Helping Prisoners of Conscience

A group of British students who toured Moscow in 1964 remember their interpreter, Zhenya Belov, as a dedicated Communist who lambasted them for "political ignorance." Last summer Belov showed his own political ignorance by writing Comrades Brezhnev and Kosygin, suggesting they democratize their regime. He was adjudged insane, put in an asylum and--the Soviet bosses hoped--forgotten forever.

Far from forgotten, Belov has since become one of 1,200 priority cases in the files of Amnesty International, a London-based organization, founded in 1961, that aims to set free "prisoners of conscience," no matter how obscure, if they have been locked up for "expressing any honestly held opinion which does not advocate violence." It is dedicated to the proposition that governments that operate outside the law must somehow be brought to account.

Most Sensitive Point. Amnesty's weapons are moral suasion strengthened with a potent brew of publicity. This is the kind of pressure, says President Peter Benenson, 45, that hits totalitarian regimes at their "most sensitive point, their public image, their trade image, their tourist image." By publicizing Belov in the British press, Amnesty forced the Russians to acknowledge his fate. Izvestia accused Amnesty of "presumption and arrogance in suggesting that a Western psychiatrist" be allowed to examine the prisoner.

Amnesty operates on a shoestring $50,000-a-year budget in a dingy fifth-floor office in London's Crane Court, where Sir Isaac Newton presided over the Royal Society. Benenson, assisted by a staff of eight full-time workers, farms out individual prisoners to Amnesty's 430 volunteer groups in 20 countries. Last week he was in the U.S. to drum up support for the 21st group, which has just been set up in Manhattan. Local chapters use every imaginable publicity weapon to dramatize the cases of their "adopted prisoners" --letters to newspapers, fund-raising campaign parties, appeals to embassies, cables to chiefs of state, massive mailings to the prisoners themselves.

Nazarene & Catholic. The London headquarters gives an added boost to the efforts of local groups by choosing three particularly deserving individuals as "Prisoners of the Month." One of the March trio is Miligojae Phillipovic, a 21-year-old Yugoslav serving a ten-year term on the penal island of Goli Otok in the Adriatic; as a member of the Nazarene sect he refuses to report for military service and handle objects intended for killing. There is also a "Prisoner of the Year." The 1966 selection is Koumandian Keita, a Guinean headmaster sentenced to ten years for criticizing President Sekou Toure's education policies.

Last month Benenson was in Rhodesia bringing suit to reverse the summary deportation of the London Observer's correspondent. This week Amnesty is sending a 25-year-old Labor peer, Lord Gifford, to discuss with Hungary's Communist officials the recent arrest of 20 Roman Catholic priests and 50 workers on flimsy charges of agitation against the state.

"Worse" Governments. In reaction to such unpleasant attention, governments sometimes defensively tip Amnesty about prisoners held by "worse" governments. Other tips come from exiles, newsmen and prisoners themselves--all in a daily flood of letters to London that builds up files informative enough to hand cases over to adoption groups. Though half the prisoners never get a trial, many are eventually permitted to see relatives, consult lawyers, and petition for clemency.

Amnesty's most celebrated success was the 1963 release of Archbishop Josef Beran after 14 years of incommunicado house arrest in Communist Czechoslovakia. Beran, now a cardinal, is scheduled to arrive in the U.S. this week. Though Barrister Benenson refuses to claim sole credit for Amnesty in any particular case, he proudly notes that in four years the number of adopted prisoners actually released has reached 800.

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