Monday, December 7,1987/The Battalion/Page 7
World and Nation
Observers think Soviets
disagree on rights issue
WASHINGTON (AP) — When
President Reagan and Mikhail Gor
bachev sit down to discuss human
rights concerns, they will be on dif
ferent wavelengths, say observers of
life in the Soviet Union.
“The Soviets stress the Marxist
idea of the economic man, and ac
cept the view that man and woman
only want food, clothing and shel
ter,” Sen. Alan Cranston, D-Calif.,
said. “Our view goes far beyond that,
to spiritual, intellectual and moral
aspects. That is a fundamental dif
ference between our two societies on
human rights.”
Thus, when the United States ac
cuses the Soviet Union of human
rights violations, it points to the esti
mated 300 people imprisoned be
cause they criticized the govern
ment, to the hundreds of thousands
of Jews who want to leave but are
denied visas, and to those in labor
camps or psychiatric hospitals be
cause of their political and religious
beliefs.
The Soviets counter that U.S. offi
cials should not presume to interfere
in their internal affairs, or as Gorba
chev put it in a televised interview
last week, “You should not try and
go into another man’s monastery
with your own charter.”
They, in turn, accuse the United
States of hypocrisy. U.S. streets are
full of homeless people, they say. To
grow up poor and black in the
United States is to be deprived of
fundamental rights, the Soviets add.
And they point to cases where
would-be immigrants and visitors
are denied visas because of their po
litical beliefs.
According to international human
rights observers, both sides are right.
“They are of a different kind, per
haps a different magnitude,” Arthur
Helton, director of the political asy
lum project for the Lawyers Com
mittee for Human Rights, said.
One area of concern to human
rights watchers is the use of the
death penalty. Amnesty Interna
tional regards that as its top human
rights concern in the United States
and one of many problems in the So
viet Union.
So far this year, Soviet authorities
have imposed capital punishment on
six prisoners and sentenced another
21 persons to die, according to the
organization’s figures, taken from
official public accounts. In the
United States, there have been 25
executions and 255 new death sen
tences during the same period.
Susan Osnos, spokesman for Hel
sinki Watch, said monitoring groups
also gauge the behavior of both sides
by how well they adhere to agreed-
on human rights principles, like the
freedoms set forth in the 1975 Hel
sinki accords. While her group does
not compare countries’ perfor
mances, the United States generally
comes out far ahead by such stan
dards, and the Soviets don’t like to
dwell on the subject, she said.
They prefer to talk about Soviet
society’s guarantees of a job, a place
to live, medical care and education.
“In terms of social protectedness,
our society is much higher than
yours,” Gorbachev said last week.
Osnos said, “We talk about issues
of freedom -r- freedom of express
ion, freedom to travel, the reunifica
tion of families, the people locked
up for their political beliefs.”
Soviet agents intimidate
journalists at Moscow rally
MOSCOW (AP) — Hundreds
of burly men in civilian clothes
roughed up refuseniks and jour
nalists Sunday and knocked down
and detained U.S. TV-newsman
Peter Arnett during rival demon
strations on the eve of the U.S.-
Soviet summit.
At least 100 refuseniks — Sovi
ets denied permission to emigrate
S— fiqfd story, pqg» 1
— planned to take part in a pro
test against Soviet restrictions on
emigration.
But at least 27 were detained
en route to the Moscow demon
stration, and the others were
overwhelmed by about 200 plain
clothes KGB agents and about
100 members of the officially
supported Soviet Peace Commit
tee.
The agents jammed Smolensky
Square and jostled refuseniks
who managed to get through po
lice cordons blocking all en
trances to the protest site — a
small triangle of grass opposite
the Foreign Ministry.
They shoved and occasionally
threw punches at refuseniks and
Western journalists trying to pho
tograph the clash.
Alexander Feldman, a refuse
nik and would-be demonstrator,
told the Associated Press he spent
Saturday night at his sister’s
apartment in an attempt to avoid
Soviet authorities.
But when he left his sister’s
home Sunday morning to go to
the demonstration, Feldman said,
three men put him into a waiting
black sedan and drove him to a
pxjlice station 40 miles outside
Moscow. He said he was released
about 2:30 p.m., two hours after
the protest was over.
About 15 minutes into the re
fusenik protest, plainclothes
agents knocked down and struck
Arnett, the Moscow correspon
dent for Cable Network News,
and then husded him into a bus
and drove him to a nearby office.
Arnett said he was released af
ter about four hours after being
presented with a written accusa
tion that he assaulted a Soviet citi
zen by knocking off his hat with a
microphone. Arnett said he wrote
a formal denial of the allegations.
At least five busloads of plain
clothes agents arrived with signs
proclaiming support for peace
and opposition to President Rea
gan’s plans for a space-based mis
sile defense system, “Star Wars.”
Agents surrounded the refuse
niks, jabbing them with their el
bows and the wooden staffs of the
p>eace signs.
The agents also used the peace
signs to block photography by
Western correspondents.
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Welfare program fraud may cost
government $1 billion this year
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fraud in
the federal government’s major wel
fare program for mothers and chil
dren could be costing $1 billion a
year according to a report by the De
partment of Health and Human
services’ inspector general.
The rep>ort estimates that federal
and state governments could save
$800 million a year with more em
phasis on weeding out unqualified
applicants under the Aid to Families
With Dependent Children program.
The repiort, obtained late Friday,
emphasized that “for the sake of
clarity, we have used the broader
definition of fraud that includes
unintentional misrepresentations of
facts by clients” as well the kind of
intentional representation that could
lead to criminal prosecution.
In a written response to a draft of
the repiort the head of the Family
Support Administration, Wayne A.
Stanton, said he “agreed whole
heartedly” with the need to reduce
fraud and would “look into the feasi
bility” of implementing the report’s
recommendations.
But he said he could not accept
the estimate of the scope of the
problem.
Carol Delosreyes, a spokesman
for the agency, said of the final re-
p>ort: “We have just gotten it. Since
we normally have about 60 days to
comment, it would be inappropriate
at this pxiint to say anything about
it.”
The AFDC program is opierated
jointly by federal, state and local
governments, with the states respon
sible for detecting fraud.
“The incidence of actual AFDC
fraud cannot be accurately deter
mined with existing data collection
methods,” the repiort said. “How
ever, experts agree it is consistently
understated.”
Senate to vote on tax increase
as part of deficit reduction plan
WASHINGTON (AP) — For the
third time in six years, the Senate is
about to decide whether taxes
should be raised to reduce the fed
eral budget deficit.
Senate leaders hope to take a final
vote this week on a $23 billion tax in
crease that is the centerpiece of a
plan to slash the deficit by $76 billion
over the next 22 months. Spending
cuts that account for most of the sav
ing are wrapped into a giant money
bill on which a Senate vote also could
come late in the week.
The framework for the anti-defi
cit measures was worked out by Pres
ident Reagan and congressional
leaders in a much-publicized effort
to show that partisan differences can
be put aside in the national interest.
Nevertheless, there is opposition
to the plan from those who are
against any tax increase and from
others who say the spending cuts are
much too timid.
Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas,
chairman of the Finance Committee,
which wrote the tax bill, predicted it
will pass because it is “as painless as
possible” — meaning the impact will
hardly be felt by typical taxpayers.
The burden will fall almost entirely
on corporations and upper-income
individuals.
Sen. William Roth, R-Del., said he
probably will vote no. He character
ized the tax plan as “economic leech
ing,” saying “raising taxes when we
are trying to strengthen the econ
omy is like bloodletting for an ane
mic patient.”
Even so, Roth said, “I expect the
whole thing to get through because
the president and the leadership are
behind it.”
Jury deliberates in four teen-agers’ trial
for allegedly beating, killing black man
NEW YORK (AP) — It is difficult
to imagine the four teen-agers acting
as killers as they mingle in court
house haUways with parents and
girlfriends, looking stiffly out of
place in their fresh dark suits.
Special state prosecutor Charles J.
Hynes has spient the past two months
trying to prove that the four white
youths — Scott Kern, Jon Lester and
Michael Pirone, all 18, and Jason La-
done, 17 — are responsible for the
death of a 23-year-old black man.
The victim, Michael Griffith, was
among three blacks who strayed into
the largely white neighborhood of
Howard Beach last Dec. 20.
Kern and Lester are charged with
murder, manslaughter, assault, riot
and conspiracy; Pirone and Ladone
are charged with manslaughter, as
sault and riot.
On Wednesday, a jury at state Su
preme Court — the state’s trial-level
court — is expiected to begin deliber
ations to select between two widely
diverging accounts of an incident
that has taken on the symbolic
weight of a lynching for many blacks
in New York.
The prosecution’s view is that the
white youths taunted, chased and
beat the black men in a racial attack
that culminated when a terrified
Griffith ran onto a highway and was
struck by a car.
Then there is the defense view —
that the three black men were up to
no good when they entered the
white neighborhood; that they were
responsible for the confrontation
with the white youths; that Griffith’s
death was an unfortunate accident
exacerbated by his own cocaine use.
Yet the job of the 12 jurors, half
of whom are non-white, is hardly as
simple as choosing between the two
opposing viewpoints they will hear
in closing arguments today and to
morrow.
More than 70 witnesses testified at
the trial, which began Oct. 7, and
their accounts are a testament to the
fragility of human memory. Hardly
any two poople were in complete
agreement about what took place.
A major point of contention is the
manner and location of Griffith’s
death.
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