Several investigations into police action to evict 600 squatter peasant families from the Santa Elina estate in Corumbiara, Rondonia, on 9 August 1995, have confirmed that police were responsible for gross human rights violations, including extrajudicial executions. Eleven squatter peasants remain...

A confrontation on 9 August between Rondonia state military police and a group of 500 squatter peasant (posseiro) families is reported to have left at least 11 peasants, including two children, and two policemen dead and over 100 people wounded. The full death toll is not known but reports indicate...

AI fears for the safety of staff at Casa Alianza Honduras, a non-governmental organization in Tegucigalpa working with street children. AI has received reports that they have been threatened and intimidated. At least nine threatening phone calls were made to staff on during the morning of 5 July...

AI is concerned for the safety of Wagner dos Santos, 22, the only adult witness to testify at the trial of those accused of killing seven street children and one youth in July 1993 in the so-called “Candelaria Massacre”. Based mainly on Wagner dos Santos’s testimony, three military police officers...

The two youths named above were shot at by a man claiming to be a member of the Direccion de Investigaciones Criminologicas (DIC) of the national police on 23 June 1995. There were among several street youths gathered at 18th Street in Zone 1, Guatemala City. Two of them were allegedly...

Jaswinder Kaur and her father, Darshan Singh, have not been seen since they were taken on separate occasions from their home in Punjab by members of the Ropar branch of the Criminal Investigation Agency. On 26 February 1995, CIA officials, looking for Jaswinder Kaur’s husband, raided the family...

In the 18 months since the new government of Cambodia was formed, AI has noted a gradual erosion of the positive human rights legacy of the UNTAC period. Although progress has been made in some areas, AI is increasingly concerned that fundamental rights and freedoms laid down in international human...

AI is concerned for the safety of a groups of 500 landless rural workers and their families camped on the side of the road outside the Fazenda Mocambo in Vitoria da Conquista, Bahia state. On 29 October 1994 gunmen fired on the encampment, killing two and seriouly wounding six. Leaders of the group...

1. USA: Amnesty International seeks further information on “Food not Bombs” activists arrested in San Francisco, USA.

Amnesty International wrote today to District Attorney Arlo Smith in San Francisco, USA, to request further information about concerns the organization has about the alleged harassment and arrests of the members of the group “Food Not Bombs”. Since September 1993 Robert Kahn, Keith McHenry and some...

There are fears for the safety of street children in Guatemala City after a sudden new wave of attacks. According to reports, on 24 September Ruben Garcia Gonzalez and Daniel Rosales were killed and Victor Manuel Garcia was injured when they were fired on by two private policemen. The two policemen...

In the 10 years since returning to civilian rule, serious human rights violations have persisted in Brazil. Incidents such as the massacre of 111 prisoners in Sao Paulo in 1992 and the killing of seven children in the centre of Rio de Janeiro in 1993 have shocked public opinion at home and damaged...