ultimate guarantee of world security, stability, and justice. Moreover, United States support for individual human rights in a country with a repressive government--no matter what the ideology--wins the friendship of that country's citizens. If we support oppression, we gain only their hatred and ultimately threaten United States security.

A few weeks ago Americans gathered in another part of this city to break ground for the construction of a museum devoted to the memory of six million people who were slaughtered by the forces of Hitler as the world pretended not to see. Too often we look back to the Holocaust as an isolated reign of terror unimaginable, impossible in today's world. Recalling the "madness and horror of Hitler's time," Representative Sidney R. Yates said, "we pledge to the lost and we pledge to the living--we will not forget." What kind of a memory is it that allows us to believe we know better than we did, to weep for the past and stand silent and indifferent to a present that knows the most horrible acts of barbarism?

Mr. YATRON. Thank you, Mr. Cox, for your statement and also for the recommendations that you're making to the subcommittee which will be very helpful to all of us.

I'd like to ask a question of either or both of you. Has Amnesty International been successful in raising the issue of the phenomenon of torture in countries that employ this practice, and have you been able to get a satisfactory response?

Mr. Cox. Well, I wouldn't say we've been as successful as we'd like at all. The common response of governments that torture— that have been known to do it systematically on a very wide scale is of course to deny it. And the second-most common response is to denounce Amnesty International, either for being left wing or for being right wing. One of the things we have done in this campaign to get around that problem is that we have identified specific steps that will indicate whether a government is serious when it denies that it's torturing; if a government tells us, as they all do, that they are not torturing, then they ought to be able to explain to us or to detail for us the investigations they have undertaken into the many allegations of torture that have come to our attention.

They ought to be willing to put an end to incommunicado detention, which is a very big problem and one that is almost always a precondition to torturing. And one which is a problem in countries that range from Turkey, where it can be up to 45 days, to the occupied territories in the Middle East, where people can be detained incommunicado up to 17 days.

So we have come up with specific ways that a government can demonstrate what they all say when we bring this to their atten

tion, which is that this is absolutely unthinkable, there could be no torture in their country.

Mr. YATRON. Mr. Healey, do you want to comment?

Mr. HEALEY. I think, in particular, Mr. Chairman, incommunicado detention is one issue we'd like to highlight before your subcommittee. If that could be gotten at, for instance, when you all travel, you could stop and ask about that, that's when the torture goes to work, when you can't get to them. They say to the prisoner, we are God in here; and that's when they go to work.

When you cut down on that time, you cut down on the brutality of the state and its ability to torture. We'd like to urge you every time you travel and every time the question of torture comes up to take a look at that time interval, because it's then that the torture occurs. We have a computer system, that if you are in fear of torture enables us to send out swiftly telegrams to that prison. And we feel if we can deliver within 72 hours of the arrest we can stop the torture about 50 percent of that time, because nobody wants to be identified as a torturer.

So there are things that can be effectively done but we must tell Members of Congress that we work against a giant; thousands are hurt everyday.

Mr. YATRON. Mr. Healey, often governments propagandize the issue of human rights rather than dealing with the facts. How can a government be influenced to face a threatening situation, such as acknowledging torture of its citizens, instead of spouting rhetoric and ideology?

Mr. HEALEY. I think what's important for Congress is, when it looks at a government and assesses it through our ambassadors, that our ambassadors in fact be asked to highlight in the reporting to the Congress exactly what's going on in that country and really put pressure on those ambassadors to deliver that kind of information. I think that would be most helpful to you so that you would, in fact, have the nitty grit sense of what's going on in that country, rather than a document that at times really does not tell the truth. Governments could be looked at to see if they sustain and support human rights, domestic human rights groups in their country. If they're shooting them or if they put up props just to represent themselves, and you know that, you have that sense of it when you visit these countries. You should look at that, the domestic human rights capacity in that country, and if it's not there at all or if it is a phony kind of cover, you'll know what they're doing in that country.

But the critical analysis of looking at all the good human rights groups, which you'll hear in the next two days, look at all of that; not in the sense of friend and foe, which we often times worry the Congress does, but in the sense of the human condition of that country as it's being hurt by its own government.

Mr. YATRON. What role do nongovernmental organizations play in raising public awareness pertaining to torture?

Mr. Cox. Well, we try to play a very important role. And I think our role is to bring, to mobilize average people and citizens at all levels of society to take some kind of action against torture and that's what we're trying to do. I think we've been effective in raising the issue of torture.

I think more people are aware today than ever before that these things are happening. Ten years ago, Amnesty launched its first campaign against torture and I think it was a shock to the world to learn that more than 60 nations were systematically inflicting pain on their citizens.

But the reason we're here today is because after 10 years of trying to combat torture, along with other nongovernmental organizations, we're very aware that it's not enough, and we believe that the U.S. Government can greatly add to the work that we are trying to do.

Mr. HEALEY. Could I add to that, Mr. Yatron?

Mr. YATRON. Sure.

Mr. HEALEY. Thank you. Many of us in the human rights movement are brothers and sisters and we work together. Other human rights groups do good work like Amnesty International, though at times we get the attention.

But take Amnesty International as one unit. Worldwide, it takes no more than the cost of 2 months of the Peace Corps budget, not even half of the F-15; we're the nobodies of the Earth; we're not the slick, the powerful, the strong, the mighty; we're the nobodies. We're the people who write letters because we are angry about something.

We're like the founder of Amnesty, he was mad about something, he wrote a letter, and got a reaction. That's who we are and that's all we are. We want to write about human rights violations, and we want to do something about it. And the outrage could be spread within the Congress so that sense, that rage, is felt because this country has a moral duty to itself and to its people to represent high principle in this matter and never let it be said that this country ever shared in the damaging of another human being.

It's unacceptable to any religion, any country, and in fact, we've all signed a Universal Declaration at the United Nations. We should abide by it and Amnesty is one of the groups with a lot of other groups that hold governments to their agreements, and we should embarass them every time.

Mr. YATRON. Thank you.

Mr. Solomon.

Mr. SOLOMON. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I was just interested in the last statement of the gentleman saying that all religions are against torture; certainly, they are. Unfortunately, in the Soviet Union, and under Communist doctrines, there is an athiestic philosophy. Of course they don't believe in God and they don't believe in religion. I was very much interested in your efforts to prevent torture from starting in the first place, and the telegrams that you mentioned.

Is the Soviet Union, and other Soviet bloc countries like Bulgaria, Rumania, even Ethiopia responsive to these kind of telegrams, and if so, how do you determine what the results were in stopping the torture? I think it's good and I'm not in any way being critical; I'm just wondering how you determine it, if they are responsive behind the Iron Curtain?

Mr. Cox. Well, it's very hard to determine, obviously. I mean, there's no way to do a study where you have a sample group where you don't appeal and you have another one where you do appeal.

Certainly as you go around the globe there are countries that are more responsive than others.

Frankly speaking, the Soviet Union is not an easy country to get a response from, apart from getting denounced as the CIA. In particular forms of torture, we feel that it is possible to bring pressure that's effective in the Soviet Union. One of the common forms of torture in the Soviet Union is psychiatric abuse. People are put into hospitals and inflicted with drugs that are inappropriate. Now, there you do not have a situation where they have been sentenced to a term, where there is no loss of face for the Soviet Union to let someone go, because they've never said how long they would hold that person.

In these cases, in one of the most dominant forms of torture in the Soviet Union, we do feel that the letters and telegrams and the pressure from the outside and particularly from the more powerful bodies, as the World Medical Association, have been effective in getting people out of psychiatric institutions before permanent damage was done to them.

Frankly, once somebody is sentenced to a term in the Soviet Union, it's very rare, in fact, I don't know of any cases 'myself where they are released before the end of the sentence. But certainly in terms of stopping the treatment, in terms of getting medical care, we feel that we have been effective. There have been times when the pressure has gotten someone who was being tortured much needed medical care, so there is some responsiveness even though it is not one of the easier situations. Mr. SOLOMON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. YATRON. The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Kostmayer. Mr. KOSTMAYER. I wanted to ask what effect this administration's attitude here in Washington today has had on this situation around the world of whether or not there has been an increase or a decrease or neither?

Mr. HEALEY. We're often asked to go on television to compare one administration with another and we don't do that at Amnesty International; we're not interested in that; what we're interested in is that the Government that is in power reacts to any human rights violations by any government. We protect our independence by going after any country that's violating human rights at any one time.

Mr. Cox. I think it's impossible for us to determine whether torture is increasing or decreasing, first of all.

Mr. KOSTMAYER. Well, it's not so much that I want to know whether it's increasing or decreasing, but what affect, I mean, surely, the policies of this administration and past administrations in this country, have some affect on torture, on the reaction to governments to our own country, for the aid we provide or don't provide, and that's what I'm

Mr. Cox. Insofar as we send signals to other governments that human rights is being given a lower priority, insofar as we remain silent about extremely aggrevious violations of human rights, insofar as we do not take the kind of steps that I've indicated could be taken even without any legislation, that is to say, encouraging State Department people and ambassadors to intervene, it has a very negative affect on the human rights situation.

Insofar as this administration has engaged in those kinds of practices, it's had a negative affect. When this administration has in fact raised its voice and intervened, it has often had a very extremely positive affect. In South Korea, for example, where they raised their voices over the case of Mr. Kim Dae Jung, that was certainly a major factor in getting him freed.

So, its a mixed picture; it would be very hard for us to give you a blanket statement saying it's all been negative or it's all been positive.

Mr. KOSTMAYER. Are you able to say whether this administration's been raising its voice as frequently as administrations in the past?

Mr. Cox. Well, I think we could say safely that it has not been raising its voice anywhere nearly as often as we would like it to. Mr. HEALEY. Let me explain my silence. I was a Peace Corps director in Lesotho, which is surrounded by South Africa, with 140 volunteers there, before I became director of Amnesty International. Right after I came back, the sale of shock batons to South Africa went through. The Commerce Department let it go through and the State Department said it slipped through.

Mr. KOSTMAYER. This was in what year?

Mr. HEALEY. This was 3 years ago, 21⁄2 years ago in fact, and once you've been in that part of the world, to let shock batons go through, there is a signal somehow. There's some message to the people of southern Africa, that is so abhorrent and so unbelievable it borders on shame. Because they look to this country, they dress like us, they listen to our music, they hope one day they'll be like us. For these shock batons to arrive like that; it is an insult. I think we want to say that we worked very closely with the Assistant Secretary of State; they've been very receptive to us.

Secretary Haig joined us once in stopping some executions in South Africa. Secretary Shultz joined us in stopping some executions in Liberia.

So we worked with them, but we always want more. There's too much agony in the world; there are too many people being hurt by their governments, and we need this administration, this body to do more and more and more, and never is there enough until torture is stopped and eliminated the way slavery was.

Mr. KOSTMAYER. I guess what I was after is, there's been a great deal of criticism in this country and in the Congress of this administration's record on human rights, as you know, especially in comparison to the prior administration.

What I was after from the experts is to find out whether this criticism, especially in comparison to the Carter years, is valid or invalid.

Mr. HEALEY. I think that will come from other people, Mr. Kostmayer, because what we do is take the human rights violations, one by one, and criticize them within the country as such. And we don't try to get into comparisons between this President and the last President. Hopefully, we do our job with both of them. Mr. KOSTMAYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. YATRON. Mr. Solomon.

Mr. SOLOMON. Might I just follow up with another question?