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Aceh Under Martial Law
by Human Rights WatchA hidden war has been raging in Aceh since May 2003, when Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri declared martial law in the province. This report attempts to convey some of the reality of that war: extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances, beatings, arbitrary arrests and detentions, and drastic limits on freedom of movement. In many incidents described to Human Rights Watch, Indonesian security forces - military and police - routinely resorted to violence against primarily young Acehnese men stopped for questioning. Witnesses told Human Rights Watch about killings of civilians during village sweeps, some while being questioned or detained, others while fleeing in fear of mistreatment.
Black Hole
by Human Rights WatchThe 53-page report, "Black Hole: The Fate of Islamists Rendered to Egypt," identifies some 60 individuals, mostly alleged Islamist militants of Egyptian origin, whom other states rendered to Egypt since 1994. The sending states have mainly been Arab and South Asian countries, but include Sweden as well as the United States. The Egyptian government has held many of the suspects in prolonged incommunicado detention. In some cases, Egypt has refused to acknowledge the whereabouts of those persons, and even the fact that they were in custody, raising concerns that some of the suspects have been forcibly "disappeared." Human Rights Watch said that sending wanted individuals to Egypt is a clear violation of the international law that prohibits extraditing or otherwise transferring persons to a country where they face likely torture.
Future Forsaken
by Human Rights WatchThis 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.
Fleeting Refuge
by Human Rights WatchIn recent years the Netherlands has successfully tailored its asylum policies and practices with an eye toward stimulating efficiency in decision-making and deterring manifestly unfounded claims. As a result, requests for asylum are dramatically lower while the percentage of applications processed in accelerated procedures has significantly increased. But as this report details, the Dutch government has pursued its new asylum policies at the expense of fundamental asylum and refugee rights. After three months of research into Dutch asylum policies, Human Rights Watch has identified three areas of particular concern: violations of refugee and asylum rights in the accelerated procedure; inappropriate treatment of migrant children; and restrictions on asylum seekers' rights to basic material support, such as food and housing. This report elaborates these concerns and identifies measures the Dutch government should take to address them.
Darfur Destroyed
by Human Rights WatchThe government of Sudan is responsible for "ethnic cleansing" and crimes against humanity in Darfur, one of the world's poorest and most inaccessible regions, on Sudan's western border with Chad. The Sudanese government and the Arab "Janjaweed" militias it arms and supports have committed numerous attacks on the civilian populations of the African Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups. Government forces oversaw and directly participated in massacres, summary executions of civilians-including women and children-burnings of towns and villages, and the forcible depopulation of wide swathes of land long inhabited by the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa. The Janjaweed militias, Muslim like the African groups they attack, have destroyed mosques, killed Muslim religious leaders, and desecrated Qorans belonging to their enemies.
The Warri Crisis
by Human Rights WatchConflict in Nigeria's Delta State during 2003 has led to the killing of hundreds of people, the displacement of thousands, and the destruction of hundreds of properties. Among the dead are probably dozens killed by the security forces. Although the violence has both ethnic and political dimensions, it is essentially a fight over money. In Nigeria, control of government often represents virtually unaudited control over resources. Delta State, which produces 40 percent of Nigeria's oil and receives 13 percent of the revenue from production in the state, has a particularly controversial division of political and government positions and structures, over which representatives of different ethnic groups are struggling. The wholly fraudulent nature of the 2003 state and federal elections in Delta State, as in 1999, means that there is little hope of changing political structures by democratic means, and elections become a focus for violence. In addition, the warring factions are fighting for control of the theft of crude oil, siphoned from pipes owned by the joint ventures that operate Nigeria's oil industry, known as "illegal oil bunkering." Illegally bunkered oil accounts for perhaps 10 percent of Nigeria's oil production, and those who sell the stolen oil, who have low capital costs, make enormous profits from this trade. Both politicians and those who head the illegal bunkering rackets (sometimes the same people) have armed youth militia to ensure their reelection or defend their operations. Among the other factors contributing to the conflict are the widespread availability of small arms, and ongoing impunity for abuses by all sides, including the security forces, since the first round of serious fighting in Delta State in 1997. Finally, the corruption and mismanagement in government that has left the region from which Nigeria derives its wealth poor and underdeveloped, has created a large class of young men who have no hope of legitimate work that would fulfill their ambitions, and are easily recruited into violence.
Egypt
by Human Rights WatchThis report documents serious human rights violations by Egyptian security officials during and following large demonstrations in Cairo on March 20 and 21, 2003 against the U.S.-led war in Iraq. These violations included: excessive use of force in disbursing demonstrators and bystanders on March 21 in violation of the right to freedom of assembly; arbitrary arrest and detention, including of children; beatings and mistreatment of persons in detention, in some cases amounting to torture; and failure to provide medical care to seriously injured detainees.
"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.
Forgotten Fighters
by Human Rights WatchAn agreement reached between government armed forces and the largest opposition group, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola, UNITA), brought peace to mainland Angola in April 2002. Some 100,000 adult combatants from UNITA moved with their families into quartering areas. Five thousand of these were integrated into the national police and armed forces; the rest into a formal demobilization program. Most adult fighters eighteen and older received demobilization and photo identification cards, a travel authorization certificate, a five-month salary based on military rank, and food assistance. They are also to receive a transport allowance and a reinstallation kit upon return to their home communities. But boy and girl soldiers, seventeen and younger, were not included in the demobilization program and received only an identification card and food aid distributed by the international community to family units attached to the soldiers.
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.
Failure to Protect
by Human Rights WatchOn March 17 and 18, 2004, violent rioting by ethnic Albanians took place throughout Kosovo, spurred by sensational and ultimately inaccurate reports that Serbs had been responsible for the drowning of three young Albanian children. For nearly forty-eight hours, the security structures in Kosovo-the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR), the international U.N. (UNMIK) police, and the locally recruited Kosovo Police Service (KPS)-almost completely lost control, as at least thirty-three major riots broke out across Kosovo, involving an estimated 51,000 participants.