Human Rights: A Means or an End?

...By arresting the human rights activists and Helsinki Watch Group members, the Communists have succeeded in placing the weapon that poses the greatest threat to them beyond the reach of the democratic world...

...At the very same time, the subject is rarely even brought up with respect to, say, China...

...From their point of view, the Communists have acted in a completely proper manner...

...This inconsistency, as I have already suggested, stems from the Administration seeing the struggle for human rights merely as a means of promoting what it perceives to be its larger interests, not as an end in itself...

...Human rights, by their very nature, know no boundaries...

...It is impossible to fight a greater evil with a lesser one, or a harsher dictatorship with a more benevolent one...

...And really, there is no other scale today...

...several hundred others merely received a one-year or six-month reduction in their prison terms, and since the sentences meted out to political offenders in Yugoslavia are remarkably long, the majority of them are still incarcerated...

...They know that the struggle for human rights is incomparably more dangerous to a totalitarian regime than any atom or neutron bomb...

...they include Yuri Orlov, Anatoly Shcharansky, Aleksandr Ginsburg, and hundreds more...

...Indeed, in November 1977 the press reported a general amnesty of political prisoners in Yugoslavia, but that was not exactly correct...

...The clash taking place is essentially between democracy and Communist totalitarianism...

...At that time, the Yugoslav authorities deemed it prudent to demonstrate their agreement with the concept of human rights...

...the problem has been its inconsistent application...

...Except for Ginzburg, who was allowed to emigrate and is now in the United States, they are in Soviet prisons to this day...

...Their crime is unsatisfactorily and inconsistently supporting universal, international human rights...

...Practically every present-day totalitarian country was authoritarian, or partially authoritarian, before the Communists came to power...

...Quite the opposite is true: The misfortune is that each Western country is pursuing the very notion of national interest that Solzhenitsyn advocates, while completely illogically expecting that the West can simultaneously maintain a unified worldwide policy of resisting Communist totalitarianism...

...And until such time as the democratic world sets universal goals that go beyond nationalism, the Communists will prevail...

...You hardly have to be a Communist, though, to consider the violence of nationalist movements in the 20th century a horrible evil...

...Far more important, however, is the fact that the omission serves to illustrate how human rights are still only an instrument of U.S...

...You can only fight against dictatorships, or totalitarianism in its worst form—that is, Communist totalitarianism—with democracy...

...Thus, paradoxically, all the Right-wing dictatorships are essentially the fifth column of totalitarianism...

...Many of these people will be remembered...

...The periodic meetings called for under the terms of the Helsinki Accords are intended to assess—and thereby at least encourage, if not insure—the compliance of the signatories with the provisions of the 1975 agreement pertaining to detente and advancing the cause of human rights...

...Are they the Right or Left-wing dictators allowed for whatever reason to go largely uncriticized, or the enslaved peoples of the countries they rule...

...Yet the authorities there themselves admit that some 500 political prisoners are currently being held in Yugoslavia—more than in Poland and Hungary put together...

...That totalitarianism can only be resisted if we have a planetary vision of a free democratic mankind...

...This will open a way to victory over totalitarianism on an international scale...

...Therein, we are told, lies our true salvation...

...The history of this century illustrates this thesis beautifully...

...Events were to show that these expectations were premature...

...The time will come when the U.S...

...Instead, attempts were made to rigorously eliminate this movement with the full knowledge and approval of the United States...

...In regard to the supposed betrayal of the dictator "friends of theU.S.," the majority of critics of U.S...

...In this respect, a report prepared for the Madrid Conference by the Congressional Committee on Security and Cooperation in Europe does not augur well...

...The United States and virtually every other Western democratic state is, to be sure, very mistaken in the strategy it is using to fight the Communists, but not for the reason cited by critics like Solzhenitsyn...

...Lung cancer may not be a direct consequence of smoking, but smoking certainly encourages it...

...There is no such thing as different human rights for different nations, and there never will be...

...policy, to be employed in accordance with the uncertain dictates of political "realism," rather than an uncompromisingly pursued objective...

...And it is certainly true that the months immediately following his arrival at the White House were marked by great hopes in all Communist countries that the United States had at last found its international mission...

...the Western democracies are not guilty of ignoring the so-called nationalist revival in Communist countries...

...In November 1977, I was released from prison before the end of my term in connection with the Belgrade meeting to evaluate the implementation of the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe...

...Nowhere in its 341 pages, for example, is the issue of human rights in the one-party Communist country of Yugoslavia mentioned at all...

...It is no accident that the struggle for universal human righls was for the first time forcefully organized by the United States—a country that is still like a fairy-tale land and was founded by those who placed freedom of conscience above all other narrow, self-serving interests...

...That the authors of the Congressional report do not say a single word about this, although they devote many pages to the prisoners being held in the other Communist countries of Europe, obviously touches a deep concern of mine...

...The first months of President Carter's term in office roused great expectations that at last this universal vision had made its appearance in the United States, in the capital of the democratic world...

...Opponents of a universal human rights policy often use the example of the Shah of Iran to prove that the United States must in some instances befriend authoritarian dictatorships, and not become involved in the defense of democracy and human rights...

...Nevertheless, much was made of the few who were freed from jail, particularly of my own case, and the Belgrade conference was hailed as a huge success for human rights...

...Not only the Soviet dissidents, but I, too, personally experienced a feeling of gratefulness for the forceful statements on human rights that repeatedly came from the Carter Administration during its initial months in office...

...America continues to be the homeland for all the people on our earth because a person's real homeland is freedom...

...BY MIHAJLO MIHAJLOV Whether or not the democratic countries at the second Helsinki review conference opening in Madrid this month try to regain the ground lost three years ago in Belgrade is, I think, a matter of major importance...

...A global society is now being created and a battle is going on in the world...

...Yet who are the friends and allies of democracy...

...During the year after the end of the Belgrade meeting, practically all the important founders of the Helsinki Watch Groups and their respective committees were arrested and sentenced to long prison terms...

...The one hope for our world today is that the United States, in spite of the efforts of a variety of "Right-wingers," will never actually become just one more nationalist state...

...When at the beginning of 1978 a final communique was at last signed by the participants in the Belgrade conference, it did not contain one word about the violation of human rights—rights to which all the Communist states had also obligated themselves by signing the Helsinki Accords...

...For the first time, the issue of universal human rights made the front-page headlines of the world press...

...The truth is that, quite to the contrary, a setback was suffered because the Western European countries and the United States were not able to muster sufficient strength to stand up until the end for the implementation of all the principles of the Helsinki Accords—even if this meant taking the risk of placing the survival of the entire agreement in jeopardy...

...So long as the fate of an individual country or an individual people is considered more important than the rights of an individual person, regardless of his nationality, the fight for freedom in the world will suffer defeat...

...The President corresponded with Academician Andrei Sakharov, met with exiled writer Vladimir Bukovsky and spoke about how his first priority everywhere would be the dignity and freedom of the individual...

...will defend freedom throughout the world, just as other states defend their subjects...

...Ishould perhaps stress here that if President Carter's human rights policy has experienced failures over the last few years, I do not think the policy itself is at fault...

...There can be no doubt that the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's regime is hundreds of times worse than that of the Shah...

...It is too often forgotten, however, that the Islamic fanatics would never have come to power in Iran if the U .S...

...Apparently, the moment had not yet arrived for the new instrument of U.S...

...had in due time supported the pro-Western, democratic opposition movement against the Shah...

...The correlation between Right-wing authoritarian regimes and Communist totalitarian regimes can be compared to the relationship between smoking and lung cancer...

...President Carter has somehow managed to support the fight for human rights in South America and in many countries that have Right-wing authoritarian dictatorships...

...It is unfortunate that what the Communist leaders realize is not always realized by their counterparts in the West...

...Here it might be noted that fortifying South Korea would mean pressing for its democratization, not supplying a Right-wing dictatorship with military equipment...

...But I personally have no doubt that before long the overriding significance of the struggle for human rights will be understood...

...A Soviet dissident commented recently in Moscow that whatever President Carter's successes or failures at home or abroad, in the USSR the name Jimmy Carter will always remain linked with the history of the struggle for human rights...

...In short, Washington's mistake in Iran was not supporting democratization, it was failing to realize this should be done until it was too late...

...The Kremlin leaders were quick to recognize the weakness of the democratic states and, not surprisingly, immediately moved to take advantage of it...

...And what happened was what always happens in such cases: When the opposition to the authoritarian regime did not find support in democratic countries, it became anti-Western and anti-democratic...

...foreign policy often refer (as does Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his recent article in Foreign A/fairs) to the necessity of not so much supporting human rights as backing established or beginning nationalist movements...

...policy to serve as the decisive weapon of democracy?for the means to become the end...

...Only some of the most well-known political prisoners actually were released...

...Washington's underlying attitude is revealed not only in the way that it has sometimes backed down, witness the performance in Belgrade, but in the fact that its advocacy of human rights has had less to do with the principle than with the particular country involved...

...But the effectiveness of these sessions necessarily depends on the determination of the democracies, and especially the United States...