Annual human rights report - overview of 'Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1990,' includes relevant sections of Foreign Assistance Act - transcript

US Department of State Dispatch, Feb 11, 1991

Annual Human Rights Report

Following is the text of the overview to the State Department's report to Congress "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1990." Electronic text of the full report is available through the State Department's Computer Information Delivery Service. (For information on how to subscribe to the service, call the CIDS Information Center at 703-802-5700.) It also is available on some database services, such as Lexis-Nexis. You may obtain hard copies of the full report after March 1, 1991, from the Government Printing Office, Superintendent of Documents, Washington, DC 20402-9325 (stock no. 052-070-06712-8).

1990 Human Rights Report Overview

This report is submitted to the Congress by the Department of State in compliance with Sections 116(d)(1) and 502B(b) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as amended. (See box on p. 103.) The legislation requires human rights reports on all countries that receive aid from the United States and all countries that are members of the United Nations. In the belief that the information would be useful to the Gongress and other readers, we have also included reports on the few countries which do not fall into either of these categories and which thus are not covered by the congressional requirement.

Congress amended the Foreign Assistance Act with the foregoing sections of law so as to be able to consult these reports when considering assistance programs for specific foreign countries. One of the very important consequences - perhaps unintended - of these legislative provisions is that they have made human rights concerns an integral part of the State Department's daily reporting and daily decisionmaking. A human rights officer in an embassy overseas who wants to write a good annual human rights report on the country in which he or she works must carefully monitor and observe human rights developments throughout the year on a daily basis. As a consequence, he or she will report on such developments whenever something of human rights significance happens in the country of assignment. In the past 12 years, the State Department has become decidedly better informed on and sensitized to human rights violations as they occur around the globe.

A year ago in this space we posed the question whether the human rights gains of 1989 in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world would be lasting achievements or whether there was danger of relapse. For most of 1990, the gains of 1989 were being largely consolidated, in spite of major problems encountered by the countries making difficult transitions from command to market economies and from totalitarian communism to democracy. Iraq's brutal invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, initiated a reign of terror and human rights abuses that reminded the world of the dangers that repressive regimes can pose to regional security and international order.

Europe. In Europe, multi-party elections had taken place in the countries which had been joined to the Soviet Union in the Warsaw Pact. Following such elections, the former German Democratic Republic had, by decision of a democratically elected government, joined the Federal Republic of Germany. Freely contested elections had also taken place in all of the constituent republics of Yugoslavia. Even in hard-line Albania, there was evidence of increasing popular pressure for greater freedom.

Across Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the process of democratization was in some areas hampered by the totalitarian legacy and by interethnic antagonisms that had been suppressed for decades. The United States expressed concern about violence against social and ethnic groups in Romania. The repressive measures taken by the Serbian republic against ethnic Albanians were among the worst in Europe in 1990. Yet, there were also some positive developments in interethnic relations in the region. Under the impact of democratization and increasing concern for human rights, Bulgaria was able to improve significantly the treatment of its ethnic and religious minorities.

In the Soviet Union in 1990, vast numbers of citizens continued to exercise newly won political rights, including freedoms of expression, assembly, and religion. Hundreds of thousands were permitted to emigrate. However, reforms were unevenly implemented in the country as a whole, and many are not yet secured by law or buttressed by an independent judiciary. Toward the end of the year and in early 1991, the central government's moves to reassert authority over the republics, particularly the use of military force in Latvia and Lithuania, raised concern over the future of the recent reforms, with dangerous implications for the entire country.

Africa. While Europe was struggling to consolidate its democratic gains, new democratic ferment was most clearly in evidence in Africa. There was significant movement away from apartheid in South Africa, and in many other Sub-Saharan African countries, important steps were taken toward democratic rule. Following multi-party elections, Namibia joined the ranks of independent states in March. A government pledged to democracy and human rights succeeded the regime of Benin. Laws authorizing new political parties, which would thus allow for free, contested elections, were enacted in Gabon, Cote d'Ivoire, Congo, and Zambia. Contested elections were, indeed, held in Gabon and Cote d'Ivoire. In Cape Verde and Sao Tome and Principe, the one-party governments lost free elections and have said they will honor the results. However, the intergroup rivalries that beset many parts of the continent resulted in large-scale death and devastation. The hostilities surrounding the fall of President Doe of Liberia, clan-based or intratribal warfare in Somalia, civil strife in Ethiopia with Eritrean and Tigrean insurgents, the civil war in Sudan, the measures taken by Mauritania against its black population in the south, and the violence in South Africa among black groups caused many hundreds of deaths in some countries and thousands in others. The Sudanese government's failure to cooperate in food deliveries may lead to widespread starvation in southern Sudan in 1991.