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Let me first thank Secretary Albright for her extraordinary leadership in ensuring the centrality of democracy, human rights, labor, and religious tolerance in U.S. foreign policy. In a recent appearance before Congress, Secretary Albright testified that "We view these not solely as American or Western values, but as universal norms applicable to all people." In the spirit of that universal commitment, I was honored to join the Secretary today in sending to Congress the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1999. The goal of these annual Country Reports is simple: to tell the truth about human rights conditions around the globe. These reports present a comprehensive, permanent and accurate record of human rights conditions worldwide in calendar year 1999. These reports form the heart of U.S. human rights policy, by providing the official human rights information base upon which policy judgments can be made by all branches of our federal government. In addition, they provide other key actors -such as the media, foreign governments, intergovernmental organizations, and non-governmental organizations -- with an authoritative factual basis for evaluating human rights conditions. The Country Reports represent the yearly output of a massive department-wide monitoring effort that involves literally thousands of individuals: human rights officers from each of our embassies, desk officers from our regional bureaus, officials from other U.S. Government agencies, and a wide range of foreign sources. The simple act of human rights reporting is difficult and sometimes even dangerous work. I thank the hundreds of State Department officers around the world who worked on these reports-many of whom I met on my travels this past year--and the countless groups and individuals outside the Department who provided vital information. Let me single out for special heroism my own dedicated and talented country reports team from the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor-led by their committed director, Marc Susser, and deputy director, Jeannette Dubrow--for completing these reports with such painstaking care and integrity. The first of these reports, issued in 1977, ran only 137 pages and covered only a fraction of the world's countries. This, the last volume of the 20th century, represents the largest report ever, covering 194 countries and totaling approximately 6000 pages in typescript. Based on past experience, when these reports are placed on the World Wide Web today, well over 100,000 people will read or download parts even before the day is out. Obviously, a report of this magnitude is not easily summarized. While no one watershed event marked the human rights calendar in 1999, there were significant positive developments and challenges to democracy and human rights. Democratic elections were held in Nigeria and Indonesia - bringing more new people under democratic government in any year since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The international community's intervention in Kosovo and East Timor demonstrated that it possesses the will and capacity to act when human rights are most threatened. At the same time, human rights defenders continued to face harassment, imprisonment, and torture in many places worldwide, and ethnic minorities were often the subject of unbridled violence. Four broad themes run throughout the 1999 Reports: democracy, human rights, religious freedom, and labor. The introduction to the reports contains our assessment of how these themes played out in particular countries. Each of this year's reports also contains a new section on one of the most comprehensive challenges to human rights in the world today: the trafficking of persons. Trafficking is an international crime that affects women, children, and men from all walks of life, of every age, religion and culture, and nearly every country in the world as either a source, transit, or destination country. Trafficking represents the antithesis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for by treating its victims as objects, it denies their very humanity. I would be glad to discuss any of these themes at greater length in the question period. Throughout the reports, we continue to resist requests to "rank order" countries or to engage in the false precision of "quantifying" human rights abuses. I would be happy to discuss any individual country in response to your questions. But because time is short, let me briefly touch on just three countries about which the media has expressed especially keen interest this year. In China, the government's poor human rights record deteriorated markedly throughout the year, as the government intensified efforts to suppress dissidents, particularly organized dissent. In the weeks leading up to both the tenth anniversary of the June 4th Tiananmen Square massacre and the fiftieth anniversary of the October 1 founding of the People's Republic, the Chinese Government moved against political dissidents across the country, detaining and formally arresting scores of activists in cities and provinces nationwide and thwarting any attempts to use the anniversaries as opportunities for protest. China continued to restrict freedom of religion, and intensified controls on unregistered churches. Unapproved religious groups, including Protestant and Catholic groups, continued to experience varying degrees of official interference, repression and persecution. Some minority groups, particularly Tibetan Buddhists and Muslim Uighurs, were subjected to increased restrictions of fundamental freedoms, including freedom of religion, as the government clamped downed on dissent and "separatist" activities. Control and manipulation of the press and the Internet by the Government increased during the year. In our report we cite instances of extrajudicial killings, torture and mistreatment of prisoners, forced confessions, arbitrary arrest and detention, lengthy incommunicado detention, and denial of due process. To address these concerns, we have announced that we will again introduce a resolution regarding China's human rights record at the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva. This resolution fits within our overall strategy of engaging China on a principled, purposeful basis on all issues and bringing China into the international system to abide by international rules in all appropriate forums, including human rights, trade, and nonproliferation. Similarly, Cuba's human rights record further deteriorated over the past year. The Castro regime continued to suppress opposition and dissent, and denied citizens the freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and association. Cuban authorities routinely harassed, threatened, arbitrarily arrested, detained, imprisoned, and defamed human rights advocates and independent professionals, including journalists, economists, doctors, and lawyers, often with the goal of coercing them into leaving the country. The Castro regime subjected independent journalists to internal travel bans, arbitrary detentions, harassment, seizures of office and photographic equipment, and repeated threats of prolonged imprisonment. The Government tightly controlled access to information and computers, limiting access to the Internet to certain government offices, selected institutes, and foreigners. Finally, in Russia, Chechen armed insurgent groups' attack and seizure of villages in Dagestan escalated by year's end into a full-fledged attack by Russian forces on Chechen separatists, including the provincial Chechen capital of Groznyy. The Russian attack included air strikes and the indiscriminate shelling of cities predominantly inhabited by civilians. These attacks led to house-to-house fighting in Groznyy, the death of numerous civilians, and the displacement of hundreds of thousands more. There are credible reports of Russian military forces carrying out summary executions of civilians in Alkhan-Yurt and in the course of the Groznyy offensive. As this report went to press, there were also credible reports that Russian forces were rounding up Chechen men of military age and sending them to "filtration" camps, where they allegedly were tortured. We have acknowledged that Chechen separatists may have also committed abuses -- including the killing of civilians, although on a smaller scale -- and that the Russian Government has a duty to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks. But as we have insisted repeatedly in our meetings with Russian officials, Russia must comply with its international commitments and obligations to protect civilians, and must not engage in extrajudicial killing, the blocking of borders to prevent civilians from fleeing, and other violations in the name of internal security. Obviously, these are only a few of the country situations of concern to the global human rights community this year. In closing, let me say that we believe that this year's Country Reports preserve and advance their reputation for comprehensiveness, consistency, and candor. I would now be happy to answer any specific questions you might have about these and other country situations. Thank you. [end of document] Remarks Index | Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor | Department of State | Secretary of State |
