EDITORIAL: 30th anniversary of Helsinki Accords (08/07/05)

EDITORIAL

30th anniversary of Helsinki Accords

Thirty years ago, on August 1, 1975, in Helsinki, Finland, the representatives of 35 states, including the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, signed the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Among them were President Gerald R. Ford of the United States and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

By signing the document that became known as the Helsinki Final Act, or simply the Helsinki Accords, states pledged to respect human and civil rights and fundamental freedoms - such as freedom of thought, religion and conscience, to allow their citizens to travel freely, to provide for reunification of families and to allow free exchange of information and ideas. As well they agreed to respect the territorial integrity of participating states, to refrain from the threat or use of force, to seek peaceful settlement of disputes and to cooperate with each other in various fields of endeavor, ranging from science to commerce. These provisions were contained in the three sections of the accords known as "baskets" - covering political, economic and cultural-humanitarian issues - all of which were designed to enhance security and cooperation.

Immediately, the West began to hold the Soviet Union to the standards set forth in Helsinki. A mere week after the signing of the accords, Rep. Millicent Fenwick (R-N.J.) led a delegation of 18 members of Congress on a trip to the USSR. They arrived in Moscow on August 8. Two days later the congressional delegation met with 18 Jewish dissidents in the lobby of the Moscow hotel where the U.S. legislators were staying. On August 12 the members of Congress met with their Soviet counterparts, members of the Supreme Soviet, and presented a list of 1,000 Ukrainians and Jews who were political prisoners and/or refuseniks. The Soviet legislators accused Rep. Fenwick - who had stated that one of the delegation's aims was to meet with Soviet political prisoner Valentyn Moroz of Ukraine - of damaging U.S.-Soviet relations by constantly bringing up human rights. One official said to her:" "It's an obsession with you, isn't it?"

Actually, it was.

Rep. Fenwick and others like her staunchly defended human rights and fundamental freedoms for all people. They used the Helsinki Accords expertly to press their case and they did so at various international fora, including the regular follow-up meetings of the CSCE.

At the same time, Helsinki monitoring groups sprang up. First in Moscow, then in Ukraine (where the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote Implementation of the Helsinki Accords was founded on November 9, 1976), Lithuania, Armenia and Georgia. Their activists were severely repressed by the Soviet authorities; they were jailed, exiled, sent to psychiatric institutions, sentenced to hard labor, convicted on trumped-up criminal charges, beaten and terrorized. Some lost their lives in the process of standing up for human, national, religious and civil rights. But their collective voice never wavered. As the Ukrainian Helsinki Group's memorandum No. 1 underscored: "The struggle for human rights will not cease until these rights become the everyday standard in social life." Indeed, the Helsinki movement grew and became more powerful.

The Helsinki Accords were once characterized as a "beacon of hope" to victims of oppression worldwide. On their 30th anniversary we pay tribute to the beacon that ultimately brought freedom to millions.

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