Rights Watch

LaMont W. Flanagan doesn't dispute that the jail he runs in Baltimore is grim. But he bristles when it is portrayed as an inhumane, unsanitary and unsafe place to hold youths awaiting trial for serious crimes.The conditions at the Baltimore City Detention Center are not, he insists, "appalling" -- the descriptive term that the New York-based group, Human Rights Watch, uses often in a recent report about juveniles held in adult jails in Maryland."It is antiquated," Flanagan said, noting that parts of the jail were built in 1802.

National Public Radio fired its CEO and its lead fundraiser last week and another fundraiser was suspended after the latest in video stings orchestrated by conservative activist James O'Keefe. Just as the funding for NPR's parent company, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, was under scrutiny in Congress, a video surfaced showing Ron Schiller, president of the NPR Foundation, making disparaging remarks about tea party members and saying that the CPB could survive without federal money.

For the first time, Human Rights Watch has issued a report that harshly criticizes a single industry in the United States, concluding that working conditions among the nation's meatpackers and slaughterhouses are so bad that they violate basic human rights. The report, released yesterday, echoes Upton Sinclair's classic on the industry, The Jungle. It finds that jobs in many beef, pork and poultry plants are so dangerous as to breach international agreements promising a safe workplace.

JERUSALEM -Israel's use of white phosphorus artillery shells led to the deaths of at least 12 Palestinian civilians and destroyed millions of dollars in property during the recent three-week war in the Gaza Strip, Human Rights Watch says in a report released Wednesday. Israeli military officials called the claim "baseless" and said the shells, designed to produce a smoke screen, were used in accordance with accepted rules. A frequent critic of Israeli military practices, New York-based Human Rights Watch says its review of the Gaza fighting found instances in which white phosphorus rounds were used in urban areas under circumstances that had no clear military rationale.

MOSCOW - He was humiliated, robbed and beaten. All because he was drafted into the Russian army. Like thousands of conscripts, Andrei Baryakin had looked forward to serving his country. "I always wanted to be a paratrooper," said the 20-year-old from Nizhny Novgorod, an industrial city about 200 miles east of Moscow. "They are brave and courageous people." But the first morning Baryakin awoke in his barracks, he found that someone had stolen his shoes. Other draftees in the barracks had also been robbed by longer-serving comrades.

WASHINGTON - Setbacks and successes marked the human rights landscape in the Americas during 2000, with the deteriorating situation in Colombia "constituting the region's most urgent crisis," according to the annual report from Human Rights Watch. The 11th annual survey, an in-depth look at conditions in 70 countries, also details continuing abuses in Cuba, electoral violence in Haiti and the weakening of judicial and political systems in Peru. The high level of violence and civilian casualties in Colombia, involving government, guerrilla and paramilitary forces, received special scrutiny from the international monitoring organization.

WASHINGTON - Iraqi civilians are being arrested arbitrarily, tortured while in jail and threatened with indefinite detention unless they pay bribes, according to a study released yesterday by Human Rights Watch. The abuse of detainees has become "routine and commonplace," the group said in its 94-page report, The New Iraq? Torture and Ill Treatment of Detainees in Iraqi Custody. The report said that Iraq's interim government appeared to be either an active participant in the abuses, or "is at least complicit."

JERUSALEM -Israel's use of white phosphorus artillery shells led to the deaths of at least 12 Palestinian civilians and destroyed millions of dollars in property during the recent three-week war in the Gaza Strip, Human Rights Watch says in a report released Wednesday. Israeli military officials called the claim "baseless" and said the shells, designed to produce a smoke screen, were used in accordance with accepted rules. A frequent critic of Israeli military practices, New York-based Human Rights Watch says its review of the Gaza fighting found instances in which white phosphorus rounds were used in urban areas under circumstances that had no clear military rationale.

A city grand jury that regularly inspects jails will be asked to review a human rights group's report that sharply criticized conditions for youths confined in Baltimore City Detention Center.Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy said she will recommend that the report by New York-based Human Rights Watch be reviewed by a new city grand jury to be impaneled in January.She disclosed those plans in a Nov. 16 letter to Jonathan M. Smith, executive director of Public Justice Center, a Baltimore advocacy group that provides legal services to the poor.

Hundreds of juveniles awaiting trial in Maryland are locked each day in bleak adult jails like the Baltimore City Detention Center where they endure rampant violence and appalling conditions, a human rights group says.In a report released today, the New York-based Human Rights Watch also said some guards at the Baltimore facility condone and organize fights between youths who have scores to settle. It said that jailed youths lack adequate food, education and mental health services.LaMont Flanagan, the state official who oversees the city detention center, said the report gives a "highly exaggerated picture" of conditions there, and he flatly denied that any guards were allowing youths to fight.

BEIJING -Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday that she would not emphasize contentious issues such as human rights in talks this weekend with the Chinese and focus instead on topics on which progress might be more likely: the economy, climate change and security issues. Clinton's weeklong tour of Asia culminates with meetings in China, where she is remembered for a tough 1994 speech on human rights. But she said that after years of pressing Beijing, the dialogue on human rights, freedom for Tibet and accommodation with Taiwan had grown predictable.

For a few years in the 1980s and 1990s, the world was changing for the better and seemingly destined to keep doing so indefinitely. Back then, freedom resembled justice as described in the Bible - rolling down like waters. But in the last few years, various governments have managed to dam it up, and in some cases even reverse the flow. Between 1990 and 1997, the number of democracies in the world rose from 69 to 118, according to the human rights group Freedom House. In the past decade, though, the number has crept up by just five.

BOGOTA, Colombia -- The risky nature of President Bush's trip to this violent country was spelled out on a television monitor aboard Air Force One en route from Uruguay: "Colombia presents THE MOST SIGNIFICANT THREAT ENVIRONMENT of this five country trip!" Listing the terrorist and criminal threats as "High," the message - meant for Bush's security detail but seen by reporters on the plane - underscored the complications Bush is confronting during his weeklong visit to South and Central America.

Friends, I have met the enemy, and be forewarned, he's more concerned with the hard drive than the hard court, more protective of the World Wide Web than the wide world of sports, and he will stop at nothing to cut out the 'Net to keep you from seeing who cuts down the nets. That's right, there are computer technicians currently working around the clock to take away our inalienable right to Internet access at work during the NCAA tournament. I know what you're thinking, and yes, this is something that was guaranteed in both the Bill of Rights and the Ten Commandments.

School officials and advocacy groups throughout Maryland are watching an age discrimination case that has the potential to affect the coffers of every state school system, as well as employees who think their districts wronged them. At issue is whether workers can sue local school boards in Maryland courts over suspected violations of federal protections, which include the Family and Medical Leave Act and constitutional claims. School officials fear that allowing these lawsuits in state courts would unleash potentially expensive litigation for local school boards.

WASHINGTON - Iraqi civilians are being arrested arbitrarily, tortured while in jail and threatened with indefinite detention unless they pay bribes, according to a study released yesterday by Human Rights Watch. The abuse of detainees has become "routine and commonplace," the group said in its 94-page report, The New Iraq? Torture and Ill Treatment of Detainees in Iraqi Custody. The report said that Iraq's interim government appeared to be either an active participant in the abuses, or "is at least complicit."

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration this year has "actively obstructed" human rights efforts as well as new mechanisms to enforce internationally accepted standards, according to a highly critical report released yesterday by Human Rights Watch.The report says U.S. actions particularly have been hurtful on three issues now on the front line of the global human rights campaign: child soldiers, land mines and an international criminal court.The U.S. practice of ignoring human rights in some areas and adopting a "selective" commitment based on economic convenience or strategic interests in others poses "a growing threat" to human rights in key parts of the world, most vividly in China and Central Africa, it charges.

Washington -- If the world wants to put a human face on the horror taking place in the killing fields of a tiny, Central East African nation called Rwanda, it need look no further than the face of Rwandan human rights leader Monique Mujawamariya. The violence is etched there in the scars on her face, the result of an assassination attempt. The history of Rwanda is there, too: in the mixture of tribal blood that flows through her from her Hutu father and Tutsi mother.And like hundreds of thousands of her fellow Rwandans, Monique Mujawamariya has had to flee her country and the massacres that began a month ago after a mysterious plane crash killed the presidents of Rwanda and neighboring Burundi.

For the first time, Human Rights Watch has issued a report that harshly criticizes a single industry in the United States, concluding that working conditions among the nation's meatpackers and slaughterhouses are so bad that they violate basic human rights. The report, released yesterday, echoes Upton Sinclair's classic on the industry, The Jungle. It finds that jobs in many beef, pork and poultry plants are so dangerous as to breach international agreements promising a safe workplace.