NEWS - Fifty Years on, Human Right

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Subject: NEWS - Fifty Years on, Human  Rights Getting More Secure

QUESTION: Should Ne Win, leaders of the BSPP, SLORC and SPDC be tried by
the ICC - International Criminal Court for the crimes they are directly
and indirectly responsible for ??

Fifty Years on, Human  Rights Getting More Secure

            Reuters
            03-DEC-98

            WASHINGTON, Dec 3 (Reuters) - Advances in human rights
            in 1998 threaten to derail the quiet retirement plans of
former
            tyrants such as Uganda's Idi Amin and Haiti's Raul Cedras,
            Human Rights Watch said in its annual report on Thursday. 

            "The quest to subject gross abusers of human rights to the
            rule of law remains in its infancy. Too many despots still
            enjoy impunity for their crimes," the group said in its
ninth
            annual report. 

            "But developments in 1998 will make it more difficult for
            official mass murderers to sleep easy at night," it added,
            lauding the arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto
            Pinochet on genocide charges in Britain in October. 

            Fifty years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration
of
            Human Rights, the world has seen a transformation in the
            way that governments are expected to treat their people and
            each other, the group said. 

            It cited a major expansion of the concept of human rights to
            include not just political prisoners and opposition leaders,
            but women and children, ethnic and religious minorities,
            common prisoners and homosexuals. 

            Once focused solely on the big picture human rights
            struggles of dissidents against Soviet Communism or Latin
            American opposition figures against right-wing regimes, the
            international community now debates and takes seriously
            issues such as landmines, the use of children as soldiers,
            police brutality and sexual abuse in prisons, the group
said. 

            "There has been much improvement in the last fifty years--
in
            most countries of the former Soviet bloc, Latin American and
            southern Africa, as well as parts of Asia. But any
celebration
            of the 50th anniversary must be tempered by the knowledge
            that serious problems persist-- that many governments still
            resist applying the Universal Declaration to all their
people,"
            the report said. 

            Repressive governments remained in place in countries such
            as Burma, Iraq, China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and
            Turkmenistan, while abusive warfare continued in
            Afghanistan, Algeria, Colombia, Kosovo and Sudan. 

            "Even genocide, that most universally condemned crime, has
            been committed in Bosnia and Rwanda," it noted. 

            Among the positive developments in 1998, Human Rights
            Watch cited passage this summer of a treaty to create an
            International Criminal Court (ICC), which will try
perpetrators
            of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes,
            overriding the opposition by the United States, India and
            China. 

            "The ICC undoubtedly would be stronger with U.S. backing,
            but the broad governmental coalition behind it has more than
            enough moral, economic and military clout for it to
succeed,"
            the group wrote. 

            Other positive steps in 1998 included progress in trying war
            criminals responsible for the genocide in Rwanda, NATO
            arrests of indicted war criminals in Bosnia, and the release
of
            South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission report,
            which helped reveal some of the worst excesses of
            apartheid. 

            Human Rights Watch again took Washington to task for its
            failure to support many of these human rights initiatives,
and
            its efforts to derail the ICC, as well as its failure to
            adequately address human rights abuses in the United
            States. 

            Washington's refusal to support the ICC unless it exempted
            U.S. citizens posed a threat to the universality of human
            rights, the group said, noting that "far less savory
regimes"
            were likely to mimic the U.S. stance. 

            Despite some gains, human rights activists continued to pay
            with their lives for their work, the group said, noting that
10
            top human rights defenders were murdered in the first 10
            months of 1998.