[net.politics] Yugo automobile and human rights

whg1@mtuxo.UUCP (w.georger) (08/23/85)

REFERENCES:  <292@ubvax.UUCP> <28200051@inmet.UUCP>, <163@gargoyle.UUCP>

protection
protection
Some Americans will soon be buying the $4000 Yugo automobiles imported from
Yugoslavia.  I would not want to buy a product from any country that does
not at least have free speech and free press.  Does anyone on the net have
any easily verifiable facts/opinions regarding the status of those rights
in the State of Yugoslavia?
Norm Andrews
AT&T Information Systems Laboratories
Building 114A
Room HO1C325
Crawfords Corner Road
Holmdel, New Jersey 07733
(201)834-3685
vax135!mtuxo!whg1 (temporarily better E-mail address)
or:
vax135!ariel!norm
-- 
Norm Andrews
AT&T Information Systems Laboratories
Building 114A
Room HO1C325
Crawfords Corner Road
Holmdel, New Jersey 07733
(201)834-3685
vax135!mtuxo!whg1 (temporarily better E-mail address)
or:
vax135!ariel!norm

charli@cylixd.UUCP (Charli Phillips) (08/24/85)

In article <911@mtuxo.UUCP> whg1@mtuxo.UUCP (w.georger) writes:
>
>Does anyone on the net have
>any easily verifiable facts/opinions regarding the status of [human] rights
>in the State of Yugoslavia?
>Norm Andrews

Believe it or not, one of the best and most reliable sources of 
information on the status of human rights in Europe is our own
government.  As a party to the Helsinki accords, the United States
carefully tracks violations of the provisions of that agreement.
You would be interested in Basket Three (the Human Rights basket).
For recent information, just write:

	Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
	U. S. House of Representatives
	Washington, DC

Ask for hearings and mark-ups related to human rights in Yugoslavia.
They are free.  (If you are really interested in human rights
world-wide, you might ask to be put on their mailing list for all
Basket Three hearings.  My husband and I have done that.)  If there is
a depository of government documents at an area library, you might check
there if you want the information fast.  CSCE can be slow to respond,
but they do send you the information eventually.

Other reliable sources of information are Amnesty International
(general human rights information) and Christian Response International
(religious freedom).  (There are lots of others; I can vouch for the
reliability of these two organizations.)

As far as Eastern Bloc countries go, Yugoslavia is bad, but not by
any means the worst.  It allows more rights and liberties than, say,
Romania or Czechoslovakia, but is more repressive than East Germany
or Poland.  It is a one-party Marxist-Leninist regime, and consistently
violates the Helsinki Accords, the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, and other agreements which it has signed.  It just doesn't
violate them as often or as severely as some others.

(I don't have any of my references on human rights here at work.  If
you want information instead of just sources, send me mail.  I'd be
happy to send it to you.)

		charli

riddle@im4u.UUCP (08/25/85)

>> As far as Eastern Bloc countries go, Yugoslavia is bad, but not by
>> any means the worst.  It allows more rights and liberties than, say,
>> Romania or Czechoslovakia, but is more repressive than East Germany
>> or Poland.  It is a one-party Marxist-Leninist regime, and consistently
>> violates the Helsinki Accords, the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human
>> Rights, and other agreements which it has signed.  It just doesn't
>> violate them as often or as severely as some others.

One minor correction: Yugoslavia is really not an Eastern Bloc country.
"One-party Marxist-Leninist," yes, but not Eastern Bloc -- Tito was a wily
and independent type who didn't want the Russians telling him how to be
dictator in his own country.

As for Yugoslavia's rights record, I'm sure you know more about it than I do
given the sources you cite, but I will say that Yugoslavia seems to be quite
a bit more open in its contact with Western Europe than the true Eastern
Bloc countries are.  Yugoslavian citizens do a lot of travelling back and
forth to the West, especially if you include the thousand of Yugoslavian
"guest workers" in West Germany and Austria.

--- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.")
--- {ihnp4,harvard,seismo,gatech}!ut-sally!riddle   riddle@ut-sally.UUCP
--- riddle@ut-sally.ARPA, riddle%zotz@ut-sally, riddle%im4u@ut-sally

gdvsmit@watrose.UUCP (Riel Smit) (08/27/85)

In article <220@cylixd.UUCP> charli@cylixd.UUCP (Charli Phillips) writes:
>
>As far as Eastern Bloc countries go, Yugoslavia is bad, but not by
>any means the worst.  It allows more rights and liberties than, say,
>Romania or Czechoslovakia, but is more repressive than East Germany
>or Poland.  It is a one-party Marxist-Leninist regime, and consistently
>violates the Helsinki Accords, the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human
>Rights, and other agreements which it has signed.  It just doesn't
>violate them as often or as severely as some others.
>

In the light of the above (which is not new to me), and similar statements
that can be made about a large proportion of African (and other third
world) countries, can someone please explain why South Africa is singled
out for the kind of treatment it gets?  I'm not necessarily saying they
(SA) should not be getting the treatment, I just want to hear peolpe
explain why they do not become rabid over these other countries the way
they do over South Africa.  Why, sporting ties, investments, and what have
you go on with hardly a whisper (and definitely nothing more than a
whisper).

lkk@teddy.UUCP (08/27/85)

In article <220@cylixd.UUCP> charli@cylixd.UUCP (Charli Phillips) writes:
>In article <911@mtuxo.UUCP> whg1@mtuxo.UUCP (w.georger) writes:
>>
>>Does anyone on the net have
>>any easily verifiable facts/opinions regarding the status of [human] rights
>>in the State of Yugoslavia?
>>Norm Andrews
>
>As far as Eastern Bloc countries go, Yugoslavia is bad, but not by
>any means the worst.  It allows more rights and liberties than, say,
>Romania or Czechoslovakia, but is more repressive than East Germany
>or Poland.  It is a one-party Marxist-Leninist regime, and consistently
>violates the Helsinki Accords, the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human
>Rights, and other agreements which it has signed.  It just doesn't
>violate them as often or as severely as some others.
>
>(I don't have any of my references on human rights here at work.  If
>you want information instead of just sources, send me mail.  I'd be
>happy to send it to you.)
>
>		charli


I'm skeptical of this synopsis of human rights in yugoslavia.  
First of all, Yugoslavia is NOT a member of the "Eastern Bloc".
The Eastern Bloc refers to the Warsaw pact., which
yugoslavia is not a member of.  Yugoslavia is NOT ALLIED WITH THE SOVIET UNION.

Many other things about Yugoslavia differentiate it from Warsaw pact regimes:


-  It has a rotating presidency, and there is no leadership cult.
-  Citizens are generally free to travel abroad.
-  It is not Marxist-Leninist, at least if you consider the USSR to be the
   prototype for Marism-Leninism.  The economy is DECENTRALIZED, and
   workers have a significant say in the way that factories are run.


I don't know what criterion you are using to compare it to East Germany, but
it certainly doesn't need a wall to keep its citizens there.

There is also some non-trivial amount of press freedom there.


There are cases of political dissidents being put on trial in Yugoslavia,
but these are rare, and the sentences are generally much more lenient
than in Soviet Bloc countries.


-- 

Sport Death,
Larry Kolodney
(USENET) ...decvax!genrad!teddy!lkk
(INTERNET) lkk@mit-mc.arpa

mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (08/28/85)

>As for Yugoslavia's rights record, I'm sure you know more about it than I do
>given the sources you cite, but I will say that Yugoslavia seems to be quite
>a bit more open in its contact with Western Europe than the true Eastern
>Bloc countries are.  Yugoslavian citizens do a lot of travelling back and
>forth to the West, especially if you include the thousand of Yugoslavian
>"guest workers" in West Germany and Austria.
>
>--- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.")

Last year I watched the border crossing between Yugoslavia and Italy
near Trieste (didn't cross, though).  My impression was that cars were
going both ways with less holdup than at the Canada-USA border points.
I didn't see the Austria-Hungary border, but there were lots of cars
with Hungarian plates, apparently holding camping families in many cases.
In Vienna, one got the impression that Viennese and Budapest people
go shopping in each other's cities for whatever is cheaper there.
Tourists can go to Budapest with very little formality (again, I didn't
try it myself).  Open borders *should* help reduce internal repression
(how would they keep people in the repressed country), but they don't
necessarily go together.
-- 

Martin Taylor
{allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt
{uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsri!dciem!mmt