History and activities of the Moscow Helsinki Group
Background to the Moscow Helsinki Group's Activities
On May 12,
1976, Dr. Yuri F. Orlov announced the formation of the Moscow Helsinki Group.
The eleven founders of the group, which also included Yelena Bonner, Anatoly
Shcharansky, Anatoly Marchenko, Ludmilla M. Alexeyeva and other Soviet citizens,
sought to uphold the USSR's responsibility to implement the Helsinki
commitments. They based their actions on the provision in the Helsinki Final
Act, Principle VII, that establishes the rights of individuals to know and act
upon their rights and duties.
In 1982, the Moscow Helsinki Group was forced
to disband, yet its pioneering efforts had inspired others to call attention to
violations of human rights. In 1989 the Moscow Helsinki Group reestablished
itself.
Introduction
Today, Russia is going through a very difficult period
- the one of transition from totalitarian state to constitutional state. One
cannot define Russia as a fully constitutional state yet in light of the
situation with human rights. In the contemporary Russia, there exist a great
number of human rights organizations - both domestic and international. The
Moscow Group for Assistance in Implementation of Helsinki Agreements (MHG),
founded in 1976, is the eldest Russian human rights organization.
History of the Human Rights Movement. Helsinki Period
On May 12,
1976, at the press-conference initiated by A. Sakharov, Yuri Orlov made a
declaration about the creation of the Moscow Group for Assistance in
Implementation of Helsinki Agreements (or, as it came to be called, the Moscow
Helsinki Group).
The executive declaration on the foundation of the Moscow
Helsinki Group (MHG) stated that the goal of the Group was in providing
assistance in implementing the humanitarian articles of the Final Act of the
Convention for Security and Cooperation in Europe. In accordance with the Final
Act, the USSR had gained some significant advantages - primarily, the acceptance
of the European frontiers which had been established after the WWII - and had
"suffered" only the obligations to comply with human rights. However, the
Western partners of the Soviet Union did not count on any notable changes in the
Soviet domestic politics. Apparently, the Soviet leaders never thought of making
such changes either. Still, having read the text of the Final Act in the
newspapers, the Soviet citizens were actually dumfounded by the humanitarian
articles because they found out for the first time that their Government had
such international obligations. They began to allude to Helsinki Agreements when
dealing with the State officials, who refused to comply with one of the rights
of the supplicant confirmed by the Final Act.
The MHG advocated for creation
of similar Helsinki groups in other countries. But the first positive reaction
to the MHG's appeals came not from abroad but from the citizens of other
republics in the Soviet Union. On November 9, 1976, Ukrainian Helsinki Group
came into being. On November 25 - the Lithuanian one. On November 14, 1977, the
Georgian Group was born. On April 1 of the same year -- the Armenian one. In
Lithuania, Armenia, and Ukraine, the Helsinki Groups became their first public
associations.
Moreover, human rights groups appeared outside the territory of
the Soviet Union. In September 1976, in Poland, the Committee for Protection of
Workers was founded. On January 1, 1977, "Hartia-77" was established in
Czechoslovakia. These associations did not label themselves "Helsinki", but
their positions in relation to the issue of human rights were similar to the one
of the Helsinki Groups in the USSR, i.e. based on the respective Constitutions
of their countries and on the international human rights agreements. Identical
demands for the State to adhere to the human rights, as defined in the Final
Act, resounded in Hungary, Rumania, and the Democratic Republic of
Germany.
The MHG not only gave birth to the era of human rights
organizations, but also initiated the foundation of several human rights
organizations in the Soviet Union. The Helsinki Groups in the Republics should
not be viewed as MHG branches. They were totally independent. Still, all the
Helsinki Groups in the Soviet Union were guided by the same principle, i.e.
adherence to the humanitarian articles of the Final Act, which brought them
close together both on the ideological and on the organizational level.
By
undertaking the task of collecting from different sources and organizing
information on human rights violations, the MHG adopted the role of a
loud-speaker for public demands from all layers of the Soviet society and from
citizens of different nationalities and religious believes, who had never had
anything in common with one another before. These citizens accepted MHG' s
tactics to encourage the West to become medium in the interactions between the
Soviet authorities and the Soviet people. Not only the activists of human rights
movement but also those of national and regional movements began to address
their appeals to the West - primarily, to the Belgrade Conference, the US
Congress, the US President, "the public of the world", and "the people of good
will".
The authorities immediately reacted to the establishment of the MHG.
Three days after the declaration on the foundation of the Group, the Chair of
the Group, Yuri Orlov, was warned that if he and "the persons connected to him"
became active, they would be punished with all the severity of the law. Still,
no arrests had occurred until February of 1977.
However, even the open
support from the West could prevent repression against Helsinki Groups members.
In February 1977, Yuri Orlov, head of the Moscow Group, and Mikola Rudenko, head
of the Ukrainian Group, and some other members of these two Groups were
arrested.
The samizdat publication of the human rights movement, Chronicle of
Current Events reported that in February-March 1977, at the Department of
Agitation and Propaganda of the Central Committee, during a meeting of editors
of newspapers and magazines, one speaker (whose name was not quoted) declared
that "the decision was made to display the strength and not to pay heed to the
West", and therefore, the arrest of 50 most active dissidents and strict
measures in relation to their collaborators were being planned. This plan,
however, took some time to be carried out, and only later Sakharov was exiled
and single arrests of active dissidents turned into mass arrests. In 1977, the
authorities were not ready for it just yet. Instead, they chose to temporarily
concentrate their repressive activities on the Helsinki Groups only.
The
establishment of the Helsinki Groups did not (at the time) bring the results,
for the accomplishment of which such Groups had been created - i.e. did not
achieve the task of restraining the repressive powers of the authorities with
help from the West. For his activities, Yuri Orlov was sentenced to 7 years of
lard labor and 5 years of exile. A great number of his fellow-dissidents shared
the same fate.
During the period of 1977-78, 12 people from different
Helsinki Groups were arrested. Two of MHG members were forced to emigrate. One
member of the Leningrad Group also had to emigrate. The number of members in
each Group being very small, such losses were significant, but the Georgian
Group was the only one to dissolve at the time.
During the period of 1978-79,
a few independent associations came into being in the city of Moscow. While the
MHG dealt with the entire block of issues related to human rights, these new
associations were, so to say, "specialized" or "profile" because they saw their
task in protecting one particular group of citizens or one particular human
right (or several particular human rights). They were the Initiative Group for
Protection of the Rights of Invalids in the USSR, the Free Trade Union, and
others. In 1982, the MHG had to stop its activities due to the fact that "almost
all the members were arrested, and new members could not be accepted, because
once accepted, they would have been arrested right. So, it did not make any
sense to accept new people and thus send them straight to prisons. Until 1989,
the MHG did not exist. And when political prisoners were released in 1989, they
reestablished the Helsinki Group. Still, I should better say that they did not
reestablish the old Helsinki Group but actually founded a new one under the old
name. Out of all the old members, only Orlov and I now participated, and both of
us lived in the US at the time. And all the rest of the members of the new
Group, had not participated in the MHG before."
Presently, on the territory
of the former Soviet Union, there are more than 10 Helsinki Groups: Azerbaidgian
National Committee of Helsinki Public Assembly; Armenian Committee for
Assistance in Implementation of the Helsinki Agreements; Byelorussian Helsinki
Committee; Helsinki Committee of Alma-Ata; Georgian Committee of Helsinki Public
Assembly; Helsinki Public Assembly of Moldova; Moscow Helsinki Group, Ukrainian
Group "Helsinki-90", and others. The first Group to appear in a democratic
country was the American Helsinki Group, established in the USA in December of
1978. In different democratic countries, the American Helsinki Group was
searching for people involved in human rights activities and helping these
people to create small Groups in their respective countries. In 1982, in Italy,
a conference on the establishment of the International Helsinki Federation took
place. The Federation consisted of the following members: the MHG, the
Yugoslavian Helsinki Group, the Polish, Hungarian and Czechoslovakian Groups,
and Groups from England, from the US, from the Netherlands, and from Sweden.
Presently, the number of Helsinki Groups is considerably larger because such
Groups have been created in almost every country of the dissolved USSR.
The
International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights is a non-governmental
international organization that monitors the situation with compliance with the
Final Act and all of the later issued decrees. The International Helsinki
Federation (IHF) publishes Annual Reports on the situation with human rights in
different countries across the world. The IHF received information not only from
31 counties presented by the respective Helsinki Groups but also from other
countries, where such Group do not exist. The Annual Reports condemn violations
of human rights and political regimes of those States, where such violations are
allowed to take place.
In early December 1997, in Minsk, the IHF held a 3-day
conference. The city of Minsk was not a location of random choice. It was
selected in light of the Byelorussian events. The situation in Byelorussia is
described in the public address of the First Assembly of Byelorussian
Non-Governmental Organizations. The address specifically relates the following,
"We, representatives of 251 non-commercial, non-political, non-government
organizations, are strongly convinced in the vital necessity of democratic
changes in our country. We are concerned about the unequaled level of human
rights violations in Byelorussia. We believe that right now, when the
authorities are striving to resurrect the authoritarian Soviet-like regime, it
is extremely important to establish a coalition of democratic non-government
organizations."
Presently, the IHF is quite an influential organization with
about 40 Groups participating. It's Head-Quarters, where the executive director,
the treasurer, and the experts work, are located in Vienna. There, once, a year,
the Chairs of all the Groups hold a meeting. During that meeting, they presents
their reports on the situation in their respective countries, submit materials
for the next Annual Report, and determine main trends of activities for the next
year.
According to the membership date for 1997, the representative offices
of the IHF are open in Albany, Austria, Byelorussia, Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany,
Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Macedonia,
Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Rumania, Serbia, Slovakia,
Slovenia, Sweden, and Switzerland.
The MHG has provided support in
establishment of the Society of Assistance in Implementation of Human Rights in
Central Asia, which was founded by a group of immigrant human rights defenders
from the countries of Central Asia, in Moscow, in 1993.
It is impossible to
for the Society to actively function on the territory of Tadzhikistan,
Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan due to the fact the after the fall of the "Soviet
Empire", and the establishment of these new independent states, the repressions
against all opposing public and political organizations, human rights activists,
and journalists have only become more severe. Hence, the Society had to be
registered in Moscow. From there, it works on monitoring the situation with
human rights in Central Asia and, sizing up the results of the monitoring,
publishes Informational Bulletins on human Rights violations in Tadzhikistan,
Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The leaders and members of the Society are still
aided and supported by the MHG.
Now, among the members of the MHG are the
following well-known and respected people: Yu. Orlov, E. Ametistov, L. Bogoraz,
V. Borschev, D. Kaminskaya, S. Kovalelev, B. Pinsker, G. Resznik, L. Ponomarev,
G. Yakunin, V. Abramkin, and others. An prominent member of the MHG and an
zealous human rights activist, Galina Starovoitova, was brutally murdered in
November of 1998.
The principal goals of the MHG are the
following:
Maximal assistance in practical implementation of the Final Act of
the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCU) of
1975;
Advocacy of human rights ideas;
Compilation, generalization, and
analysis of information related to the situation with human rights in a state,
viewed within the framework of content and spirit of international human rights
obligations, including information on specific cases of violations of human
rights by government bodies or non-governmental organizations;
Bringing the
information described above to the attention of leaders of the states that
signed the Helsinki Agreement, leaders of the states that participate in the
Council of Europe, international organizations concerned, domestic governmental
and non-governmental institutions, and public opinion;
Searching for forms of
effective public participation in the legislative process within the domain of
the issues related to human rights and their protection, providing maximal
assistance to legislators in working out specific guarantees for observing human
rights, including doing so by offering specific comments on the discussed
projects.
In order to realize these goals, the MHG is doing the
following:
Works in close contact with regional human rights centers, helps
these centers to resolve their problems, and represents them in government
institutions;
Cooperates with all persons, organizations, and movements,
whose tasks and activities are not in contradiction with the MHG's
goals;
Collects, obtains, organizes, stores, and disseminates information and
documents related to human rights issues;
Carries out other legal activities
with the purpose of realizing its goals and tasks;
Accepts written personal
complaints, related to violation of the Final Act, directly from Russian
citizens, briefly summarizes these complaints, e-addresses them to the leaders
of all states that sighed the Final Act and bring them to public attention;
signed original of the complaints remained stores at the Group's archive;
In
cooperation with the public, seeks to obtain any other information on violation
of the humanitarian Articles, processes such information, and, attaching its own
evaluation of the reliability of the information, addresses it the appropriate
state leaders and to the public.
Address, telephone, fax,
e-mail
Moscow Helsinki Group
Bolshoy Golovin per.d. 22, str. 1
103045
Moscow
Russia
Tel: +7-095-207 6069
Fax: +7-095-207 6065
e-mail:
mhg@glasnet.ru
Board-members
Ludmilla Mikhailovna Alexejeva,
Chairperson
© International Helsinki Federation