Resistance to Elections

Efforts to block elections, or to deny the will of the electorate in choosing its government, continued to reap devastation in 1993. While elections alone cannot guarantee respect for human rights, the year showed repeatedly that disregard for free and fair elections can breed disaster.

· In Angola, some 500,000 have died from the renewed fighting, and related starvation and disease, caused by the rebel force UNITA's rejection of September 1992 elections found by foreign observers to be "generally free and fair."

· In Algeria, the government's 1992 cancellation of elections won by an Islamic party yielded a bloody conflict plagued by assassination and torture.

· The Nigerian military's refusal to recognize the results of presidential elections in June 1993 threw the country intopolitical turmoil that resulted in a coup d'etat in November.

· Since the Haitian military's September 1991 coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's freely elected government, the army has clung to power through ruthless repression. Its grievances against President Aristide pale in comparison with the killing, brutality and impoverishment that it has visited upon the Haitian people.

· In Burma, the military continues to reject the results of the May 1990 elections. In January 1993, it initiated a National Convention to draft a constitution guaranteeing itself a primary governing role.