Palestinian Armed Groups’ October 7 Assault on Israel
The 236-page report, “‘I Can’t Erase All the Blood from My Mind’: Palestinian Armed Groups’ October 7 Assault on Israel,” documents several dozen cases of serious violations of international humanitarian law by Palestinian armed groups at nearly all the civilian attack sites on October 7. These include the war crimes and crimes against humanity of murder, hostage-taking, and other grave offenses. Human Rights Watch also examined the role of various armed groups and their coordination before and during the attacks. Previous Human Rights Watch reports have addressed numerous serious violations by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 7.
Human Rights on the Eve of the March 1994 Elections
As El Salvador winds up the campaign for presidential, legislative, and municipal elections scheduled for March 20, 1994, no issue represents a greater threat to the peace process than the rise in political murders of leaders and grassroots activists belonging to the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).
Researched and written prior to the 1994 elections in South Africa, this report describes how the former South African government failed to fulfill its obligations to protect its citizens from violence and guarantee the exercise of their political rights in two homelands.
In spite of the peace accord signed in October 1992 between government forces and RENAMO rebels, innocent civilians are maimed and killed by landmines in Mozambique on a daily basis.
Violations of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law during the Armed Revolt in Chiapas, Mexico
This report examines the underlying causes of the New Year’s Rebellion, the Mexican government’s two-phase response, and the most serious human rights and humanitarian law violations that occurred to date during the conflict.
While visiting over twenty prisons as well as lockups in at least five different cities throughout South Africa, we found significant improvements had been made since the political climate began to change in 1990.
On January 3, 1994, a massacre in a Venezuelan prison left more than one hundred inmates dead and scores injured. While security personnel stood by, a group of prisoners set fire to a prison building, then shot and stabbed prisoners who tried to escape the inferno.
In two separate shipments in May 1992 and August 1993, eighteen tons of official Iraqi state documents captured by Kurdish parties in the 1991 uprising arrived in the U.S. for safekeeping and analysis. Our team has conducted research on these documents and catalogued a large percentage.
On February 22, 1993, the U.N. Security Council promised to create an international tribunal to try accused war criminals in the former Yugoslavia, but a year later the tribunal appeared to be part of a pattern of empty threats and broken promises.
This report provides an update on the human rights situation in Cuba. Again this last year, Human Rights Watch/Americas (formerly Americas Watch) has been handicapped in monitoring Cuba because of the regime's refusal to allow us to visit the country, to conduct inquiries and talk to victims, and to engage in a dialogue with the authorities.
A campaign to curb pornography has backfired dangerously in Canada, leading not toward its ostensible goal of gender equality, but to a weakening of fundamental liberties for women and gay men. The cornerstone of this campaign is R. v. Butler, an anti-pornography decision issued by the Canadian Supreme Court in 1992 that sets forth a litmus test for determining obscenity and has been used to prosecute a lesbian magazine, to destroy books intended for gay consumers, and to confiscate an array of political and erotic works.
Police and Death Squad Homicides of Adolescents in Brazil
Despite the considerable attention that has been brought to homicides of adolescents, impunity for those responsible for these abuses has in most respects, continued to prevail.
Twenty-one people died in suspicious circumstances while in police custody in 1993. These deaths took place in police or gendarmarie stations throughout Turkey during the interrogation phase of investigations. They follow on the deaths of at least 17 people who died while under interrogation in police custody in 1992.
The Arms Trade and Human Rights Abuses in the Rwandan War
On October 1990, the Rwandese Patriotic Front launched an invasion from neighboring Uganda, aimed at overthrowing the Rwandan government. While the war has stopped in an uneasy peace, an estimated 4,500 people died in the conflict and nearly one million civilians are refugees.
Facing serious problems, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is making the difficult transition from communism to democracy and a free market economy. It also faces the possibility of the Bosnian war overtaking the region.
Even as the Indonesian government repealed a controversial decree and stated it's concern for the welfare of workers, we continued to receive reports of labor rights violations. These violations include the harassment of union members and reports of bonded labor in Irian Jaya.