Nations Said to ‘Sabotage’ Human Rights : Abuses: Amnesty International’s report for 1990 says violations continue in 141 countries.

Many governments are still “sabotaging the world’s hopes for human rights,” Amnesty International said Wednesday.

“Some governments are flagrantly torturing and killing,” the London-based human rights organization said in its 30th annual worldwide survey. “Others are hypocritically condemning some abuses but ignoring others when it suits them.”

The organization’s report for 1990 indicated that human rights abuses continued in 141 countries.

“People were jailed as prisoners of conscience in about half the countries in the world,” the survey said. “More than 100 governments continued to torture or ill-treat prisoners, thousands of people ‘disappeared’ or were extrajudically executed in 29 countries.”

Often governments showed a concern for human rights only when it fit their own interests, Amnesty International said.

“We’ve seen human rights often take a back seat to trade or diplomatic concerns,” the organization said, “and become the casualty of political expediency.”

“There were many people in and out of government at the end of 1990 who had reason for deep shame--and sometimes self-interested regret--at their failure to stand up against human rights violations.”

Citing an example, General Secretary Ian Martin said: “Just months before the invasion of Kuwait, the U.N. Human Rights Commission decided not to take action on the grave human rights situation in Iraq.

“Throughout the decade, governments across the political spectrum failed to look at the human rights records of the countries to which they export military, security and police assistance that could be used to commit further violations. Most of those governments did an about-face after the invasion of Kuwait.”

According to Martin, many governments followed a double standard: Abuses committed by their enemies were exploited as propaganda, while those committed by their friends “were lost in the silence.”

The organization said that while abuses by Iraq--ignored until its Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait--made headlines, the “grave violations” in countries such as Chad, China, Colombia, Mali, Myanmar, Syria and Turkey, detailed in the report, drew little or no attention.

International criticism of abuses in Iran last year was muted, Amnesty International said, and in Syria, thousands of political prisoners are still jailed without charge from previous years.

In Israel and the occupied territories, the report continued, about 25,000 Palestinians were arrested, including more than 4,000 held without charge or trial.

In the Americas, the high rate of “disappearances” and non-judicial executions in Colombia increased, and death squads operated in Peru, Guatemala, Brazil and El Salvador, the organization said.

The group, which opposes the death penalty, criticized the United States for having more than 2,300 people under death sentence in 34 states.

In Europe, Amnesty International said that despite the growth of democracy, rights abuses persist in the former East Bloc countries. It cited reports of torture in Romania and declared that more than 1,000 ethnic Albanians were imprisoned in Yugoslavia’s Kosovo province for going on strike or expressing nationalist sentiments.

In the Soviet Union, the report said, at least 30 Armenians were slaughtered in the republic of Azerbaijan while police and soldiers stood by.

In Turkey--a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and an applicant to the European Community--the “pattern of widespread and systematic torture continued in 1990,” the report said.

In half of the countries in Europe, including France, Switzerland and Greece, conscientious objectors to military service were imprisoned, the document said.

And in Northern Ireland, 10 people were killed by British security forces, the report said, some of those shot under “suspicious” circumstances.

On a positive note, the group said some or all political prisoners were freed in several African nations: South Africa, Rwanda, Malawi, Ethiopia, Sudan, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Niger, Swaziland and Zambia.