The United States government yesterday denounced 92 countries as persistent violators of individual and human rights, including Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Guatemala in Central America and the Caribbean. Violations in these countries and four others in Latin America (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela) include the common practice of torture, the regular registration of “disappeared” individuals and other serious abuses. More specifically, the U.S. government cites obstacles to democracy in Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Haiti as the source of political violence and the promotion of human rights. In Guatemala however, the U.S. simply pointed out the deterioration of respect for human and indigenous rights since the mid-to-late 1990s as the reason for its annual placement on the list of violators.
