New Human Rights Group Formed

The formation of a new international human rights organization was announced here today, designed to provide unity and cohesion for Western nations and European countries to speak out against human rights abuses in the Soviet Union. The formation of The Interparliamentary Group (IPG) was announced at a joint press conference by the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ) and its four initial cosponsors in the United States: Sens. Dennis DeConcini (D. Ariz.) and Charles Grassley (R. Iowa), and Reps. Tom Lantos (D. Calif.) and John Porter (R. III.).

Grassley said, “We will be speaking with one voice in the Western world for the plight of people who don’t have the human rights we have.” Porter said that by “joining together. Western European and American parliamentarians … will work to maximize the pressures on the Soviet Union to end human rights violations.”

According to Lantos, who said the formation of the group was “long overdue,” the IPG will help bring maximum pressure in the field of human rights on the Soviet Union. “We have to speak in one voice stretching from Norway to New Zealand,” he said. DeConcini blamed the number of people allowed to emigrate from the Soviet Union on “fading” interest, and said, “The world united can bring about the public perception and pressure on the Soviet Union to be reasonable in their emigration policies.”

The IPG headquarters will be in Washington and London and funded entirely from the private sector. It will be led by Paul Meek, the executive director of the UCSJ. It is expected to gain the support of as many as 1,000 legislators from the U.S., Canada, Britain, France, West Germany, and Spain as well as other countries. Its first international conference will be held in Paris in May, 1984 where six issues of Soviet human rights performances will be addressed.

COORDINATE HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCACY

Meek said the goal of the IPG is “to coordinate advocacy of human rights as an adjunct to bilateral and multilateral diplomatic efforts.” It also hopes to compliment the Madrid conference on human rights and carry out the goals of the Helsinki Final Act, Meek said.

Lynn Singer, president of the UCSJ, said the new organization was the product of discussions between the U.S. and West European officials “on how best to draw world wide attention to human rights abuses in the Soviet Union … We hope to have everyone working together to draw public attention to human rights abuses.”

Singer meanwhile released the text of a letter written by a 7-year-old Soviet Jewish boy, Avi Goldstein, from the town of Tbilisis, that was sent to Samantha Smith of Manchester, Maine asking her to give the letter detailing Soviet harassment of his refusenik family to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov. Smith, who wrote to Andropov about U.S.-Soviet relations, was invited by the Soviet leader to visit the USSR this summer. Singer said she did not know whether Smith would deliver the Goldstein letter to Andropov.