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Human Rights Watch IN THIS ISSUE:
The Human Rights Watch monthly email update highlights the impact of our work around the world, as well as recent campaigns. It does not list everything we produce or on which we work. For the latest information from Human Rights Watch, visit our home page. Past monthly updates are archived.
Russia: Securing Refuge for Displaced Chechens
Anna Neistat and Sasha Petrov, the director and deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Moscow office, released a report on September 22 charging that Russian forces in Ingushetia are committing many of the same abuses that Human Rights Watch has documented in Chechnya: arbitrary arrest, detention, ill-treatment and looting. Now the pressure on the displaced Chechens is getting worse. In the run-up to the October 5 presidential election in Chechnya, Russian authorities began threatening them with arrest, striking their names from lists for humanitarian aid and cutting off basic services such as electricity, gas and water. “The Russian government wants to move the Chechnya problem back to Chechnya, no matter what the human cost,” said Rachel Denber, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia division. Human Rights Watch is trying to persuade the Russian government to keep camps open for 11,000 Chechens who must not be forced to return to their dangerous homeland. At the beginning of September, Russia’s migration authorities set October 1 as the deadline for closing one of the five remaining camps, Bella, which housed more than 1,000 people. Soon gas, electricity and water were cut off in the camp, and humanitarian and human rights groups were denied access. With Russia’s President Vladimir Putin due to begin a Camp David summit with U.S. President George Bush on September 26, Human Rights Watch spotted a prime moment to take action. Human Rights Watch advocates in the United States and Russia wrote and met with government officials in Washington and Moscow to stress how the closure of the Bella camp would embarrass both sides during the summit. Under heightened international scrutiny, Russian authorities agreed to allow Bella camp to remain open until a suitable alternative could be provided for its residents. The day before the Camp David summit began, Ingush President Murat Ziazikov restored gas, water and electricity to Bella camp. By the end of September, Russia’s migration authorities moved the remaining families to another camp, Satsina, but now they threaten to close that one down, too. As winter approaches in mountainous Ingushetia, tactics such as cutting off power and heat in the camps become even more brutally effective. What You Can Do By sending a postcard to President Putin by e-mail or fax, you can urge the Russian authorities not to close Satsina and other camps sheltering displaced Chechens in Ingushetia. You can also insist that Russia refrain from returning any displaced people to Chechnya against their will, either directly or by means of coercion like threats, arrests, harassment or cuts in humanitarian aid. Click here for the postcard.
Colombia: Stopping Use of Child Combatants
“Our report launch was extremely successful,” said Robin Kirk, Human Rights Watch’s Colombia researcher. “We got a number of commitments on the part of the Colombian government.” Colombia agreed to expand programs to rehabilitate former child combatants, which remains a challenge as the armed groups make some children execute others who try to desert. The government also agreed to pay special attention to the demobilization of child combatants in talks with both the guerrillas and the paramilitaries. Human Rights Watch has also worked closely with a network of non-governmental organizations on the ground, part of the international Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. The president of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe, on September 18 met with a Human Rights Watch delegation led by José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas Division’s executive director. Former foreign ministers Jorge Castañeda of Mexico and Lloyd Axworthy of Canada, and film producer Sid Sheinberg--all of whom are Human Rights Watch board members--joined Vivanco for talks with Colombian government officials. Ten days earlier, however, President Uribe in a speech to the Colombian armed forces had compared human rights groups to “terrorists.” Such a statement threatened to give carte blanche to further violent attacks on non-governmental organizations in the country. Uribe subsequently backed away from his belligerent stance towards NGOs, first in a letter to the editor to The Economist in response to the magazine’s prominent story on the Human Rights Watch report. Then, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, he said non-governmental organizations are “partners” in resolving Colombia’s conflict.
United States: Urging for Clean Needles Against HIV
Needle exchange programs, which provide sterile syringes to injection drug users, have been proven to reduce HIV transmission without increasing drug use. Yet in California and other states, needle exchanges are banned in many counties. Even where needle exchanges operate freely, sterile syringes are considered “drug paraphernalia” under state law in California. Thus many drug users shy away from needle exchange programs, fearing arrest for possession of syringes. Last month Human Rights Watch met with Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy Baca, who agreed to start a working group aimed at reducing police interference with needle exchanges. Oakland’s chief of narcotics enforcement, Benson Fairow, agreed to take steps to do the same. Meanwhile the California State Office on AIDS is organizing a statewide conference on needle exchange and plans to draw on the findings of the Human Rights Watch report in the meeting. In counties throughout California, Cohen and Schleifer met injection drug users who resorted to reusing or sharing syringes. Others risked arrest to make contact with underground needle exchanges, in one case by sneaking through bushes and taking back roads. Human Rights Watch held a number of roundtable discussions in California to report findings and discuss advocacy strategies with local organizations, many of which had assisted them in their research. Members of Human Rights Watch’s Northern and Southern California Committees were also invited to participate in the meetings. “Our role here is a supportive role,” Cohen said. “There are highly sophisticated organizations working on the ground that don’t have the time to document abuses, and that’s a gap our report attempts to fill.” The “holistic” advocacy strategy pursued in California by Human Rights Watch’s HIV/AIDS researchers engages local organizations, law enforcement officials and government agencies--on both local and statewide levels.
Nigeria: Debunking Misconceptions on Stoning Case
Human Rights Watch researcher Carina Tertsakian had just returned from a mission to states in northern Nigeria where Sharia (Islamic law) had been extended to cover criminal offenses. Tertsakian knew the issues cold, but she also knew that many reporters were chasing the wrong story. “Amina Lawal’s case deserves attention, and we are delighted at the outcome of her appeal, but hers is not the only case, nor is the punishment of stoning the only human rights problem in Nigeria,” says Tertsakian, who has worked at Human Rights Watch since 2001. “Much of the Western media has oversimplified the issue by focusing exclusively on this type of punishment under Sharia.” The more fundamental human rights issue in Nigeria is the dysfunctional justice system, Tertsakian noted. She also describes how dysfunction lies at the heart of how Islamic law is being practiced too. Amina Lawal, for example, was convicted in a trial that was seriously flawed and did not follow due process, even under the Sharia legislation. She was not aware of her rights and did not even have a defense lawyer until the appeal stage Tertsakian’s reports for Human Rights Watch have highlighted the absence of justice that underlies Nigeria’s many human rights problems. Impunity for perpetrators of human rights violations and the inability of victims to obtain redress are the common threads linking problems as diverse as killings by the security forces, vigilante violence, and ethnic and religious conflicts. Amina Lawal’s case has helped raise awareness of the parlous state of Nigeria’s justice system, but these other human rights problems, which have claimed several thousand lives since 1999, are crying out for the same level of attention. Tertsakian, 41, formerly worked at Amnesty International as a researcher on Rwanda and the Great Lakes region. She works out of Human Rights Watch’s London office. Her next report will focus on violations of freedom of expression in Nigeria. She is also working on Human Rights Watch’s first substantial report on human rights in the context of Sharia in northern Nigeria. For more on human rights in Nigeria, visit http://www.hrw.org/africa/nigeria.php
Book: Reclaiming ‘Lost Liberties’ Under Ashcroft
To order “Lost Liberties” at a 25% discount, please call W.W. Norton at 1-800-235-4830 and mention the Human Rights Watch discount. Visit the publisher’s Web site at http://www.thenewpress.com/books/lostlibs.htm
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Chechen refugees in Ingushetia. © 2000 Peter Bouckaert/Human Rights Watch
HRW Americas division director José Miguel Vivanco speaks with Colombian
President Álvaro Uribe and Vice President Francisco Santos about child
soldiers in Colombia.
© 2003 Human Rights Watch
Amina Lawal and her child wait in Katsina Court in northern Nigeria.
© 2003 Reuters Limited
The New Press has just released “Lost Liberties: Ashcroft and the Assault on Personal Freedom,” which includes an essay by Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth. The volume was edited by a former Human Rights Watch program director, Cynthia Brown, and contains an introduction by Human Rights Watch’s former executive director, Aryeh Neier, as well as contributions from many other highly respected authors and rights activists.