London – The struggle for respect for fundamental human rights gained ground last year in Latin America but widespread serious abuses continued, particularly by undisciplined police forces prone to mistreatment and torture of suspected criminals, Amnesty International said in its yearly report published Tuesday.
The organization said in its Amnesty International Report 2006 that the “denial of human rights” was still a “daily reality” for many of the people in the Americas, “particularly those in the most vulnerable sectors of society, such as indigenous communities, women and children.”
“However, civil society, including the human rights movement, continued to gain strength and influence in their demands for better living conditions, government transparency and accountability, and respect for human rights,” AI said.
The organization’s report focuses on “police abuse, torture and ill-treatment of detainees,” which “remained widespread,” violence against women, a problem “endemic throughout the region,” and the “high levels of organized crime” in the Americas.
“Members of the security forces continued to commit widespread human rights violations with impunity. Across the region torture and other ill-treatment, sometimes resulting in deaths in custody, were reported but few of the perpetrators were punished,” AI said.
Many prisons in the region “were severely overcrowded and lacking in basic services. Often, the conditions amounted to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. This caused several riots across the region resulting in scores of deaths, mostly of young, poor men,” AI said.
The human rights group said “inefficient, corrupt and discriminatory judicial systems meant that detainees who came from poor and marginalized communities could languish for months and even years in prison without being tried and sentenced, and frequently without access to defense lawyers.”
Regarding the situation in Colombia, AI said “the rule of law was threatened by government policies in the context of the long-running conflict. All parties to the conflict continued to commit widespread human rights abuses principally against the civilian population.”
The Justice and Peace Law, which provided the judicial framework for the peace process with Colombia’s right-wing paramilitary groups, “threatened to guarantee impunity for members of illegal armed groups implicated in human rights abuses, including war crimes and crimes against humanity, who agreed to demobilize,” AI said.
“Human rights and the rule of law were also under threat through high levels of violence in several countries, especially in urban areas,” AI said.
“In some Brazilian, Central American and Caribbean cities, entire neighborhoods were trapped between criminal, often gang-related, violence and the repressive response of the state security forces whose methods violated the rights of entire communities,” AI said.
AI said violence against women “continued to be one of the most pressing human rights challenges in the Americas. Countless women and girls faced violence on a daily basis and could not count on their government to provide them with the basic level of protection and security that is their fundamental right.”
Among the steps forward: Mexico’s Supreme Court “ruled that rape within marriage is a crime,” while Guatemala “suspended a law that allowed rapists, in certain circumstances, to escape prosecution if they married their victim.”
In many countries, according to AI, human rights activists faced tough challenges and dangers, and “the authorities often refused to take reports of violations against human rights defenders seriously, suggesting that the reports were fabricated or exaggerated.”
“The use of the judicial system to hamper the work of human rights defenders by threatening them with investigation or detention on unfounded criminal charges was a serious problem in Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras and Mexico,” AI said.
The report said Cuba, the hemisphere’s only nation without an elected government, did not improve civil and political rights in 2005. The island, under Communist one-party rule for 47 years, maintained strict restrictions on freedom of expression, association and movement, the AI report said.
Cuban “human rights activists, political dissidents and trade unionists continued to be harassed and intimidated, and attacks on freedom of expression and association were frequent,” AI said, noting that “such attacks were frequently perpetrated by quasi-official groups, the rapid-response brigades, allegedly acting in collusion with members of the security forces.”
“Nearly 70 prisoners of conscience remained in prison” last year in the island, AI said, adding that the Cuban government “maintained a tight control on those who criticized it, and detained several human rights defenders and political dissidents.”
The human rights organization, however, noted that the Assembly to Promote Civil Society, which groups more than 350 independent non-governmental organizations, was able to hold a meeting of dissidents in Cuba last May.
“Freedom of expression and association continued to be under attack. All legal media outlets were under government control and independent media remained banned. Independent journalists faced intimidation, harassment and imprisonment for publishing articles outside Cuba,” AI said
