Reagan Chastises Friends and Foes on Human Rights Abuses

President Reagan on Tuesday chastised friends and foes alike for human rights violations, calling on South Africa to end its policy of apartheid and criticizing the Soviet-backed regimes in Afghanistan and Cambodia.

Reagan used a White House ceremony commemorating the 37th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to remind Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev of the pledge to support humanitarian issues that the two superpower leaders issued at the end of their summit conference last month in Geneva.

“Americans will be watching hopefully to see whether that pledge is observed,” the President said. “Make no mistake about it. Human rights will continue to have a profound effect on the United States-Soviet relationship as a whole because they are fundamental to our vision of an enduring peace.”

Reagan, who has drawn criticism in the past for concentrating his fire on human rights abuses in Communist nations, said that in Chile and the Philippines, “we have shown our strong concern with our friends (who) deviate from a strongly established democratic tradition.”

Also, the President said, the state of emergency declared in parts of South Africa “has given the police . . . essentially unlimited powers to silence critics of the government.” Thousands of opponents of apartheid, the nation’s policy of racial separation, have been detained “and denied even elementary judicial protection,” the President said.

‘Apartheid is Abhorrent’

“I have said that apartheid is abhorrent. It is time that the government of South Africa took steps to end it and to reach out for compromise and reconciliation to end the turmoil in that strife-torn land,” he said.

“In Afghanistan and Cambodia, . . . alien dictatorships, with the support of foreign occupation troops, subject their peoples to unceasing warfare.”