News In Brief

Afghanistan commits vast rights violations, group says

A report issued Sunday by the Helsinki Watch human-rights group claimed that Soviet troops and the Afghan Army are subjecting Afghan citizens to arbitrary arrest, torture, imprisonment, and execution. After interviewing refugees in the Pakistan border town of Peshawar, the group's investigators found that ''just about every conceivable human-rights violation is occurring in Afghanistan, and on an enormous scale.''

The report also said that Afghan students are now required to learn the Russian language, Russian history, and Marxist-Leninist philosophy. It said tens of thousands of Afghan youths are being sent, sometimes against their will, to study in the USSR; and that children are being trained to inform on their parents and to infiltrate the resistance.