amnesty international newsletter Vol. IV No. 4 A ril 1974 Founded 1961 vestigate whether they comply with the law in CHILEANS TRIED BEHIND CLOSED DOORS AS this camp and also ascertain the facts concern- REGIME INCREASES USE OF TORTURE ing the persecution of my son." AI cabled President AUGUSTO PINOCHET She asked AI to appeal again to the Soviet UGARTE on 14 March urging that all trials Government and to Soviet Communist Party leader in Chile be held in public with full rights LEONID BREZHNEV "for humaneness and justice." to legal defence and appeal and that death Her appeal was supported by a letter to the sentences and executions cease. International League for the Rights of Man from The cable came in the wake of continuing eight other Soviet dissidents, including the reports that military courts martial sit- physicist ANDREI SAKHAROV. ting in closed sessions were meting out On 12 March, AI Secretary General MARTIN summary sentences of death and imprisonment ENNALS cabled Soviet President NIKOLAI PODGORNY to suspected supporters of the overthrown and other leading officials urging them to ab- Allende regime. rogate Mr Bukovsky's current punishment of Reports from Washington said that more three months in an isolation cell in view of than 10,000 people had been killed in his state of health. Mr Ennals also asked that Chile since the coup last September. The Mr Bukovsky receive proper medical attention AI research department has received sub- and that his sentence be reviewed and commuted on humanitarian grounds. Ostantiallitical evidence detainees that has increasedthe torture and of become po- more systematic. AI ASKS NATO TO END TORTURE TRAINING AND OBSERVE DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES VLADIMIR BILKOVSKY 111E AI has called on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to end the training of mili- AI GETS PLEA FOR HELP FROM MOTHERtary personnel OF in torture techniques and ensure DISSIDENT WHO EXPOSED SOVIET thatASYLUMS all of its member states adhere to demo- Mrs NINA IVANOVNA BUKOVSKAYA, mother of Sov- cratic principles and the rule of law. iet dissident VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY, has written an In a statement prepared in advance of the open letter to AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL appealing 25th anniversary of the signing on 4 April 1949 for help for her son, who she said was seri- of the treaty that created the alliance,AI ously ill in prison. noted that the preamble pledged NATO members to Mr Bukovsky, an A/-adopted prisoner of consc- "safeguard the freedom, common heritage and ience who was on thePostcards for Prisoners civilization of their people, founded on the Campaignin January this year, was instrumental principles of democracy, individual liberty and in bringing to the outside world's attention the rule of law." Yet these basic principles the Soviet practice of confining dissidents to were still violated in member states. mental asylums. In January 1971 he sent abroad "Greece, ruled by military juntas since 1967, copies of official medical reports of certain and Portugal, an authoritarian regime for al- dissidents by Soviet psychiatrists, along with most half a century, are two prominent examples, but not the only ones," the statement said. "Reports of military training in torture and io near-old "Appeal writer to Westernnow is servingPsychiatrists". a 12 year The sen- 31- tence for "anti-Soviet agitation and propagan- of grave torture practices themselves have, in da" the past 10 years, been also received from Tur- In her three-page letter, Mrs Bukovskaya said key, the United States and the United Kingdom. her son is suffering from a heart condition, Allegations have recently come from Belgium, rheumatism and a liver ailment. She expressed West Germany and the Netherlands that NATO concern at the possibility of his being trans- troops are trained in torture techniques. Many ferred back from a labour camp to Vladimir Pri- of these allegations were documented in the son where he was "almost starved to death". Amnesty International Report on Torturepub- She said she had appealed to Soviet authori- lished in December 1973." ties on five occasions to free her son and let UN HUMAN RIGHTS BODY CRITICIZED FOR him accept an invitation to study at Leiden University in Holland but this had been refused POSTPONING ACTION ON 8 COUNTRIES "I address this appeal to you," her letter to The Human Rights Commission of the United AI said. "Do not allow my son to be transfer- Nations came under fire in March when it ended red to Vladimir Prison - to his physical des- a five-week session by voting to set up a new truction. I also ask you to form, as quickly body to review allegations of human rights vio- as possible, a competent international commis- lations in eight countries, but not until next sion and to send it to the camp for political year. prisoners located at Vsesvyatskaya Station, AI had submitted information on three of the Chusovskoi District, Perm Region, establishment countries: Indonesia, where 55,000 persons are VS 389/35, where my son is imprisoned, to in- still detained without trial after eight years; 2 Amnest International Newsletter A ril 1974 Brazil, where there were allegatio.ns of the continued use of torture and the deaths of at SECRETARIAT STAFF MEMBER PAT ARROWSMITH least 210 political prisoners and suspects in ARRESTED AND DETAINED FOR TRIAL police custody (see below);and Northern Ire- PAT ARROWSMITH, a member ofAI's Secreta- land, in which there were torture allegations. riat staff in London, was committed for The other five countries are Portugal, Bur- trial without bail on 21 March on charges undi, Iran, Tanzania and Guyana. During the connected with pamphlets she distributed to session accusations of human rights violations British soldiers last September. The leaf- also were made against Chile and the Soviet lets informed soldiers that they could des- Union. An AI spokesman in New York deplored ert to Sweden if they did not want to serve the postponement of action on the cases. "How in Northern Ireland. long can we be expected to be patient and wait Miss Arrowsmith, a well-known British for one bureaucratic procedure after another to pacifist, was arrested at the time and re- be applied when political prisoners are suffer- leased on bail. But she refused to cooper- ing?" the spokesman said. ate with the act under which she was to be DONALD M• FRASER, head of a United States tried and went to Ireland, missing her house of Representatives subcommittee on human hearing. rights, said: "The commission, in effect, is She returned to Britain early in March asking the Brazilians subjected to torture, the and resumed work at the Secretariat. Ten Indonesians and Chileans detained without trial days later she was arrested at her home and and the Burundians experiencing massacres to subsequently detained without bail in Hol- withstand oppression for another year." loway Prison, London. Her trial is sched- According to a report inThe New York Times, uled for April. If convicted, she faces a other observers at the UN criticized "the ste- maximum sentence of two years' imprisonment rile debates, propagandistic speeches and a and a heavy fine. high rate of absenteeism at commission meet- In 1961, Miss Arrowsmith became the first ings." However the newspaper said other obser- prisoner of conscience ever adopted in vers saw the establishment of the new body as a Britain byAI after being imprisoned for "modest accomplishment that kept the cases from six months in connection with a civil pro- being permanently shelved." test. She later published a novel about her experiences in prison. ANNIVERSARY PLEA TO BRAZILIAN CHIEFAI has written to the British Government Brazil's newly inaugurated President, General urging the repeal of the Act in question on ERNESTO GEISEL, has been urged to demonstrate the grounds that it "constitutes an unac- his confidence in the country's much-heralded ceptable limitation on freedom of speech "economic miracle" by freeing all political protected by the Universal Declaration of prisoners on the 10th anniversary this month of Human Rights." AI will again adopt Miss the coup that brought the present regime to Arrowsmith as a prisoner of conscience if power. she is convicted and imprisoned for her Freedom for Brazilian political prisoners is non-violent protest action. There will the goal of a current action campaign involving also be an AI observer at her trial. all AI National Sections and groups (January Newsletter). to reconstitute the banned Communist Party. A letter from AI Secretary General MARTIN "Their arrest and trial is clearly unconsti- ENNALS also asked for President Geisel's com- tutional," anAI spokesman said. "If there was ments on a list of 210 political prisoners and evidence of their having broken the law or en- suspects who have died in mysterious circum- dangered national security, why were they not stances or while in police custody. The list tried and sentenced under the relevant legisla- is one whichAI submitted to the UN Human tion?" Rights Commission (see above). AIis also Secretary General MARTIN ENNALS, in a follow1110 planning to supply the Commission with further up to his letter to President ANWAR SADAT in evidence that political prisoners in Brazil are February (MarchNewsletter),cabled the Presi- still being tortured. dent on 8 March asking again for the release of APPROACH TO KENYA OVER UGANDA DEATHSthe prisoners, believed to number up to 20. Press reports from Cairo in March quoted legal AI has decided to make representations to Kenya over the murder in Uganda of two more op- and political sources as predicting that Presi- ponents of Ugandan President IDI AMIN. The la- dent Sadat would release most political priso- test victims of the wave of such murders are ners soon.