AI's Global Human Rights Report.

Governments and opposition groups on every continent violate human rights every day. That's the clear message of this year's annual report from Amnesty International, issued June 14, 2000. This means that human rights abuses aren't limited just to "areas of crisis" that receive heavy media attention, such as Kosovo, Chechnya, and East Timor. Abuses are widespread, from the United States to Peru to the Xinjiang region of China.

The silver lining in all this is that major crises can be avoided if the international community will address problems early. According to the report:

   None of the human rights tragedies of recent years were unpredictable or
   unavoidable. It is only through a serious collective commitment to the
   day-to-day protection of human rights for all, wherever they live and
   whoever they are, that future human rights crises can be prevented.... The
   warning signs for the massive crises that struck Burundi, Chechnya, East
   Timor and Kosovo in 1999 were all there for the world to see and for
   governments to take action on.

Therefore, to stop human rights abuses, nations need to condemn violations "by their allies as well as their foes."

Here are some cited specifics:

* Extrajudicial executions were carried out in thirty-eight countries.

* Thirty-one countries carried out state-sponsored executions.

* Prisoners awaited execution in fifty-five countries.

* People were reportedly tortured or treated badly by authorities in 132 countries.

* Torture or some other form of ill treatment led to deaths in eighty-one countries.

* People were held without bail or charge in sixty-three countries.

* Unfair trials were held in fifty-one countries.

* Sixty-one countries held prisoners of conscience.

* People "disappeared" or remained "disappeared" from previous years in thirty-seven countries.

* Armed opposition groups committed human rights abuses in forty-six countries.

Reviewing 1999 data and events, Amnesty International found violations in at least 144 countries--nearly two-thirds of the world's nations. The report cited Zimbabwe as one of the areas of greatest concern. In that southern African nation, "the human rights situation deteriorated" in 1999. Reports of human rights abuses last year in Zimbabwe included the first details of politically motivated torture since the late 1980s, including the widespread torture of criminal suspects by police and torture and death threats against independent journalists.

Singled out is Zimbabwe's treatment of women. A court ruling in 1999 in that country upheld a law assigning unmarried women the status of minors. The report also makes brief mention of widely reported attacks against Zimbabwe's white minority and cites Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's anti-gay "hate speech campaign" that led to harassment of homosexuals.

Regarding other countries, here is a sampling of Amnesty International allegations:

* Burundi: hundreds of unarmed civilians killed; "disappearances" on the rise; thousands detained without charge.

* China: repression of dissidents; repression of religious groups, including Christians and Falun Gong; repression of labor activists; excessive, arbitrary use of the death penalty; torture of criminal suspects; harsh prison conditions; "gross violations of human rights" in Tibet and the Xinjiang region.

* Iran: hundreds held without trial or charge after student demonstrations; at least 165 executions.

* Iraq: hundreds of executions, possibly of prisoners of conscience.

* Israel: demolition of Palestinian homes built on the West Bank; reports of Palestinians beaten at checkpoints.

* Peru: withdrawal from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights; hundreds of prisoners with unsubstantiated terrorism charges remain in prison; threats against journalists, opposition leaders, and human rights defenders; civilians tried by military courts.

* Russia: torture and ill treatment in prisons, police custody, and the armed forces; inadequate protection for refugees and asylum-seekers; imprisonment for conscientious objectors; Chechen civilians indiscriminately killed; torture and extrajudicial execution.

* Sierra Leone: rampant torture, mutilation, and rape at the hands of rebel opposition groups; thousands of civilians abducted by rebels; children fighting on both sides of the civil war.

* Turkey: the number of torture reports exceeds those in the past two years, some resulting in death.

* Yugoslavia: extrajudicial executions, "disappearances", arbitrary detention, torture, ill-treatment, forcible expulsions, and the deliberate destruction of homes belonging to ethnic Albanians by Serb forces; massive refugee crisis; 500 civilians known to be killed by NATO bombing.

Abuses in the United States' justice system also figure heavily in Amnesty International's survey. "More prisoners were executed in 1999 than in any year since 1951," the report says. It also cites widespread incidents of police misconduct, including racial profiling, misuse of pepper spray and police dogs, deaths from restraints, and the shooting of suspects in "disputed circumstances."

The report also cites ill treatment of prisoners in U.S. jails, including abuse of women inmates, and violations of international standards protecting children in custody, as well as the potential for violations through implementation of the U.S. juvenile justice bill, which would allow more children to be incarcerated with adults.

But the world's human rights record was not entirely bleak. The report notes the effort to bring former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet to trial on charges of torture committed during his seventeen-year rule. A British court stripped Pinochet of the immunity he had enjoyed as a former head of state, though he was allowed to return to Chile because of ill health. Then Chile's Supreme Court ruled in June that Pinochet has no immunity in his home country. "The Pinochet case," the report declares, "opened a window of hope for all the victims and relatives still pursuing justice."

Taken as a whole, however, the worldwide realities presented in this report can be completely overwhelming, especially to humanists, who inherently abhor injustice and human suffering. But we can't allow this horrifying state of affairs to discourage or paralyze us. We need, instead, to feel encouraged and grateful for the existence of groups like Amnesty International and to support them. We can also educate others about human rights abuses. We can get involved. We can renew our commitment to curb such abuses in our own country, state, city, and neighborhood. In sum, we can recognize that an injustice to one is an injustice to all of us.

Barbara Dority is president of Humanists of Washington, executive director of the Washington Coalition Against Censorship, and cochair of the Northwest Feminist Anti-Censorship Task Force.