Amnesty says human rights abuses paint ugly picture

Press, 7 October 1988, Page 34

Amnesty says human rights abuses paint ugly picture

NZPA-Reuter London Amnesty International documented an “ugly picture” of human rights abuses from murder to political harassment by a record 135 Governments in its 1987 annual report, published this week. The London-based organisation reported that while all the United Nations’ member States formally subscribed to the 40-year-old Declaration of Human Rights, many considered its ideals subversive and attacked citizens trying to defend them. Amnesty accused scores of Governments of kidnapping and killing opponents and said men, women and children were tortured in one third of the nations it reviewed. At least half the nations in the world imprisoned people for speaking their mind. In spite of the widespread evidence of abuse, Amnesty said it was encouraged by the existence of a genuinely worldwide human rights movement of more than 1000 organisations exposing errant Governments to inter-

national publicity. “Today, even one death can set off waves of anger and protest worldwide,” it said.

"The torture and death in 1987 of one student in South Korea — Park Chung-Choi — led to publicity followed by the arrest of police officers and the resignation of Government Ministers. It does not always happen but it can.”

The report found that torture was used extensively in Latin America and that “the use of clandestine forces linked to security forces to terrorise political opposition appeared to have increased in the region.” El Salvador, Colombia, Panama, Paraguay, Brazil, Honduras and Peru were named as nations where “death squads” appeared to operate with official impunity. Amnesty said that in Asia “grave violations of human rights continued throughout the year ...

there were few signs of regional mechanisms for the protection of human rights being established.

Nor were many of the Governments responsible for abuses prepared to acknowledge they had taken place.”

The most acute areas of conflict in Southern Asia were Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and the Indian state of Punjab. Serious conflicts also occurred in Burma and Bangladesh. Although there were moves towards better observance of human rights in Africa, these were still violated on a wide scale across the continent with reports of torture and illtreatment from at least 18 nations.

Amnesty expressed concern about the scale of death sentences passed in a number of nations including South Africa, Iran, China and the United States.

It said 164 people — all but nine of them black — were hanged in Pretoria’s central prison alone in 1987 and noted: “There were new allegations that police and other security forces committed extra-judicial executions ... (and) that police failed to investigate

certain politically motivated killings.” In China, 132 people were reported executed in 1987 and 158 in Iran. Twenty-five people were executed in the United States and 1982 were under sentence of death. Amnesty's report said, “Evidence of racial discrimination in the application of the death penalty was a matter of urgent concern.” East and West European nations were criticised for the number of conscientious objectors to military service in their jails. Amnesty said several thousand political prisoners were reported held in Turky where widespread and systematic torture caused at least 17 deaths. Abuses of human rights were also said to have been committed on a wide scale in Israel, where Palestinian demonstrators were frequent victims, and in other Middle East nations. The organisation expressed continuing concern about the arrest by

British troops and police of guerrilla suspects under anti-terrorism laws in Northern Ireland where the Irish Republican Army is fighting British rule.

Its report doubted the validity of the convictions of 10 Irish people, imprisoned for I.R.A. bombings in mainland Britain. They have unsuccessfully protested their innocence.

Amnesty praised changes in the Soviet Union which had led to the release of prisoners of conscience, a fall in the number of political arrests and the opening of "some discussion of human rights issues that were previously taboo.” But it added, “Although the general picture was encouraging, there was as yet no change in law that would protect Soviet citizens from being imprisoned for peacefully exercising their rights ... At the end of 1987 at least 300 prisoners of conscience were still imprisoned, in exile or held in psychiatric hospitals against their will.”