The Right to Monitor

While in some cases in 1993 the international community showed itself increasingly willing to adopt extraordinary measures to protect human rights, local human rights monitors often were the most important actors in the struggle to hold their governments accountable. The threat they posed was most evident in the lengths to which abusive forces went to silence their reports. At least nine human rights monitors were killed in the year under review, and two forcibly disappeared.

Some countries, such as Burma, Iraq, Iran, North Korea and Vietnam, remained too dangerous, or too closed, even to attempt human rights monitoring. Of the places where it was possible to attempt human rights monitoring in the past year, Kashmir and Turkey were the most dangerous. Three human rights monitors were killed in each, under circumstances suggesting retaliation for their public criticisms.

· In Kashmir, a prominent human rights activist, Hirdai Nath Wanchoo, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in December 1992. The government's refusal to conduct an independent investigation raises questions about its complicity. Dr. Farooq Ahmed Ashai, a doctor and outspoken critic of the government's human rights record, was shot and killed by Indian paramilitary troops in February 1993. Dr. Abdul Ahad Guru, a surgeon and critic of Indian human rights practices (who was also a member of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front) was assassinated by unidentified gunmen in March 1993, and his brother-in-law was killed by police during the funeral procession.

· In Turkey, two officials and one member of the Human Rights Association were assassinated, all in February. They included Metin Can, the president, and Dr. Hasan Kaya, a member, of the Elazig branch, and Kemal Kilic, a founding member of the Urfa branch. The government has failed toinvestigate the murders.

Other countries where human rights monitors were killed in 1993 include the following:

· In Guatemala, rights activist Tomás Lares Sipriano was murdered in April by an army-organized civil patrol, the day after he had organized a demonstration protesting military pressure to join the supposedly voluntary patrols. In October, Francisco Guarcas Ciphiano, a member of Guatemala's oldest human rights organization, the Mutual Support Group, was kidnapped by civil patrol members in the Guatemala City bus terminal and disappeared. Guatemalan human rights groups also continued to suffer threats, intimidation, and detention.

· In Algeria, Djilali Belkhenchir, a pediatrician who was vice-president of the Algerian Committee Against Torture, was felled in an attack attributed to Islamists in October.

· In El Salvador, José Eduardo Pineda, a lawyer who had been working for the newly created office of the human rights ombudsman, died in March of injuries sustained in a violent attack in July 1992. Other human rights monitors were threatened and attacked in 1993.

· In Colombia, Delio Vargas, president of the Colombian Association for Social Assistance, a refugee organization, disappeared in April after being forced into a car by five men in circumstances suggesting the involvement of security forces. Human rights activists also suffered threats and surveillance by state security agents.

Apart from murder, governments took other steps in their effort to silence the human rights movement:

· The Rwandan government threatened and attempted to assassinate human rights activists and witnesses in advance of a January visit by an international human rights commission that included one of our representatives. Beginning hours after the commission's departure, government-sponsored violence left 300 dead, including a student who had provided information to the commission, and thousands driven from their homes. The family of one young man who aided the commission was attacked by a mob incited by local officials, and the father of the family was forced to commit suicide. Attacks on human rights monitors continued throughout the year.

· Fifteen Syrian human rights monitors remain in prison, serving long prison terms or awaiting sentencing. The Committees for the Defense of Democratic Freedoms and HumanRights in Syria has been decimated in its home country, and now operates out of Paris.

· The Saudi government banned the Committee to Defend Legitimate Rights, established in May by six prominent Islamist jurists and university professors, for purportedly violating Islamic law. The committee was the first nongovernmental organization of its kind to be formed in Saudi Arabia in decades. Several members lost their government jobs or had their private offices closed, and fifteen were detained.

· Those who reported on Chinese human rights practices continued to risk lengthy prison terms. For example, Fu Shenqi, a Shanghai dissident, was sentenced in July to three years in a re-education camp for mounting a letter-writing campaign on behalf of a political prisoner. No international human rights organization was permitted to conduct a fact-finding mission in China in 1993, although the head of China's bid for the 2000 Olympics issued one invitation five days before a decision on the site was to be made.

· Human rights monitors in Haiti were subject to death threats and physical attacks. Haitians who cooperated with the international civilian mission were threatened and arrested.

· Cuba continued to imprison pro-democracy activists, and to restrict access by U.N. and nongovernmental human rights investigators.

· For the first time in ten years, the Peruvian government obstructed our own attempts to visit prisons. It asserted trumped-up charges of "terrorism" against human rights activists. To obstruct inquiries into its death-squad activity, it also intimidated Peruvian congressional investigators and impeded proper forensic inquiry.

· In a move aimed at the country's six human rights and humanitarian groups, the Kuwaiti government banned all unlicensed organizations, after having repeatedly refused their requests for licenses. Some of the groups continued to meet privately.

· Sudan persisted in its strategy of effectively replacing the nation's leading human rights organization and bar association with government-controlled entities.

· The Yugoslav government obstructed international monitoring efforts in Kosovo, Sandzak and Vojvodina. It forced the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe to close down its mission, and refused permission to the U.N. SpecialRapporteur to open an office.

· The Iranian government also denied access to the U.N. Special Representative, as well as to nongovernmental organizations that sought to monitor Iranian practices.