By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Feb 26 2001 (IPS)

The cause of human rights made some substantial advances in Yugoslavia, Europe, Latin America, and Africa during 2000, but perennial problems in some Asian countries either did not improve or got worse, according to the annual State Department’s human rights reports released here Monday.

On the plus side of the ledger were election defeat of former Yugoslav president and indicted war criminal Slobodan Milosevic; the peaceful transfers of power to the opposition after elections in Ghana, Croatia, and Mexico, as well as the resignation after disputed elections of former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, the reports said.

On the other hand, China’s repression of dissent and a number of minority religious and ethnic groups, including the Falun Gong movement; continued fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); the spread of Liberian-support violence from Sierra Leone to Guinea; and the ongoing, multi-faceted civil war in Colombia were among key setbacks during the year, the reports noted.

The latest annual edition, the 25th of the so-called “Country Reports” on Human Rights Practices, covering 195 countries around the world, comes just a month after the departure of President Bill Clinton.

Under his eight-year tenure, the reports expanded their coverage of countries’ human rights performance from predominantly political and civil rights, core labour rights, and the rights of the person to be free from torture, to include the rights of women, children, refugees, people with disabilities and the rights of indigenous populations and national, racial, ethnic, and religious minorities to be free from repression or discrimination.

The reports were originally mandated by Congress in 1976 and were first implemented by former President Jimmy Carter. They have grown steadily in length; country reports average well over 50 pages per country and constitute the world’s single most comprehensive analysis of human rights conditions.

They often incorporate or summarise findings by UN or other multilateral agencies, such as the International Labour Organisation or the UN High Commissioner on Human rights, as well as local and international rights groups. It can be seen in full at the US State Department’s website: www.state.gov.

Many foreign governments resent the reports as a kind of “report card” on their human rights performance, insisting that they demonstrate US arrogance toward the rest of the world and that their failure to accord most economic and social rights in their analyses shows an ideological blind spot.

While the reports avoid comparing the human rights practices of different countries, its introduction often singles out specific nations for praise or blame.

This year, they noted that the human rights situation in North Korea, for example, “remained among the worst in the world”, while it called the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein “one of the world’s most repressive regimes”. Security forces there, it said “routinely executed, tortured, beat, raped or otherwise intimidated and abused any perceived political opponents”.

Other perennial rogues identified by the State Department include Burma which was accused of maintaining its “severe repression” of the opposition led by Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and coercing people, including children, into forced labour during 2000; Afghanistan where “the Taliban continued to be a major violator of human rights, severely restricting women’s and girls’ access to education, medical facilities and employment”; and Cuba where “the government retained tight surveillance over anyone considered a potential opponent”.

The reports said China’s “poor human rights record worsened during the year”, an assessment which the Bush administration has decided to take to next month’s annual meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission.

It also singled out several countries of the former Soviet Union, including Belarus where the regime “repressed all calls for democracy”, and Turkmenistan which, it said, remained “one of the most totalitarian countries in the world” based in part on a “personality cult of its leader, Saparmurat Niyazov.

Armed conflicts also took a terrible toll on human rights in Colombia, where the reports blamed mostly “both paramilitary and guerrilla groups” for massacres of civilians and the murder, kidnapping, and intimidation of journalists, and other targeted groups; Sudan; which “continued its bombing of civilian population centres, support for slave taking, and forced religious conversions”; and Chechnya, where Russian forces committed ” extrajudicial killings, torture, and rape”.

In Indonesia, according to the report, the government’s record was “poor, and the overall human rights situation worsened during the year despite the government’s efforts to continue (its) democratic transition”.

It said security forces were responsible for numerous instances of indiscriminate shooting of civilians, torture, beatings, and other abuses in Aceh, Irian Jaya and elsewhere, while the government was “ineffective” in deterring social, interethnic, and inter-religious violence in the Moluccas and Sulawesi. In the past few days, similar violence by the Dayak indigenous group against immigrant Madurese has cost hundreds of lives.

The report also noted the outbreak of violence between Israelis and Palestinians in September, noting that Israeli security forces “sometimes used excessive force”, resulting in the killing of some 300 Palestinians, while Palestinian security or paramilitary groups have killed “numerous Israeli solders and civilians in the cycle of violence”.

While praising elections in Croatia, Ghana, Mexico, Suriname and Yugoslavia, the reports noted “seriously flawed elections” in Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Cote d’Ivoire, and Haiti, as well as the breakdown of law and order in the South Pacific countries of Fiji and the Solomon Islands.

On torture and extrajudicial execution, the reports noted persistent abuses in Algeria by both security forces and the Islamic insurgency; “widespread” torture of political dissidents in Uzbekistan; serious abuses, including killings, rapes and amputations of limbs by Liberian-backed rebel forces in Sierra Leone and Guinea; and the killing of “many dozens of people” by Camerounian security over a six-month period in Douala.

Violence against women remained a “pervasive problem” worldwide, according to the reports, which noted only “limited gains” for women during the year. In Egypt, women were granted the right to divorce on grounds of incompatibility, while in Rwanda, new legislation improved their inheritance and property rights.

At the international level, the reports praised the ILO’s adoption of a resolution calling for measures to secure compliance with core worker rights and noted that body’s censure of Burma for “widespread and systematic” use of forced labour.

It also noted the role played by the Organisation of American States (OAS) throughout the contested elections in Peru, and the Organisation of African Unity’s (OAU) denial of a seat for Cote D’Ivoire at the OAU summit after the coup d’etat.

Excerpt: