Reports

This report warns that the failure of the Dayton Peace Accord will be inevitable, and the U.S.

In 1995 alone, there were at least 181 reported attacks against Roma or foreigners in the Czech Republic and many other assaults go unreported. One murder in particular, that of Tibor Berki in May 1995, incited a public debate about racism and prompted the government to take more forceful measures.

When Atlanta set out to host the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, its application stated that “for many,” the city is “the modern capital of human rights.” In this report, one of a series on the U.S., we offer an assessment of how Atlanta, and the state of Georgia, violates international human rights standards.

Some 2,685 villages and hamlets in Turkey’s southeastern provinces have been completely or partially depopulated since fighting broke out in the region in August 1984 between government forces and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an armed group which until recently had the avowed goal of an independent Kurdish state. Although there has been some migration for economic reasons, most of the depopulation has been the result of a government counterinsurgency campaign intended to deprive the PKK of logistical support. The PKK has also targeted state-sponsored village civil militia settlements, forcing some inhabitants to flee. Estimates of the number of individuals displaced range from 275,000 to two million.

On May 26, 1996, Albanians voted in parliamentary elections—the third multi-party elections since the fall of the communist government in 1991. Unfortunately, numerous human rights violations before, during and after the vote undermined the democratic process and threatened the legitimacy of the elections.

At the outset of the February 1996 session of the Preparatory Committee for the U.N.

Macedonia has taken some important steps toward democratization since declaring its independence from the Yugoslav federation in 1991. Substantive reform has opened the door to the European institutions and laid the foundation for a multi-party system based on the rule of law. Nevertheless, some serious problems remain.

The fierce struggle for power between Bangladesh's main political parties has fostered a situation of lawlessness and civil strife in which wanton acts of violence and intimidation by both the former ruling party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, backed by security forces, and the opposition parties, have become routine features of the political process.

In 1995, under strong pressure from the U.S., the Bolivian government began an aggressive coca eradication effort that was strongly resisted by coca growers. Periods of negotiation alternated with outbursts of violence in the Chapare, the sub-tropical region in which thousands of poor farmers produce most of the Bolivian coca.

In 1996, the conflict in Kashmir entered it seventh year, with little indication that parliamentary elections in May would either lead to peace or end the widespread human rights abuses that characterized the war.

In 1992, a devastating civil war in Tajikistan led to the deaths of more than 20,000 (with some estimates as high as 50,000) and created more than 800,000 displaced persons and refugees.

For over a decade, a conflict has raged on the border of Israel and Lebanon, where Israel occupies a large section of Lebanese territory. Civilians have been the principal targets and victims in this conflict.

Despite the government of Uzbekistan's professed commitment to freedom of the press—made both explicitly and publicly over the past two years—state censorship of the media remains pervasive and intimidation of journalists is rampant. The tone and subject matter of articles published in Uzbekistan is strictly controlled by the government.

In late 1994, the authoritarian government of Uzbekistan, long stigmatized as a serious human rights abuser, showed the first signs that it desired to change its image.

As the 1997 parliamentary elections in Indonesia approach, the political atmosphere has begun to heat up and civil liberties are deteriorating. Since the first such election under the “New Order” government of President Soeharto in 1971, they have never been the “democratic festival” that the government would have both outsiders and its own citizens believe.