Liberian civil war, and that many units were composed primarily of children. The report argues that establishing a firm peace in the West African nation will depend on the successful reintegration of child soldiers into civil society.

China: Trials of a Tibetan Monk

This 108-page report by Human Rights Watch says that the persecution of Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, a highly-respected Tibetan lama facing a death sentence on unproven allegations of involvement in a bombing, highlights the ongoing strictures placed on Tibetans in China. In recent years, the Chinese government has consolidated secular control at the expense of monastic influence. Human Rights Watch says that the international community should raise Tenzin Delek’s case at every opportunity in meetings with Chinese officials and press the Chinese government to bring to account those officials who have persecuted this man and his community.

Slovakia: Ripe for Reform

The government of Slovakia must do more to bring its arms trade under control. Slovakia adopted some legal reforms in 2001 and 2002, but serious problems remain that allow arms to be exported or illegally trafficked to human rights-abusing countries in Africa and elsewhere. Human Rights Watch says that the country has served as both an exporter and transit hub for arms deals from other countries. Many of the weapons it supplies are surplus weapons the country is shedding as it finalized preparations to enter NATO.

Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity

This 285-page book organizes the tribunals’ decisions by topic, including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, individual criminal responsibility, command responsibility and sentencing.

Thailand: Out of Sight, Out of Mind

This 50-page report documents Thailand’s repression of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrant workers from Burma. The Thai government is arresting and intimidating Burmese political activists living in Bangkok and along the Thai-Burmese border, harassing Burmese human rights and humanitarian groups, and deporting Burmese refugees, asylum seekers and others with a genuine fear of persecution in Burma.

Egypt: In a Time of Torture

This 144-page report documents the government’s increasing repression of men who have sex with men. The trial of 52 men in 2001 for the “habitual practice of debauchery”—the legal charge used to criminalize homosexual conduct in Egyptian law—was only the most visible point in the ongoing and expanding crackdown. Today, Egyptian police use wiretaps and a growing web of informers to conduct raids on private homes or seize suspects on the street. Undercover police agents arrange meetings with men through chat rooms and personal advertisements on the Internet—and then arrest them.

South Africa: Deadly Delay

This 73-page report documents how government inaction and misinformation from high-level officials have undermined the effectiveness of South Africa’s program to provide rape survivors with post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) — antiretroviral drugs that can reduce the risk of contracting HIV from an HIV-positive attacker.

Afghanistan: "Enduring Freedom"

This 59-page report is based on research conducted by Human Rights Watch in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2003 and early 2004. Human Rights Watch documented cases of U.S. forces using military tactics, including unprovoked deadly force, during operations to apprehend civilians in uncontested residential areas—situations where law enforcement standards and tactics should have been used. Afghan forces deployed with U.S. forces have also mistreated persons during search and arrest operations and looted homes. The report also details mistreatment in U.S. detention facilities.

China: Demolished

Chinese local authorities and developers are forcibly evicting hundreds of thousands of homeowners and tenants who have little legal recourse. China's rapid urban development, fueled in Beijing by preparations for the 2008 Olympics, is leading to the eviction of homeowners and tenants in violation of Chinese law and international standards on the right to housing. This 45-page report details the problems many Chinese citizens face.

Uganda: State of Pain

This 76-page report documents cases of torture carried out by military, intelligence and security agents in the government´s pursuit of armed rebels.

Uzbekistan: Creating Enemies of the State

This 319-page report details the arrest and torture of detainees in an ongoing campaign that has resulted in the incarceration of an estimated 7,000 Muslim dissidents. The government's targets are independent Muslims who practice their faith outside state-run mosques and madrassas or beyond the strict controls set out by the government's laws on religion.

Malaysia: Aceh Under Martial Law

In this report, Human Rights Watch documents the failure of the Malaysian government to offer protection and assistance to Acehnese refugees fleeing persecution and armed conflict in Aceh. Malaysia’s treatment of Acehnese in Malaysia falls far short of internationally accepted standards for treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. Statements by Malaysian officials suggest that the government fears that by granting protection to refugees it would open up a floodgate of asylum seekers to the country. Such fears do not justify the abuses of Acehnese in Malaysia that are detailed in this report, nor the Malaysian government’s policy of routinely expelling Acehnese, who face the possibility of summary execution, forced disappearance, torture, detention, or persecution upon return to Indonesia.

Sudan: Darfur in Flames

This 49-page report describes a government strategy of forced displacement targeting civilians of the non-Arab ethnic communities from which the two main rebel groups—the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM)—are mainly drawn. Human Rights Watch found that the military is indiscriminately bombing civilians, while both government forces and militias are systematically destroying villages and conducting brutal raids against the Fur, Masaalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups.

Political Freedoms in Kazakhstan

This 53-page report details government harassment of Kazakhstan's opposition through arbitrary criminal and misdemeanor charges and threats of job dismissal, in many cases aimed at preventing them from running for public office. Among those imprisoned were Galymzhan Zhakianov and Mukhtabar Ablizaov, the founding leaders of the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan, an opposition group formed in November 2001. Abliazov was released in May 2003. Also imprisoned and then released in 2003 was Sergei Duvanov, an opposition journalist and trenchant critic of government corruption.

"Empty Promises"

Individuals suspected of terrorism should never be returned to a country where they risk torture and ill-treatment. Promises of fair treatment by states with well-known records of torture are inherently unreliable, and governments that justify returns through such promises, known as “diplomatic assurances,” are violating the absolute prohibition against torture and eroding a fundamental principle of international law. The death penalty, however reprehensible, is legal and usually carried out publicly. But torture is illegal and practiced in secret. Governments routinely lie about whether they’re torturing people or not, and in some situations they may not even have adequate control to guarantee security. This 39-page report documents cases where governments returned or considered returning suspects on the basis of such formal guarantees, and raises concern that in some cases, those returned were, in fact, tortured or ill-treated.

Jordan: Honoring the Killers

This 37-page report documents the killings and attempted murders of women by male family members who claim they are defending family "honor." The report also details the cases of women, threatened with "honor" crimes, who languish in prison for years while held in protective custody.

Russia: Lessons Not Learned

This 62-page report documents how harsh drug policies and routine police harassment of injection drug users—the population hit hardest by AIDS in Russia—impedes their access or makes them afraid to seek basic HIV-prevention services such as syringe exchange, which is available in other countries around the world. Now that AIDS is rapidly spreading into the general population, these misguided policies have widespread consequences.

The Philippines: Unprotected

In this 70-page report, Human Rights Watch says that the Philippine government bans the use of national funds for condom supplies. Some local authorities, such as the mayor of Manila City, prohibit the distribution of condoms in government health facilities. School-based HIV/AIDS educators told Human Rights Watch that schools often prohibited them from discussing condoms with students.

Sudan: Darfur Destroyed

This 77-page report documents how Sudanese government forces have overseen and directly participated in massacres, summary executions of civilians, burnings of towns and villages, and the forcible depopulation of wide swathes of land long-inhabited by the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups. The report also documents how “Janjaweed” Arab militias — whose members are Muslim — have destroyed mosques, killed Muslim religious leaders and desecrated Korans belonging to their enemies.

Malaysia: In the Name of Security

This 60-page report documents a pattern of serious abuses against detainees, including beatings, burning with lit cigarettes, and psychological abuse. In addition to suffering from various forms of physical and psychological abuse, detainees held under the Internal Security Act (ISA) have been denied basic due process rights. The Malaysian authorities should allow independent monitors access to the nearly 100 men held under its Internal Security Act—some for nearly three years—on accusations of connections to terrorist groups.

South Africa: Forgotten Schools

This 59-page report found that the government’s failure to negotiate contracts with farm owners impedes children’s right to basic education. In the worst cases, farm owners have deliberately obstructed children's access to the schools. The report documents cases where farm owners or managers prevent learners and teachers from getting to school by locking school facilities or obstructing access otherwise, generally due a lack of contractual arrangements. While the police and authorities from the provisional departments of education intervene on occasion to ensure access, such intervention has not prevented further interference at the same schools.

Iran: "Like the Dead in Their Coffins"

This 73-page report provides the first comprehensive account of the treatment of political detainees in Tehran’s Evin Prison and in secret prisons around the capital since the government launched its current crackdown in 2000. Human Rights Watch has documented systematic abuses against political detainees, including arbitrary arrest, detention without trial, torture to extract confessions, prolonged solitary confinement, and physical and psychological abuse. Human Rights Watch calls on the Iranian government to release all political prisoners and effectively prohibit torture immediately.

El Salvador: Turning a Blind Eye

Businesses purchasing sugar from El Salvador, including The Coca-Cola Company, are using the product of child labor that is both hazardous and widespread. Harvesting cane requires children to use machetes and other sharp knives to cut sugarcane and strip the leaves off the stalks, work they perform for up to nine hours each day in the hot sun. Nearly every child interviewed by Human Rights Watch for its 139-page report said that he or she had suffered machete gashes on the hands or legs while cutting cane. These risks led one former labor inspector to characterize sugarcane as the most dangerous of all forms of agricultural work.

Venezuela: Rigging the Rule of Law

The Venezuelan government is undermining the independence of the country’s judiciary ahead of a presidential recall referendum that may ultimately be decided in the courts. President Chávez’s governing coalition has begun implementing a new court-packing law that will strip the Supreme Court of its autonomy. This 24-page report examines how the new law will make judges more vulnerable to political persecution and help ensure that legal controversies surrounding the recall referendum are resolved in Chávez’s favor.

Thailand: Not Enough Graves

This 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.

Tunisia: Long-Term Solitary Confinement of Political Prisoners

This 33-page report documents how the Tunisian authorities continue to hold as many as 40 of the country’s more than 500 political prisoners in long-term isolation in prisons around the country. This policy violates Tunisian law as well as international penal standards, undermining government claims of prison reform. The report is based in part on interviews with the relatives of prisoners in isolation. The government did not reply to the organization’s requests for access to prisons and for information about its isolation policies.

Dominican Republic: A Test of Inequality

Women in the Dominican Republic are routinely subjected to involuntary HIV testing, and those who test positive are fired and denied adequate healthcare. This 50-page report documents the human rights violations women living with HIV suffer in the public health system as well as in the workplace. Women receive grossly inadequate information about HIV from the public health system, preventing them from giving their informed consent to testing and treatment. Public health professionals routinely reveal HIV test results to women’s families without the tested individuals knowledge or consent, exposing them to violence and abuse. In addition, women living with HIV are frequently denied adequate and equal healthcare.

Indonesia/Malaysia: Help Wanted

This 110-page report documents the abuse and exploitation that Indonesian female domestic workers experience at each step of the migration process. Most domestic workers are forbidden to leave their workplace and unknown numbers suffer psychological, physical, and sexual assault by labor agents and employers. Some migrant domestic workers are caught in situations of trafficking and forced labor: they are deceived about the conditions and type of work, confined in the workplace, and receive no salary at all.

Pakistan: Soiled Hands

This 54-page report documents the Pakistani military’s brutal repression of a farmers’ movement in Okara district of Punjab, the province that provides the vast majority of recruits to Pakistan’s armed forces. For the past two years, tens of thousands of tenant farmers in Okara have resisted efforts by the military to weaken their legal rights to some of the most fertile farmland in Pakistan, which many of their families have worked for generations.

Failure to Protect

This 66-page report documents the widespread attacks against Serbs, Roma, Ashkali (Albanian-speaking Roma) and other minorities that took place in Kosovo on March 17-18. Human Rights Watch details the near-complete collapse during the crisis of Kosovo’s security institutions—the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR), international civilian police from the U.N. Interim Administration Mission to Kosovo (UNMIK), and the locally-recruited Kosovo Police Service (KPS). Based on numerous interviews with minority victims and security officials, the report provides a detailed—and previously unavailable—account of what happened in dozens of communities during the riots.

India: Future Forsaken

This 209-page report documents how many doctors refuse to treat or even touch HIV-positive children. Some schools expel or segregate children because they or their parents are HIV-positive. Many orphanages and other residential institutions reject HIV-positive children or deny that they house them. Children from families affected by AIDS may be denied an education, pushed onto the street, forced into the worst forms of child labor, or otherwise exploited, all of which puts them at greater risk of contracting HIV.

Iraq: Claims of Conflict

This 82-page report documents the increasing frustration of thousands of displaced Kurds, as well as Turkomans and Assyrians, who are living in desperate conditions as they await a resolution of their property claims. Human Rights Watch details how the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority failed to act even as the situation grew more volatile.

Bringing Justice: the Special Court for Sierra Leone

This 56-page report evaluates developments at the court, identifying achievements and making recommendations where operations should be improved. The report also urges the international community to provide more financial and political support for the court so it can complete its work effectively.

Nigeria: "Political Shari'a"?

This 111-page report documents human rights violations since Shari’a was introduced to cover criminal law in 12 northern states. Since 2000, at least 10 people have been sentenced to death and dozens sentenced to amputation and floggings. The majority have been tried without legal representation. Many sentenced to amputation were convicted on confessions extracted under torture by the police. Judges in Shari’a courts, most of whom have not received adequate training, have failed to inform defendants of their rights.

Aceh at War

This 50-page report documents how Indonesian security forces in Aceh are systematically torturing detainees suspected of supporting the armed separatist Free Aceh Movement. The detainees’ forced confessions routinely serve as the basis for convictions in proceedings that fail to meet fair trial standards under Indonesian and international law.

Rwanda: Struggling to Survive

This 58-page report investigates the persistent weaknesses in the Rwandan legal system that hamper the investigation and prosecution of sexual violence. The report also documents the desperate health and economic situation of rape survivors. Many of the women who were raped became infected with HIV.

Nepal: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

This 102-page report details how civilians in contested areas are often faced with untenable choices. Refusal to provide shelter to the rebels puts villagers at risk from Maoists who are ruthless in their punishments, while providing such support leaves them vulnerable to reprisal attacks from state security forces.

Justice at Risk

This 31-page report examines domestic war crimes trials that have taken place since 2000 for crimes committed during the armed conflicts of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia. Human Rights Watch has also monitored various of these trials.

Razing Rafah: Mass Home Demolitions in the Gaza Strip

This 135-page report focuses on the southern Gaza town of Rafah, where more than 10 percent of the population has lost their homes. As well as research and interviews conducted in Gaza, Israel and Egypt, the report uses satellite imagery, maps, graphs and photographs to document a pattern of illegal demolitions by the IDF. Such a pattern, the report says, is consistent with the political goal of having a wide and empty border area to facilitate long-term control over the Gaza Strip, rather than absolute military necessity.

Russia: The Wrongs of Passage

This 86-page report documents the serious human rights abuses involved in dedovshchina, or “rule of the grandfathers,” which results in the deaths of dozens of conscripts every year, and serious—and often permanent—damage to the physical and mental health of thousands others. Hundreds of conscripts commit or attempt suicide each year, and thousands run away from their units.

Morocco: Human Rights at a Crossroads

This 70-page report features interviews with the lawyers and family members of Moroccan prisoners who said that their interrogators had subjected them to physical and mental abuse, in some cases amounting to torture, in order to extract confessions or to induce them to sign a statement they had not made. Many were held incommunicado by police beyond the legal time limit and did not have prompt access to defense counsel.

Chile: Undue Process

This 60-page report shows how Mapuche defendants charged with terrorist acts face unequal trials for crimes that do not pose a direct threat to life, liberty or physical integrity. The use of extraordinary procedures, which were established in the antiterrorism law to tackle the most extreme political violence, is wholly unjustified when dealing with crimes attributed to the Mapuche that are mostly against property.

Iraq: State of Evidence

This 41-page report details what happened to some of the key archival and forensic evidence that the U.S.-led coalition and, more recently, the Iraqi interim government failed to secure.

Sri Lanka: Living in Fear

This 80-page report includes firsthand testimonies from dozens of children from northeastern Sri Lanka who have been recruited by the Tamil Tigers since the ceasefire came into effect. Children described rigorous and sometimes brutal military training, including training with heavy weapons, bombs and landmines. Children who try to escape are typically beaten in front of their entire unit as a warning to others.

Jamaica: Hated to Death

This 81-page report describes Jamaica’s growing HIV/AIDS epidemic, which is unfolding in the context of widespread violence and discrimination against people living with and at high risk of HIV/AIDS - especially men who have sex with men. Myths about HIV/AIDS persist. Many Jamaicans believe that HIV/AIDS is a disease of homosexuals and sex workers whose “moral impurity” makes them vulnerable to it, or that HIV is transmitted by casual contact.

No Second Chance

This 101-page report is the first examination of “one strike” policies in public housing. Established to protect housing developments from potentially dangerous tenants, these policies automatically exclude applicants with certain criminal records. Unfortunately, the criteria for exclusion are needlessly overbroad and can exclude certain offenders for life—regardless of evidence of their rehabilitation.

Egypt: Divorced from Justice

This 62-page report documents serious human rights abuses stemming from discriminatory family laws that have resulted in a divorce system that affords separate and unequal treatment to men and women.

Brazil: "Real Dungeons"

This 70-page report documents that youths in Rio de Janeiro’s detention centers are often beaten and verbally abused by guards. Most complaints of ill-treatment are never investigated by the state’s Department of Socio-Economic Action (Departamento Geral de Ações Sócio-Educativas, or DEGASE), the authority responsible for juvenile detention facilities. Administrative sanctions against guards are rare and usually take the form of transfers to other detention centers; no guard has ever faced criminal charges for abusive conduct.