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OVERVIEW
Carol CorUlon
Why does the National Academy of Sciences have a Committee
on Human Rights? How does the committee define human rights and
which rights are fundamental? Does a focus on human rights under-
mine efforts toward international scientific cooperation, development,
political stability, or nuclear disarmament? Why does the commit-
tee work only in behalf of scientists and how do scientists become
victims of human rights violations? How and why do some health
professionals collude with torturers? These questions are typical of
those asked frequently of the members and staff of the academy's
Committee on Human Rights. They are important questions that
this document helps to answer.
"Governments should respect the fundamental human rights of
their citizens. That is a simple statement. It would be difficult
today to find a government that openly disagrees with it because the
violation of human rights by governments is now generally recognized
as an area of international purview, investigation, and condemnation.
Most governments are signatories to one or several human rights in-
struments that set out internationally recognized standards of human
rights protection.) The most well-known of these documents is the
United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However,
many of the governments signing these agreements frequently and
systematically violate their standards; about half routinely imprison
people for their conscientious, political, or religious convictions. Gov-
ernment sanctioned torture is routine in one-third of the nations of
the world.
1 Some of the better known human rights instruments include: Basic
United Nations Human Rights In~trumcnt~: Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(1948), International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), Interna-
tional Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1966~; Regional
Human Rights Inetrumcnte: African Charter on Peoples' and Human Rights (Or-
ganization for African Unity, 1981), American Convention on Human Rights
(Organization of American States, 1969), American Declaration of the Rights
and Duties of Man (Organization of American States, 1948), The Final Act of
the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe tThe Helsinki Agree-
ment] (The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 1975), European
Convention on Human Rights (Council of Europe, 1950~; Human Rights Dcclara-
tione of Medical Associations: Declaration of Geneva (World Medical Association,
1948, 1968, 1983), Declaration of Hawaii (World Psychiatric Association, 1977,
revved 1983), Declaration of Tokyo (World Medical Association, 1975~.
1
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2
In countries where there is no respect for the physical and mental
integrity of the person, other rights a fair trial, legal representation
by a lawyer of one's own choosing, family visitation, access to medical
treatment, adequate conditions of confinement are largely ignored
as well.
Amnesty International has developed a 12-point program for the
prevention of torture that it has recommended governments adopt.
Among the points listed are recommendations that governments
should demonstrate their total opposition to torture; adopt safe-
guards to ensure torture does not occur in incommunicado detention;
ensure that prisoners are held in publicly recognized places; estate
fish safeguards during interrogation and custody; ensure unpartial
investigations of complaints; disqualify confessions obtained through
torture; prosecute alleged torturers; provide financial compensation
to victims and their dependents; intercede with governments accused
of torture; and ratify international instruments against torture.
Unless governments are held accountable for their actions, there
is little impetus for them to change. This is particularly true of
unpopular governments and those that fear political opposition and
use repression as a weapon against the expression of political and
religious beliefs. Just as governments do not want to openly admit
that they abuse human rights, neither do they want to be accused
of it. The Committee on Human Rights found that when human
rights groups document abuses in a thorough, professional manner
and present the information to the government that is practicing
the abuse, the government is embarrassed. It is also often angry and
generally denies the allegations. In the end, however, if pressure from
the human rights groups is maintained in an evenhanded manner,
progress can often be made.
The committee believes that pressure sustained, respectful
pressure works. And when a scientific institution that carries au-
thority and prestige makes appeals for its colleagues, its concerns
are not as easily dismissed by governments ~ those made by human
rights groups sometunes are.
This book cannot possibly deal with the numerous issues that
have come to the committee's attention over the years, but it touches
on many and goes into considerable detail on torture, psychiatric
abuse, violations of medical ethics, and civil and political rights. Of
course, not all human rights issues are as clear-cut as the straight-
forward belief that man should not torture his fellow man. We hope
that the discussions that follow will stimulate thought, questioning,
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3
and exploration among students, human rights activists, scientists,
government officials, and ordinary citizens who are concerned about
human rights abuses.
For those groups deciding to create a human rights committee
of their own, Appendix C includes a blueprint of how our committee
is organized. It illustrates how a group can begin and operate on a
continuing basis In a small way and increase its activities if additional
resources become avmIable.
TEE SYMPOSIUM
The symposium was a reflection of the international solidarity
of scientists. The right to search for and to speak the truth is, for
scientists, essential. When this right is denied, science and those
who practice science super. The theme reflected in many of the
presentations is that of the scientist's responsibility to his colleagues
and the consequent moral support and inner strength derived by
those who are victims of abuse.
The international scientific community ~ becoming increasingly
involved in human rights issues. An article by physicist John Zieman
considers the involvement of scientists in human rights through the
use of the human rights instruments discussed earlier.
Many of the difficulties of achieving transnational solidarity in
the world scientific community are . . . overcome by appeal to
the international code of human rights. This code is universal,
it is phrased in precise legal language, and it has been accepted
in principle by most civilised governments. Actions based on
this code thus stand above political squabbling and the conflict
of governments. A learned society which takes up the cause of
foreign scientists whose human rights have been infringed can
scarcely be accused of partisan political action: on the contrary,
failure to act in such cases could be regarded as neglect of a
moral duty.2
Zieman also points out, in The World of Science and the Rule of
Law, that some rights are particularly import ant for the pursuit of
science. According to Zieman,
2Zieman, John, "Solidarity within the Republic of Sciences,n Mir~crva
(Spring 1978), p. 13.
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4
A typical scientific career would begin with formal education
and training in research. This would be followed by employment
in scientific work, where it would be necessary to have access to
scientific information, and to communicate the results of research
to other scientists. This leads naturally to the expression of
opinions about the work of other scientists. To take part in
critical discussions of new scientific ideas, scientists need to move
around, and to meet together in various groupings. If their work
has been well done, they may win a personal reputation and be
eventually honoured publicly for their intellectual achievements.3
The rights discussed by Zieman as particularly important to
scientists are:
education and training;
work and choice of work;
· ~
communication;
· · ~ -
oplnlon and expression;
movement;
assembly and association;
honor, reputation, and intellectual achievement.
The committee has received dozens of letters of thanks and
appreciation from scientists whose rights have been abused, and
from their families, for its efforts. Often the knowledge that we were
continuing our appeals has been of great comfort to the prisoners and
their families and has helped sustam courage and hope. For example,
a mathematician in Turkey wrote to the committee following his
release from prison. He said:
I thank you and the Academy for the interest you showed in my
case. This is an excellent example of solidarity between scientists.
I thank you again and again for your interest. Your solidarity
gave me the necessary strength to face the injustices.
A physician in Chile, following his release from prison, wrote:
"I want to thank the Committee on Human Rights of the National
Academy of Sciences for the forceful and quick action it took with
regard to my latest detention.... Generous attitudes, effectiveness
and solidarity such as yours, engenders my respect and affection, and
3Zieman, John, Paul Sieghart, and John Humphrey, 17`c World of Scicnec
and the Rule of Law, Oxford University Press, 1986, p. 38.
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more important, reinforces my decision to continue fighting for the
defense of fundamental human rights in my country."
An imprisoned algebraist in South Africa wrote: "Because of the
concern and action of your Academy many people have responded
to our problems and hence our conviction grows that our dream of a
non-racial democratic South Africa shall be realized."
The wife of a Soviet electrical engineer wrote before her hus-
band's release from prison: "I was so touched to get your warm
letter and to know about your concern and care. ~ am very thankful
to you for your efforts and ~ think them rather useful."
The three major papers presented here are written by former
prisoners from Chile, South Africa, and the Soviet Union. (Appendix
A includes short biographies of the authors.) The nationalities of the
authors reflect the fact that repression is not confined to an individual
culture, a specific geographic area, or a political ideology. Scientists
in all fields are vulnerable to repression.
Perhaps the most poignant illustration of the unity and the di-
versity described here occurred at the end of the symposium. The
three main speakers representing markedly different cultures and
political backgrounds raised their arms spontaneously and joined
hands to the thunderous applause of the audience. Many in atten-
dance had made written and oral appeals in behalf of the former
prisoners who spoke. Although human rights work is often frustrat-
ing and discouraging, the audience could not have left the symposium
with any doubt that their efforts are worthwhile, that their appeals
make a difference.
Many of the members of the NAS, NAE, and TOM are not only
correspondents of the committee, they also work with human rights
committees within other organizations of which they are members, or
take on individual cases as Their own," or make a point of discussing
a particular case with people of influence. The individuals who
provide introductions and comments in this volume are all members
of the NAS, NAE, or TOM. (Their affiliations also appear in Appendix
A.)
For many of the scientists who fee! they have a moral responsi-
bility to help and have become involved, the work of the Committee
on Human Rights has been very different from the exacting, scientific
work they do in their labs and classrooms. For example, unlike most
scientific work, with human rights work it is not always possible to
tell whether ones efforts have been helpful in a case or, when a case is
finally successfully resolved, whether a particular intervention made
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6
the difference. In addition, when the committee was first created,
information on cases was often difficult to obtain and usually sec-
ondhand. This has changed over the years, however. Now that the
committee is better known and its work has brought it into contact
with government officials, religious figures, human rights groups, and
scientists around the world, case information is often received directly
and immediately from reliable sources in the country of abuse.
The following sections address in depth a variety of issues that
have been grouped into three categories in this book: (1) torture,
psychiatric abuse, and the ethics of medicine; (2) human rights, hu-
man needs, and scientific freedom; and (3) human rights and human
survival. Each will be discussed briefly in this overview chapter.
TORTURE, PSYCHIATRIC ABUSE, AND THE
ETHICS OF MEDICINE
Torture and psychiatric abuse are important issues that con-
front, increasingly, U.S. physicians, lawyers, government officials,
and others. An estimated 8,000 torture victims, almost all of whom
are refugees, are reported to live in the New York metropolitan area
alone. Some of the individuab whose cases have been undertaken
by the committee, and thousands of others who remain unknown,
have been tortured while in detention; others have been imprisoned
for speaking out against the practice of torture or because they
documented the physical evidence of torture. If and when these indi-
viduals are released, they often require long-term medical treatment.
The World Medical Association defines torture in the 1975 Dec-
laration of Tokyo as The deliberate, systematic, or wanton infliction
of physical or mental suffering by one or more persons acting alone
or on the orders of any authority to force another person to yield
information, to make a confession, or for any other reason.
In the Soviet Union, although the practice of psychiatric abuse
has sharply diminished in recent months, hundreds of political d~si-
dents and others have been confined to special psychiatric hospitals
and administered mind-altering psychiatric drugs as a form of pun-
ishment.
Another focus of concern that cannot be ignored by a scientific
institution like the NAS, or the IOM, ~ that health professionals-
physicians, psychotherapists, nurses-have sometimes abused medi-
cal ethics. They have colluded with the torturers and have misused
psychiatry for political purposes.
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As will be described by some of those presenting comments later
in this report, most of the comrn~ttee's work is conducted privately, in
the hope that the offending government will recognize and acknowI-
edge its com~rutment to human rights and will respond when abuses
are questioned. In some instances, governments have answered our
inquiries; in others, the prisoners have been released or their con-
ditions of confinement have been unproved. Occasionally, when the
government has not been properly responsive or a substantial num-
ber of scientific colleagues are imprisoned in a particular country, the
committee undertakes a mission of inquiry. Missions were made to
Uruguay and Argentina in 1978, to Chile in 1985, and to Somalia
in 1987. Mission delegates received reports of widespread torture in
each of these countries.
In Uruguay, the delegates visited a mathematician, Professor
Jose Luis Massera, in a military prison in 1979, four years after his
arrest. Dr. Massera was first secretary of the Uruguayan Communist
Party before political parties in the country were Recessed. During
interrogation he was reportedly forced to stand on one foot until he
collapsed and broke a hip. He was not given necessary medical care.
Professor Massera was released from prison in 1984. All members of
the Uruguayan military who were accused of human rights violations
between 1973 and 1985 were granted an amnesty.
In Argentina at least 9,000 people were made to "disappear" in
what the military government called The dirty war." It is believed
that most of these individuals were tortured. A number of such
cases have been documented recently by forensic scientists and an-
thropologists in Argentina who, with the assistance of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, have exhumed bodies
from mass graves and identified evidence of torture. Among those
cases of the "disappeared," undertaken by the committee in the late
1970s and never resolved, are those of four physicists: Dr. Federico
Alvarez Roj as, Dr. Gabriela Carabelli, Dr. Antonio Misetich, and Dr.
Eduardo Pasquini.
During the self-procIaimed "dirty war," health professionals are
believed to have colluded with the Argentine military, on a systematic
basis, in the torture of prisoners. One well-known example is the case
brought by Argentine newspaper editor Jacobo Timerman against
an Argentine physician, Dr. Jorge Antonio Berges, who was a police
doctor during Timerman's detention. Timerman claimed that Berges
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8
supervised torture with an electric prod and treated detainees in
several secret detention centers.4
According to Amnesty International, it has not been easy to
identify and bring to account those doctors who violated human
rights and medical ethics because many of the victims are dead and
those who survives] were often hooded while in detention, or if they
did see them, were unable to determine the identity of the doctors
who treated them.5
Two former Argentine presidents and five of the nine former
military commanders who served during the 1976 to 1983 military
rule have been convicted of charges, including murder, torture, illegal
detentions, and disappearances, and are serving sentences of up to life
imprisonment. However, hundreds of other middle and lower ranking
military officers accused of similar crimes were granted immunity
under the "law on due obediences because they claimed they were
"obeying orders" when they were involved in repression.
In Chile, in response to information provided to the committee
by medical colleagues there regarding detention, internal exile, tor-
ture, and disappearance, a delegation was sent to Santiago in 1985 to
gather information and make appeals to government officials. While
in Chile the delegation met with members of the Colegio Medico de
Chile, of which symposium speaker Dr. Juan I,uis Gonzalez is pres-
ident. According to Dr. Gonzalez, while the Medical Association of
Chile receives many oral reports of torture, most of the victims are
afraid to put their reports in writing. He says that while the medical
association knows that torture has been a too! used by the govern-
ment in Chile during the past 13 years, the Medical Association of
Chile is restricted by the government in its effort to find witnesses
and to verify the facts.
While in Chile, the delegates of the Committee on Human Rights
also met with Dr. Ramiro Olivares, a physician at the Vicaria de
la Solidaridad, which operates under the auspices of the Catholic
Church. Dr. Olivares reported that few torture survivors require
hospitalization by the time they come to the Vicaria to file a com-
plaint. Many victims are kept in prison after they are tortured, which
4Stover, Eric and Elena O. Nightingale, The Breaking of Bodice and Minds,
1985, W.H. Freeman and Company, New York, p. 240.
5 See Amnesty International's `'Argentina: Doctor convicted of torture
released under 'due obedience' law, December 17, 1987, A.I., Index AMR
13/10/87.
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9
often makes it difficult to document the physical sequelae of torture,
particularly when electric shock is used, because the visible physical
evidence can be slight or nonexistent.6
At the time of the committee's mission to Chile, over 200 cases of
alleged torture by members of the Chilean security forces had been
presented to the Chilean courts. There had been no convictions,
although a few of the cases had been investigated. Dr. Gonzalez
himself was detained for a month and a half in 1986. Dr. Olivares
was arrested and imprisoned for more than a year between 1986 and
1987. The committee and its correspondents made many appeals
in behalf of these physicians to officials of the Chilean government.
Both men are now free and continue their efforts to end torture in
Chile.
A number of the individuals in whose behalf the mission to Soma-
lia was undertaken are alleged to have been tortured. Unfortunately,
the committee was not permitted to visit any of these prisoners to
ascertain their physical condition. The committee's report, Scien-
tists and Human Rights in Somalia, Report of a Delegation, contains
a chapter on torture, which includes information received from three
physicians affiliated with the Canadian Centre for Investigation and
Prevention of Torture. These physicians examined and treated sev-
eral dozen Somali refugees in Canada who have said they were tor-
tured in Somalia. The physicians found the scars and complaints
made by the Somalis they examined to be consistent with the history
of detention and torture that the Somalis described.
Following the mission to Somalia, the committee received state-
ments signed by two of the prisoners whose cases it has undertaken:
Abdi Ismai! Yunis, a mathematician, and Suleiman Nub Ali, an
engineer. These testimonies were received from what are believed
to be reliable sources, although committee members were unable to
directly verify the statements. These testimonies describe, in great
detail, the torture to which Yunis and All have reportedly been
subjected by the security forces in Somalia.
The committee has been involved in the issue of abuses of psychi-
atry for political proposes only to the extent that it made numerous
appeals in behalf of Dr. Anatoly Koryagin, a Soviet psychiatrist, who
spent six years in a Soviet labor camp after documenting abuses of
6For further information on torture in Chile, please see CHR's report
entitled Scientists and Human Rights in Chile, Report of a Delegation.
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10
psychiatry for political purposes. Dr. Koryagin was the chief psy-
chiatric consultant to the Working Commission to Investigate the
Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes, a human rights group in
the Soviet Union. During a (year period just before his arrest, Dr.
Koryagin and another psychiatrist examined several dozen dissidents
who were released from psychiatric hospitals or threatened with de-
tainment. None of the individuals examined was found to be in need
of psychiatric treatment or confinement.
Through its work over the years, the committee has become
increasingly aware of the particular vulnerability of health profes-
sionals working in areas of conflict. In the course of carrying out
their obligations as health professionals, these inclividuals are often
caught up in the conflict, detained, and sometimes killed. The com-
mittee has also recognized a need not only to defend those who speak
out against psychiatric abuse, but also for steps to be taken to end
such abuses. It became apparent that health professionals, by the
very nature of their work, are more often exposed to abuses of human
rights, occasionally collude with the abusers, and are more vulnera-
ble to becoming victims of abuses themselves. Thus, the committee
decided to encourage the academy's Institute of Medicine in its ef-
forts to create a committee that would address such issues. In 1987
the TOM decided to create its Committee on Health and Human
Rights (CHHR). (A description of the TOM committee's mandate is
included in Appendix B.)
The Committee on Health and Human Rights works with and
provides support to medical groups that speak out, in their own
countries and elsewhere, against practices such as collusion of physi-
cians in torture, abuses of psychiatry for political purposes, and
medical breach of confidentiality. In his comments, Dr. Albert Solnit
discusses a number of medical principles applicable to a wide variety
of cultural, political, and ideological settings. As he points out, such
principles are particularly important when it becomes state policy to
view disagreement with the government as evidence of mental illness.
HUMAN RIGHTS, HUMAN NEEDS, AND
SCIENTIFIC FREEDOM
As Gilbert White points out in his introduction to this section,
it is perhaps easier to define torture, to identify malpractice, and to
suggest means to cope with them than to handle some of the other
aspects of human rights violations.
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~-
The "other aspects" to which Dr. White refers are civil and
political rights and economic, social, and cultural rights. These
rights have come to be called, respectively, negative and positive
rights and are the subject of considerable debate. Negative rights
involve restraint by a government from doing something against an
individual citizen. Positive rights require a government to take action
to fulfill a need, such as providing medical care, food, education, or
employment. Of course, to restore some of these rights involves both
negative and positive obligations.
Negative and positive rights have been the object of discussion
in classrooms, at international meetings, between developed and
developing countries, between the East and West, between U.S. Re-
publican and Democratic parties, and, as the comments later in this
report reflect, within the National Academy of Sciences.
After spending considerable time examining the various rights
and evaluating what concrete and realistic contributions it can make
toward helping individuals achieve them, the committee decided it
should focus on civil and political rights, the negative rights.
Lipman Bers, the second chair of the Committee on Human
Rights, defines the right to food, to a job, to medical care, and to
education as "positive" rights. He defines ~negative" rights as the
right not to be arbitrarily arrested, not to be tortured, not to be
exiled, and not to be killed for one's opinions.
Human rights groups that focus on political and civil rights-
and most of them Shave sometimes been accused of a bias toward
Western values. While the committee's focus is on the negative
rights, many of the scientists in whose behalf action is taken have
become victims of government abuse because they exercised their
right to speak out against government practices. Often these are
practices that deny or impede access to basic human needs such as
food, education, and health care. In other words, the committee
promotes social and economic rights of individuals by defending
those who speak out against abusive social and economic government
practices.
In his comments, Robert Kates, the committee's first chair,
discusses which basic human needs could be considered human rights.
He concludes that water, food, shelter, and health and perhaps
education should qualify. He also suggests that the academy begin
to act in the area of social and economic rights by asserting the right
of all humankind to be free from hunger. Such an effort would involve
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"one of the most ancient and sustained applications of science and
technology." According to Dr. Kates:
It is no easier now to know how to begin confronting hunger
than it was ten years ago to confront torture and imprisonment.
Perhaps we might begin with the extremes. In a modest way, we
might speak out when people, particularly civilian populations,
are intentionally deprived of food, usually in the midst of conflict,
held hostage to their hunger to press for an advantage or to
punish for their allegiance.
In response to Dr. Kates's speculation about whether people have
a right to education, Professor Walter Rosenblith asks the following
question: "If we as an academy look towards the role that science
and technology is playing in changing the human environment, in
changing the globe, in changing our society, can we omit the right to
education both as a human need and as a human right?"
Ismai} Mohamed, whose paper appears in this section, discusses
the denial of both the negative and positive rights to the majority
of the population in his country, South Africa, and his hope for the
creation of "a nonracial, unfragmented, and democratic society in
South Africa.
Professor Mohamed comments on education: "For generations,
our black youth have cried out for the right to an education which
will enable them to take their place in the ranks of the free youth of
the world, so that they may determine their own destiny and that of
our country. About health care, he says: "While the vast mass of
our youth lack the most elementary knowledge of health and hygiene,
they are the victims of disease, of malnutrition and poverty.
Lipman Bers, in ending his comments, points out that, while the
Committee on Human Rights recognizes the importance of positive
rights, there is a good reason why the international human rights
movement, of which our committee is a small part, has concentrated
on negative rights:
It makes sense to tell a government: 'Stop torturing people.' An
order by the prime minister or the president, or whoever is in
charge, could make it happen. It makes sense to tell a foreign
ambassador that, 'the American scientific community is outraged
that you keep Dr. X in jail. Let him out and let him do his work.'
It requires no planning, no political philosophy, and it can unite
people with very different opinions.
It is quite a different matter to tell a foreign government, let's
say a government of a developing country, 'You really should
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give this or that positive right to your people.' If we make such
a demand in good faith, it must be accompanied by some plan
for unplementing this right, and by some indication of the cost
and of who will pay it and how it will be paid.
HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMAN SURVIVAL
The topic of this chapter is the relationship between the defense
of human rights of Soviet scientific colleagues and efforts toward
preservation of peace. The question of whether we can have one
without the other is a recent and sometimes troubling issue for many
American scientists. Andrei Sakharov, who is a foreign associate of
the academy, said in a 1977 essay entitled "Alarm and Hope" that
the issue of human rights is not simply a moral issue but also "a
paramount, practical ingredient of international trust and security."
During the past 40 years, human rights and human survival have
become a focus of attention within the U.S. scientific community and
within the human rights community during the past 10 years. This
is another area of debate that has been the focus of many groups
and, as reflected in this section, about which there are a variety of
views within the academy itself.
While we have seen a gradual acceptance of the importance of
respecting and defending human rights, we have also been faced
with an increasing awareness of and concern over the ever present
threat to human survival a general nuclear war between the two
superpowers.
Because of the horrendous global consequences should a nuclear
war occur, the need to preserve peace has become a major issue in
our lives and the focus of many scientific meetings and exchanges.
The importance of defending both human rights and national se-
curity is recognized by almost everyone. However, their juxtaposition
and interaction, particularly with regard to U.S. relations with the
Soviet Union, is often inevitable, and to some minds incompatible.
To others, these issues are inextricably linked. Congressman Steny
Hoyer, chair of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Eu-
rope, has said that "if we really want to make arms control work, we
must build trust between the signatory nations a trust which, in
the Soviet case, is a function of progress in human rights."
In a November 13, 1986, editorial entitled "The Right Priority
for Human Rights," The New York Times took the position that
Human rights and arms control are fundamental concerns of the
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American people. Holding one hostage to the other does a disservice
to both."
To quote from Sakharov's "Alarm and Hope" essay again:
The most serious defect of a 'closed' society ~ the total lack
of democratic control over the upper echelons of the party and
governments In their conduct of domestic affairs, and foreign
policy. The latter is especially dangerous, for here we are talking
about the finger poised on the nuclear button. The 'closed'
nature of our society is intrinsically related to the question of
civil and political rights.
The National Academy of Sciences has been concerned with both
issues for many years. Its long-standing human rights concerns have
already been described. Its concern with prevention of nuclear war
stimulated an exchange of scientists that began in 1960 between the
United States and the Soviet Union. Paul Doty, one of the speakers
at the symposium, was the first chair of this program, which is known
today as the National Research Council's Committee on the USSR
and Eastern Europe.
In 1980 the academy created a Committee on International Se-
curity and Arms Control, of which Dr. Doty has also been a member.
In discussing his involvement, he explains that the members of the
committee have tried "to bring about a bridge between the scientists
in the Soviet Union and those here [in the U.S.] and to explore in
all the ways we could between the two sides of finding a safer world
ahead, depending less and less for our security upon the enormous
stockpiles of weapons that we have assembled."
Through the years, the Committee on Human Rights has taken
the position that there should not be a conflict between the academy's
concerns about arms control and its concerns about human rights.
We must do both but they should not be linked in any formal
manner. (Individual members of arms control delegations have made
numerous informal appeals and inquiries in behalf of scientific col-
leagues who have been victims of human rights abuses.) This view
was particularly apparent when the committee recommended sanc-
tions by the academy against the Soviet Academy of Sciences when
academician Sakharov, a foreign associate of the academy, was sent
into exile in Gorky in 1980. The committee went to great pains, how-
ever, to specify that joint meetings on arms control and disarmament
should be exempted from the sanctions.
The academy council subsequently issued a public statement
in Sakharov's behalf. It reminded the Soviet Academy of Sciences
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10
that "arms control and disarmament is a central problem for both
our countries" and went on to say that the council would press for
meetings at which scientists from the United States and the USSR
could discuss thoroughly the technical aspects of this problem.
Many individuals argue that respect for human rights is the best
form of arms control that a country that respects its citizens and
has their trust will respect its international commitments and can be
trusted to abide by them. Francis Low, who introduces this chapter,
argues along these lines. He says that "surely a stable, peaceful
world requires an absence of paranoia, it requires trust, a sharing of
values which must include a universal respect for human rights...."
Dr. Low goes on to argue that the struggle for human rights and
the search for peace are inextricably bound together. Conversely,
Lipman Bers argues that "the struggle for nuclear disarmament and
peace and the struggle for human rights are rather independent of
each other."
It is Dr. Victor Weiskopf's position that "we should uncover and
protest infringements of human rights in the USSR and elsewhere.
At the same tune, we should negotiate arms reductions and controls
and avoid measures that increase fear on the other side.... But we
should not insist upon human rights unprovements as a condition for
more peaceful relations."
In his paper, Dr. Yuri OrIov suggests that steps be taken to
encourage openness in Soviet society because, "if Soviet society were
to become as open as the West, East-West tension would be substan-
tially reduced and mutual security thereby increased."
Many issues are discussed in the following pages of this report.
They are issues that, unfortunately, wiD not soon be resolved. Read-
ing about them, however, should yield insights. Thinking about
them, discussing them, and acting upon them will help to raise
awareness and concern. Progress wait gradually be made, and one of
the major objectives of our symposium will have been met.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
arms control
