Syria, Peru, and Surinam added to rights-watch list

Amnesty International added Syria, Peru, and Surinam to its list of human rights violators, saying the three countries routinely murder members of opposition political movements.

Amnesty's Danish branch said in a report that Syrian troops summarily executed 1,000 prisoners on a single day and killed thousands of citizens in attacks on religious dissidents.

In Peru, many murders occurred when landowners, trying to retrieve land lost during the agrarian reform of the 1970s, claimed that peasant leaders were connected with the guerrilla group Shining Path, the report said. Peru's spread of torture and political murder is traced to the establishment in December of the Ayacucho military administration, which runs the provinces of Ayacucho, Huancavelica, and Apurimac, the report said.

In Surinam, Amnesty charged the government of Col. Desi Bouterse with killing 15 prominent opponents of his regime on Dec. 9, 1982.