§ FURTHER REPORT ON SOVIET AND EASTERN EUROPEAN IMPLEMENTATION OF THE HELSINKI FINAL ACT FOR THE PERIOD DECEMBER 1979 TO JUNE 1980
§ General
§ 1. The period since the last report has been over-shadowed by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and by the continued occupation of that traditionally neutral and non-aligned country by substantial Soviet military forces. 1288 Soviet troops have been directly engaged in attempting to crush Afghan popular resistance to their occupation and have inflicted appalling suffering on the Afghan people. This action violates all the norms of international behaviour including the provisions of the UN Charter and the Principles of the Helsinki Final Act. It has been condemned by an unprecedented majority of members of the United Nations and by the Islamic world. It represents a most serious set-back to the pursuit of genuine détente and international cooperation which can only develop on a global basis and on a foundation of trust and mutual confidence. In CSCE terms the most regrettable consequence of the invasion has been to demonstrate the vulnerability of the CSCE process if certain signatories choose to take advantage of détente in Europe to pursue narrow national advantage elsewhere.
§ 2. More or less coinciding with their aggressive action in Afghanistan, the Soviet authorities have similarly shocked world public opinion with an intensified campaign against political dissenters within their own borders, of which the banishment to Gorky of Academician Sakharov has been only one of the more widely publicised instances. Such actions are clearly intended to silence protest against Soviet infringements of human rights, and in particular of the Helsinki Final Act, and appear to have been timed partly with the opening of the Olympic Games in mind (and possibly also the approach to the Madrid meeting). The denial of certain basic human rights and of the freedom of the individual to monitor the implementation by governments of the Helsinki Final Act has continued in a number of other countries in Eastern Europe, notably Czechoslovakia.
§ Basket I—Security in Europe: Principles guiding relations between participating states; Confidence-building measures and certain aspects of security and disarmament
§ Principles
§ 3. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, carried out under the guise of an "invitation" from a government whose leader was murdered shortly after the arrival of his "guests", violates a clear 1289 commitment by the signatories of the Final Act to conduct their relations with all other states in the spirit of the 10 Principles. These include the Principles of sovereign equality, territorial integrity of states, inviolability of frontiers, equal rights and self-determination of peoples, refraining from the threat or use of force and non-intervention in internal affairs. The last of these specifically states that signatories will refrain from any intervention in the internal or external affairs of another participating state "regardless of their mutual relations". Soviet action cannot possibly be claimed to be consistent with respect for these Principles. The Soviet authorities have, moreover, sought to distort the meaning of the Principles by claiming their own action to have been justified by alleged but unsubstantiated intervention in the internal affairs of Afghanistan by other countries. The reaction of Eastern European governments to the Soviet invasion was slow, uneven and generally unenthusiastic. The Soviet Union's allies have tended to argue that developments in Europe should be regarded as distinct from those elsewhere and that the latter should not be allowed to affect the CSCE process. The underlying assumption in such a position that détente is "divisible" is unacceptable.
§ 4. The leaders of the seven Warsaw Pact countries none the less reaffirmed their adherence to all ten Principles of the Final Act in a Declaration issued after their meeting in Warsaw on 14th and 15th of May. The main focus of their interest, however, continues to be the promotion of what they term "military détente", the military aspects of security. To this end, the Soviet Union and its allies continue to call on CSCE participating states to sign a treaty on the non-first use of nuclear or conventional weapons, and affirm their support for a wide range of loosely-framed arms limitation or disarmament measures of a largely declaratory nature (from a world treaty on the non-use of force, to a cut in the major powers' military budgets). More specifically, the Warsaw Pact states have proposed that the Madrid Review Conference should endorse Warsaw Pact ideas on the holding of a multi-stage conference on military détente and disarmament 1290 in Europe, for which the Polish Government has offered Warsaw as the venue.
§ 5. Ministers of the countries of the North Atlantic Alliance, in the communiqué issued after their meeting in Ankara on 25th and 26th of June, noted that the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan had seriously affected the confidence necessary for progress in CSCE and stated that it was a matter of particular concern that the Soviet Union had acted and was still acting in Afghanistan in a manner violating the Principles to which it had committed itself at Helsinki at the highest level. Ministers agreed that allied representatives should engage in a thorough review of implementation at the Madrid meeting and that they should also continue to develop a balanced group of proposals and remain prepared to discuss concrete proposals which might be advanced by other participants. But Ministers also noted that the prospects for progress at Madrid and in particular for the consideration of new proposals would be influenced by the course of the review and would depend on the international situation at the time.
§ 6. The deterioration in the implementation of Principle VII—human rights and fundamental freedoms—already noted in several countries in the last report—has continued. In the Soviet Union, a systematic campaign of searches, arrests and trials directed against advocates of human, religious and national minority rights have evidently been launched. Some 100 people are known to have been arrested or tried since October. The administrative and evidently illegal exile of Academician Sakharov on 22nd of January removed one of the dissidents' major links with the outside world Sakharov's present isolation has given rise to fears for his and his wife's health and safety. In addition to the Helsinki monitoring groups in Moscow and in the Ukraine, several of whose members were sentenced to long terms in camps and internal exile, including most recently Malva Landa and Viktor Nekipelov, the main targets of the drive to sweep dissidents out of sight have included the publishers of samizdat material, unofficial Christian groups such as the Reform Baptists, dissident 1291 Orthodox priests and believers and a body investigating Soviet political misuse of psychiatry, three of whose members, A Podrabinek, V Bakhmin and L Ternovsky have recently been arrested. After 5 months' detention, Father Dmitry Dudko was produced on Moscow television on 20th of June to confess to and renounce his errors including consorting with correspondents and other foreigners, and allowing his "anti-Soviet" and "slanderous" works to be published abroad.
§ 7. Whereas a record number of 50,000 Soviet Jews emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1979, the rate of emigration has declined from a level of over 4,000 a month in November to some 2,200 in April and May this year. In several areas, the emigration authorities are refusing permission to emigrate on the grounds that the prerequisite invitations from abroad are from relatives with insufficiently close kinship. Emigration from other ethnic groups (Armenians, Germans, Greeks and Spaniards) continues to run at a lower and variable level. In recent months, a small number of dissidents have also been permitted to emigrate, or been forcibly expelled, as in the case of Vladimir Borisov.
§ 8. In Czechoslovakia, the appeal of 6 members of the Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Prosecuted (VONS) sentenced on charges of subversion, was dismissed in December, despite a petition said to be supported by over 700 Czechoslovak signatories and official representations of concern in the West. Western lawyers were prevented from attending the appeal, and several who had travelled to Prague were expelled. The remaining 4 members of VONS arrested in May 1979 were released, but are still under investigation. Harassment of an active group of Catholics in Bohemia and Moravia has continued. Another target of police and judicial action is a small group calling itself the Independent Socialists, whose leader Rudolf Battek has repeatedly been detained and now awaits trial on a charge of assaulting a policeman.
§ 9. More recently the Czechoslovak authorities have gained further notoriety in the West through their 1292 campaign to disrupt unofficial philosophy lectures organised by Dr. Julius Tomin, a Charter 77 signatory. Academic seminars held in private flats have been broken up and participants detained for a day or two at a time. On at least six separate occasions, foreign visiting lecturers (including the Master of Balliol College, Oxford, in April) were prevented from delivering their contribution, detained and subsequently expelled. So far there has been no satisfactory explanation of which Czechoslovak law the visitors had broken.
§ 10. Under the amnesty declared in the GDR to mark the country's anniversary, just under 22,000 people were released by mid-December. Of these, it is estimated that some 2,500–3,000 were "political" prisoners, who are thought to remain under supervision, to have little choice of employment and to have to report regularly to the police. There is so far no confirmed report of any prosecution under the tighter public order legislation introduced in the course of 1979, with the apparent object of deterring certain dissident intellectuals from communicating with foreigners. Following the expulsion of Huebner and Bahro, several more writers critical of the régime have been permitted to leave for the FRG (some apparently with the option of returning to the GDR).
§ 11. In Poland, whose record on human rights has been better than that of most of the countries in Eastern Europe, there has been an uncharacteristic increase in police activity against dissidents, in the period leading to the Party Congress in February and the parliamentary elections in March. Leading dissidents were detained on the eve of unauthorised anniversary demonstrations in November and December (and 4 were subsequently sentenced to 1–4 months' imprisonment). Reprisals in the form of sackings were taken against a number of workers in Gdansk in February for commemorating the December 1970 food price riots. Members of the "Flying University" (which organises private lectures on subjects not covered by the official curriculum) came under increased police pressure, and 2 are known to have been fined. The editor of Robotnik, the journal of 1293 the unofficial Committee of Social Self-Defence, was sentenced in March to 3 years' imprisonment and a very heavy fine, for various alleged criminal offences, while Miroslaw Chojecki, director of the unregistered Nowa publishing house, was detained for over a month, released, and then tried on charges of stealing a state-owned duplicating machine. He and one co-defendant were fined and given prison sentences of 18 months each, suspended for three years; two other defendants were fined and given one-year sentences, also suspended for 3 years.
§ 12. In Romania, no new incidents have been reported. However the activities of SLOMR, the Free Trade Union of Romanian Working Men, have effectively been suppressed. It is believed that its leaders and Father Calciu, the dissident Orthodox priest, remain in prison.
§ Confidence-building measures
§ 13. The Soviet Union recently gave notification of an exercise involving some 30,000 men of the Soviet Group of Forces in the GDR in mid-July. As on most previous occasions of this type, observers are not being invited. Apart from this, no major military exercise had been notified by the Soviet Union or its allies under the terms of the Final Act since last July. There is no reason to suppose that any notifiable exercise has in fact taken place in any of the Warsaw Pact countries.
§ 14. In December, the Warsaw Pact Foreign Ministers collectively endorsed the additional confidence-building measures put forward for consideration by President Brezhnev last October. More recently, Warsaw Pact leaders have stated that it would be appropriate for the further development of confidence-building measures to be considered during the first stage of a conference on military détente and disarmament in Europe, after discussion at the Madrid Review Conference. In this connection, NATO Ministers meeting on 25th and 26th of June recalled their agreement last December to work towards the adoption during the Madrid meeting, as part of a balanced outcome, of a mandate for further negotiations 1294 under the aegis of the CSCE as proposed by the Government of France, on militarily significant and verifiable confidence-building measures applicable to the whole of Europe, including the European part of the Soviet Union. They expressed the hope that circumstances would permit concrete results in this respect at the Madrid meeting and agreed to continue their common efforts in this area whilst recognising that these same circumstances required NATO countries to evaluate developments on a constant basis.
§ Basket II—Co-operation in the Field of Economics, of Science and Technology and of the Environment
§ 15. There has been no change in the factors (including shortage of hard currency) which increasingly incline Eastern European countries towards counter-trade policies in defining their import requirements. This continues to he a serious constraint on the development of trade relations with Eastern European countries; in increasing measure, counter-trade and buy-back provisions have been a determining element in major contracts (particularly in the GDR and Romania).
§ 16. Two recent developments, which have still to be tested in practice, may ultimately have a beneficial effect on trade by simplifying administrative procedures and authorising new forms of international economic co-operation. In April, the Czechoslovak Minister for Foreign Trade outlined measures that would enable certain Czechoslovak production enterprises to conduct foreign trade directly, without passing through foreign trade organisations. In March, a Bulgarian decree provided for various forms of partnership between Bulgarian organisations and foreign firms. Hungarian interest in developing new aspects of co-operation, including joint manufacturing and marketing, was reflected in an Anglo/Hungarian seminar on co-operation in third markets held in Budapest.
§ Business contacts and facilities
§ 17. In general, there has been little change in the practical circumstances governing the day-to-day activities of firms operating in Eastern European 1295 countries. Despite the provisions of the Final Act, firms trading with the Soviet Union generally still have inadequate access to end-users and continue to suffer delays, inconvenience and uncertainty arising from dealings through the intermediary of designated foreign trade organisations. These difficulties are reflected in the unduly protracted course of some negotiations, and also in the delays experienced by some firms in securing accreditation. Practice in Eastern European countries is not uniform and is generally better in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Firms seeking to establish representative offices still face problems of accommodation in all countries, though the pressure is easing as new hotels or trade centres come into service. Rents, payable in hard currency, for office space or converted hotel suites tend to be high and in certain countries are rising fast.
§ Economic and commercial information
§ 18. There has been no development in the general quantity, quality or timeliness of economic and commercial information, either published or made available in response to specific inquiries. There has in fact been a further deterioration in the amount of detail in the published statistics of the Soviet Union and GDR for 1979. Elsewhere the range of performance previously noted has been maintained, with Hungary and Poland generally more forthcoming than others in releasing information necessary for making a realistic market analysis.
§ Basket III—Co-operation in Humanitarian and Other Fields
§ Human contacts
§ 19. In general, the modest improvements noted in previous reports in the handling of applications for family visits, family reunification and binational marriages have been maintained though the procedures are protracted, expensive and in some cases require repeated applications.
§ 20. Czechoslovakia and the GDR were reported to have reduced their backlog of exit applications for binational marriages and family reunification at the end of last year (though 1296 none of them involved travel to the UK). In Czechoslovakia, the time taken to process applications for family visits has been reduced from 3–5 weeks to a matter of days. Exit visas for short absences are normally obtainable if the visitor is financially supported from abroad; but difficulties arise if any family member is recorded as an "illegal" emigrant. The cost of an emigration passport varies (from a small sum up to about £1,000) according to age and educational status. In the GDR, as previously noted, 90% of the successful applicants for family visits to the UK (136 cases) are pensioners. There has been no progress in the case of a British subject refused permission to visit her children and grandchildren in the GDR, and one long-standing bi-national marriage application has still not been approved.
§ 21. Soviet performance continues to be disappointing: only three of the 23 outstanding personal cases in lists submitted to the Soviet authorities last year have been favourably resolved. In recent practice, the Soviet wives of British subjects have generally been permitted to emigrate within a few months of marriage; but there are currently a number of cases where marriages have been prevented through the denial of an exit visa to a Soviet woman, or of an entry visa to a British fiancé. In Poland, there are few serious problems in this area. Of about 8,600 private Polish applications for UK entry visas over 6 months, some 5,000 are estimated to have been for family visits (higher than the total for all the other countries put together). Emigration passports (mainly for wives of British subjects) are normally granted within four months (at a cost of about £70, plus in some cases a refund of education costs); two recent applications have, however, been refused.
§ 22. There has been no substantial change in the practices of Hungary (with some 500 family visitors to the UK over six months), Romania (with 73) or Bulgaria (with 101).
§ 23. Although the rationing of foreign currency allocations for private journeys is clearly a limiting factor, there has been no overall reduction in the number of tourist visits to the UK from Eastern 1297 Europe. Tourism in the opposite direction is normally encouraged as a valuable source of hard currency, and the services offered by state tourist organisations have expanded correspondingly over the years. In recent months, however, there has been a disturbing series of incidents involving British (and other Western) visitors to the USSR. The Government has protested to the Soviet authorities in Moscow and to the Soviet Ambassador in London about particular cases of assault, intimidation and harassment of British visitors, some of whom appear to have been singled out for such treatment as a result of their having made contact with Soviet citizens.
§ Information
§ 24. There has been no improvement in the situation described in earlier reports as regards the availability of Western press publications. Except in Poland, where limited quantities of Western publications are to be found on sale at normal outlets, Western non-communist newspapers and periodicals are not available to the public. Token quantities can occasionally be found in hard currency hotels and airport kiosks, basically for sale to foreigners. Western communist newspapers are generally available at normal outlets.
§ 25. There has been a further welcome increase in the number of British books on sale to the Soviet public, and in the number of bookshops selling foreign books in Moscow and in the provinces. Demand is brisk, despite the relatively high rouble price and the limited range of titles.
§ 26. In Romania, the official party daily and other journals have for the first time reproduced material from Panoramic Britanic, the British Government's official Romanian-language information magazine.
§ Improvement of working conditions for journalists
§ 27. Working conditions remain professionally uncongenial for journalists in most of the countries, though instances of actual harassment declined 1298 in comparison with some earlier periods.
§ 28. The Czechoslovak authorities remain both hypersensitive to the contents of Western press reports and unhelpful in their dealings with Western journalists. They withdrew the accreditation of the BBC Central European correspondent in December 1979, as a mark of disapproval of his material. They have also recently impeded the normal operation of news agencies by restricting the type of work undertaken by their Czechoslovak support staff. In principle, however, accredited correspondents and visiting journalists are free to travel throughout the country (under varying degrees of surveillance).
§ 29. In contrast, a British journalist in the Soviet Union has recently experienced difficulties in visiting Tallinn and Kurgan, two cities ostensibly open to foreigners.
§ 30. The regulations concerning foreign journalists and the public order legislation introduced in the GDR in 1979 continue to circumscribe the activities of accredited foreign correspondents. Correspondents from some Western countries find that applications to interview GDR citizens are processed excessively slowly. Restrictions on the information activities of diplomatic missions arc as strict as ever.
§ 31. There are no British journalists permanently accredited in Hungary, but visitors (including some of Hungarian origin) are rarely refused entry, and have reasonable freedom of movement and access to sources. Romanian officials are normally helpful to visitors, including television film crews; but the Government has recently had occasion to protest over the treatment of a British journalist working for the Observer, who, on being refused an entry visa on arrival at Bucharest airport, was detained for two days and nights while awaiting a suitable departure flight. During this time he was denied access to British consular officials before being expelled. Another journalist, the Guardian correspondent resident in Belgrade, was the object of very close surveillance during a visit to Bucharest in May.
1299§ Culture and Education
§ 32. Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the banishment of Academician Sakharov, Anglo/Soviet cultural exchanges declined sharply, as planned visits and concert tours were cancelled or postponed on both sides. Bilateral cultural, educational and scientific exchange programmes with Eastern European countries have not been adversely affected. There are in fact welcome signs of expansion in this area despite financial stringencies. One disappointment is the continuing difficulty experienced in educational exchanges with Romania, including the organisation of high-level academic events.
§ Science
§ 33. In accordance with the relevant provisions of the Helsinki Final Act and the decisions of the Belgrade review meeting, a Scientific Forum involving "leading personalities in science from participating countries" took place in Hamburg from 18th of February to 3rd March. The meeting brought together distinguished scientists from the participating states as individuals rather than as representatives of governments. Many Western scientists considered the meeting to have been of only moderate value in strictly scientific terms. However, the atmosphere generated by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the exiling of Dr Sakharov in January 1980 meant that the meeting had a particularly political flavour. Western scientists were forthright in criticising the Soviet Union's treatment of many of its scientists and the difficulties experienced in establishing direct contact with them. The final document of the Forum duly noted that "respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms (Principle VII) by all states represented one of the foundations for significant improvement of their mutual relations and of international scientific co-operation at all levels".
§ Conclusions
§ 34. The CSCE process cannot be divorced from the general course of world events. Soviet action in Afghanistan and increasing violations of human rights in the Soviet Union and certain other Eastern European countries are an affront to the spirit and letter of the 1300 Helsinki Final Act. Such events have altered drastically the political conditions in which next November's Madrid Review Meeting will now take place and considerably reduced the chances of making progress. At the same time the Government believes that the significance of the Madrid meeting has if anything increased, since it will provide a necessary opportunity for East and West to take stock of the causes of the current state of their relations.
§ 35. The Government remains attached both to the CSCE process and to the promotion of genuine détente. But this can only be on the basis that the participating states abide by the norms of international behaviour. The Soviet Union cannot continue to act as in recent months and expect the Madrid meeting to confirm that business is as usual in Europe. It is for this reason that priority must be given at Madrid to a full, frank and thorough review of implementation focusing particularly on the shortcomings of those concerned as measured against the commitments undertaking in the Final Act. The search for genuine détente and the CSCE process itself would suffer were this responsibility to be evaded.
§ 36. The prospects for the development of new proposals at Madrid are not encouraging in present circumstances. The introduction of new proposals where agreements already reached are not being honoured would severely strain the credibility of the CSCE process. The Government is none the less prepared to do business at Madrid on a realistic basis provided that the rules of international behaviour are respected. We will, therefore, be ready to make progress, but only on the basis of proposals which are substantial in content and capable of producing real and tangible benefits. The worth of new proposals must be decided on the basis of their substance and their appropriateness will depend on developments both before and during the Madrid meeting.
§ 37. It is in this spirit of realism and pragmatism that the Government, together with its partners in the Nine and in NATO, will approach the final stages of preparations for the forthcoming review meeting in Madrid.