110 Nations Still Abuse Citizens, Report Finds : Human rights: Many use torture, Amnesty International declares. It says U.N. has made little progress on issue.

Despite the dramatic growth of democracy in the world since 1989, at least 110 governments still chronically abuse human rights, including using torture, according to the international monitoring group Amnesty International.

And despite the growing international commitment to human rights symbolized by the U.N. World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna two weeks ago, the world body has made no significant progress in tackling the age-old problem, the organization charges in its 1993 annual report to be released today.

“The world conference has restated the human rights principles of the past, instead of dealing with the violations of today and the threats of the future,” Amnesty International says in its 1993 survey of 161 countries.

“When we compare the fine speeches and final document with the damning evidence of political repression in this report, it is clear that governments have yet to prove that the world conference will make a difference to the lives of people around the world,” the survey declares.

The biggest surprise in the new report is Europe’s deteriorating performance on human rights.

“In the East, new democracies have been shown not to guarantee or protect fundamental human rights, despite what these countries had earlier been through,” Curt Goering, Amnesty International’s acting executive director, said in an interview.

And in the West, racism and intolerance have risen sharply in established democracies spanning the region from Britain to Germany and including neutral countries like Switzerland.

But no country, including the United States, has a clean record. Indeed, the international monitoring group labeled 1992 a year of “appalling human rights catastrophes.”

Among the report’s findings: 62 countries held “prisoners of conscience” jailed for peaceful expression of their human rights.

At least 45 governments were guilty of political killings involving state security forces or death squads. At least 1,500 political prisoners were jailed without fair trial in 30 states last year, while another 950 “disappeared” through abductions or unacknowledged detention in 27 countries. And in the 110 governments guilty of torture, victims died from various kinds of abuse in 48 countries, Amnesty International charges.

Women were victims of human rights violations, including rape by security forces, in at least 45 countries and children or juveniles were victimized in 35 states.

Besides the obvious gross human rights tragedies in Bosnia, Somalia and Iraq, Amnesty International also cited violations and abuses “at horrifying levels” in Chad, China, Liberia, Peru and Sri Lanka.

In China, tens of thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands have been detained without being charged. China and Iran also account for 82% of the world’s known executions, according to the report.