November 3, 1999
Web posted at: 7:16 p.m. EST (0016 GMT)

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- Human rights abuses in Iraq are worsening, with Baghdad effectively eliminating the "civil rights to life, liberty and physical integrity" of its citizens, a senior U.N. official says in a report released Wednesday.

Max van der Stoel, the U.N. special reporter for human rights in Iraq, who prepared the report, also accuses the Baghdad regime of eliminating "the freedoms of thought, expression, association and assembly."

In the report, submitted by Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the U.N. General Assembly, van der Stoel calls on the Iraqi government to account for 16,496 Kurds who disappeared in 1988 and to release more than 600 Kuwaiti prisoners captured during Iraq's occupation of Kuwait.

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Situation in Iraq

"The government of Iraq should immediately release all those who are being held," the report says.

Van der Stoel, who has not been allowed into Iraq since 1992, said he received no cooperation from Iraq, but he "continues to receive assistance and information from various sources."

The report also noted continued allegations of summary, arbitrary and extrajudicial executions in Iraq.

Van der Stoel said he received information indicating that a number of residents of Basra were executed in late March, 1999 after being arrested on suspicion of participating in anti-government demonstrations.

Van der Stoel criticized Baghdad's "persistent refusal" to allow human rights monitors into Iraq.

"In the absence of such a monitoring mechanism, and in the full knowledge of established past and current serious violations ... the presumption of veracity must lie with the allegations rather than with the government of Iraq," he said.

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