State Department’s Rights Report Takes Aim at Russia

WASHINGTON — In its annual assessment of human rights, the State Department on Wednesday blasted Russia for widespread abuses, including a justice system in virtual disarray and a military assault on the breakaway republic of Chechnya that has caused civilian deaths and property destruction far disproportionate to the threat.

The report also accused China of “widespread and well-documented” abuses in 1994, underscoring the failure of the Clinton Administration policy of granting trade concessions to China in hopes that improvements in human rights would follow.

The latest version of a document prepared for Congress every year since 1977, the report described a mixed year globally. “It was a year of both crisis and progress, during which the world witnessed genocide in Rwanda but the restoration of democracy in Haiti,” John H. Shattuck, deputy secretary of state for human rights, said in releasing it.

Major human rights groups criticized the report, accusing the Administration of human rights hypocrisy. “The report is a fig leaf by the Administration to cover areas where it doesn’t have an effective program on human rights or doesn’t intend to take action,” said James O’Dea, director of Amnesty International.

“On Chechnya, the report cited Russia’s massive aerial bombardment for creating a human rights crisis. Yet what did this Administration do to stop this massive human rights crisis? History will be very unkind to this Administration for effectively giving a green light to (Russian President Boris N.) Yeltsin,” O’Dea said.

The post-Soviet era in Russia has been bleak, the report said. Thousands have been illegally arrested, while prisons have stopped feeding prisoners for months at a time, relying on inmates’ relatives to provide food. A jury system still has not been introduced in 80 regions of Russia.

Partly in response to soaring crime, Russian officials “routinely” deny suspects the right to a lawyer and beat them into confessions to win rewards for bringing cases to fast closure, the report alleged.

It also cited an upsurge in contract killings and extortion, particularly by the Russian mafia, which officials have been unable or unwilling to check, it said, sometimes because of government complicity.

Generally, the report found, discrimination against women in Russia is widespread. Violence against females, including spousal abuse, rape and sexual harassment, is serious and growing--with little interest by police in pursuing justice for women, it said. Russia has no laws against wife beating.

Lesbians, widely regarded in Russia as suffering from a form of mental illness, are “frequently” placed against their will in psychiatric hospitals, while an estimated 1,000 gay men are being held in pretrial detention centers in Moscow but have not been charged with crimes, the report said.

The report was also highly critical of human rights violations in China, India and Turkey.

“Abuses (in the three countries) include arbitrary and lengthy incommunicado detention, torture and mistreatment of prisoners,” the report charged. And six years after the Tian An Men Square uprising, it said, Beijing has still not provided a credible accounting of all those missing or detained.

Despite these abuses, O’Dea and others charged, the Administration has refused to take action in enacting resolutions at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.

Elsewhere in the world, Mexico was cited for many abuses in connection with the Chiapas uprising and for its failure to prosecute the officials responsible.

In the Middle East, Iraq was condemned for “mass executions of political opponents, widespread use of torture, extreme repression of ethnic groups, disappearances, denial of due process and arbitrary detention.”

Algerian security forces were blamed in the report for hundreds of extrajudicial killings, as well as for torture and abuse of detainees.

Middle East allies of the United States were also cited. Saudi Arabia was blasted for torture, for suppressing the rights of women, religious minorities and workers and for curbs on free speech, the press and religion. The State Department noted “credible reports that during 1994 Israel mistreated and in some cases tortured Palestinians during arrest and interrogation.”