Kremlin Attitude Toward Rights Much Better, Global Body Asserts

The Soviet Union’s attitude toward human rights has improved dramatically, and most political prisoners have been freed, although abuses persist and the picture is “deeply confusing,” Amnesty International says.

In a report published today, the worldwide human rights movement says its list of Soviet citizens imprisoned for nonviolent exercise of their human rights shrank from 600 three years ago to about 90 in July, and would have been lower but for further arrests.

An Amnesty International delegation, allowed into the Soviet Union for the first time last March, found that “the Soviet perspective on human rights has shifted dramatically since 1986,” the report said.

“The most promising prospect for long-term reform is a major review of law . . . apparently aimed at bringing Soviet law into line with international standards,” the report said.

For the first time, human rights issues are being freely discussed and acknowledged by the authorities to be an international issue, not an internal matter immune from outside scrutiny, it said.

The Soviet Union hopes to hold the Helsinki Review Conference on Human Rights in Moscow in 1991.

Amnesty International said that of the 600 prisoners, 337 were released early, and another 79 were freed from psychiatric hospitals where some had spent 15 years or more against their will.

“Most of these 416 people were prosecuted for expressing nonconformist opinions, or for their religious activities. Some had been arrested for trying to leave the U.S.S.R.,” it said.

“They make up the largest single group of prisoners of conscience to have been freed since the 1950s. Political arrests have also fallen noticeably since 1986,” it said.