The Cruel and Ineffective Criminalization of Unhoused People in Los Angeles
The 337-page report, “‘You Have to Move!’ The Cruel and Ineffective Criminalization of Unhoused People in Los Angeles,” documents the experiences of people living on the streets and in vehicles, temporary shelters, and parks in Los Angeles, as they struggle to survive while facing criminalization and governmental failures to prioritize eviction prevention or access to permanent housing. Law enforcement and sanitation “sweeps” force unhoused people out of public view, often wasting resources on temporary shelter and punishments that do not address the underlying needs. Tens of thousands of people are living in the streets of Los Angeles; death rates among the unhoused have skyrocketed.
Despite the reforms following the 1989 revolution in Romania, the laws regulating prison life are largely unchanged and many of the prison personnel remain the same. Not surprisingly, with decades of neglect and the current economic crisis, prison facilities are sorely lacking in basic necessities and overcrowding contributes to violence among inmates.
Human Rights Abuses Along the U.S. Border with Mexico
Examining human rights abuses committed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and its agents during the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws in the four U.S. states that border Mexico, Human Rights Watch finds that beatings, rough physical treatment, and racially motivated verbal abuse are routine during arrests. Unjustified shootings, torture, and sexual abuse, also occur.
The current map of the former Soviet Union is pockmarked with violent conflict, primarily in Transcaucasia, Moldova and Tajikistan. Some of the conflicts are longstanding territorial disputes inherited from the Soviet and pre-Soviet periods; others are born of governmental power struggles that are peculiar to post-putsch politics.
In early September 1991, the Indonesian military forced the country's leading newsweekly, Tempo, to kill a story scheduled for the September 7 issue about the plight of young East Timorese workers who had been promised training and high-paying jobs by President Suharto's eldest daughter, Siti Hardijanti Hastuti, better known as Mbak Tutut.
The Transitional Government of Ethiopia, which assumed power in July 1991, has set itself an ambitious agenda for transforming the political structure of Ethiopia and establishing democracy and human rights. The Transitional Charter, the basic constitutional document adopted at the national conference in Addis Ababa in July, incorporates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as supreme law.
This report focuses on the chronic problem of impunity in Brazil in the context of the struggle over land use and agrarian reform. It highlights four states and concludes that impunity—or government failure to enforce criminal laws, permitting and encouraging further criminal behavior in the context of the struggle for land—exists in these regions and throughout Brazil.
Despite insistent denials by senior officials, torture by Egyptian security forces frequently takes place while political and security suspects are held in incommunicado detention. Middle East Watch bases this finding on numerous accounts gathered from residents of cities and towns throughout Egypt regarding incidents that took place from 1989 to early 1992.
Over 70 percent of women in jail in Pakistan report sexual abuse by police officials. Despite the high incidence of rape and sexual torture of female detainees, no police official has been subjected to criminal punishment for these abuses.
On March 1, 1992, King Fahd ibn Abdel-Aziz issued three major laws: the Basic Law of Government, the Consultative Council Law and the Law of Provinces.
The issue of accountability for past human rights abuses gained considerable prominence in the 1980s as unprecedented global political change focused attention on the crimes of ousted regimes. Unlike most of the nations experiencing radical political change and facing accountability issues, however, Sri Lanka’s political system remains intact.
When he took office in January 1990, Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel spoke out against the impulse for vindictiveness in the wake of over forty years of Communist rule.
The Greek government has taken significant steps to improve conditions for the Turkish minority in Western Thrace during the past year. Ethnic Turks can now buy and sell houses and land, repair houses and mosques, obtain car, truck and tractor licenses, and open coffee houses and machine and electrical shops.
On February 10-12, 1992, workers in the Medan [North Sumatra] Canning Company, which cans fish, went on strike. The strike was successful, and wages were raised after labor and management agreed on a settlement with the Ministry of Manpower.
In February, the Dominican Republic's telecommunications chief suspended the Creole-language news program of a popular Dominican radio station based in the southwest region of the country, near the Haitian border. After receiving complaints from Haiti's de facto military rulers, the Dominican authorities barred Radio Enriquillo from transmitting its news program in Creole, the Haitian language.
Despite a series of promising political reforms in 1990 and 1991, the government of President César Gaviria Trujillo has been unable to stem the violence that accounts for more political murders in Colombia than any country in the hemisphere, with the possible exception of Peru.