By Alex Chis
On October 31 in Moscow, three television cameras and numerous radio and press reporters recorded the newly formed US Committee for Democratic and Human Rights in Russia read a statement condemning the attacks on civil liberties and trade union rights by the Yeltsin government.
Five members of the committee (Elizabeth Bowman, Susan Weissman, Alex Chis, Michel Vale and Bob Stone) travelled to Moscow in the wake of Yeltsin's coup to dramatically express their outrage and to lend their support to democratic and human rights activists in Russia.
The US committee was formed as much in response to the US government position on the events in Russia, as to Yeltsin's coup itself.
Listening to President Clinton and Senator Sam Nunn give tacit encouragement to any action Yeltsin wished to take to get rid of his opposition was bad enough. Having to listen to the US media describe, in classic Orwellian doublespeak, everything Yeltsin did as "democratic" was far too much. The closest thing to "balance" any of the major US media approached was the description, without any apparent sense of irony, of Yeltsin as a "democratic dictator".
The committee statement [see box] will run as an ad in the Nation magazine, and has already gotten a broad range of support, including Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Manning Marable, Rafael Pizzaro (Local 1199), Daniel Singer, Jane Slaughter (Labor Notes), Bogdan Denitch (Democratic Socialists of America), Dave Dellinger, Alice Sunshine (News For A People's World), Paul Robeson, Jr., Robert V. Daniels (prominent Sovietologist), Jerry Gordon (Food and Commercial Workers Union), Hillel Ticktin (Critique), Sushawn Robb (Crossroads), Malik Miah (Independent Politics), Bill Henning (Local 1180 Communication Workers of America), William Kunstler and Dennis Serrette (Black Workers for Justice).
Further international support was evident at the "International Round Table for Democratic and Human Rights In Moscow" organised by Alexander Buzgalin, professor at Moscow State University. Lucciana Castellini, a member of the European Parliament from Italy, made a statement, as did Hillel Ticktin from Scotland and Livio Maitan from Italy.
Prominent activists from the Russian human rights movement and legal experts led a discussion of democratic rights and the new election laws. Andrei Kolganov, doctor of economic sciences, began the discussion with a summary of the present position. Among the speakers was Gleb Pavlovsky, the editor-in-chief of Twentieth Century and Peace, famous for hosting the first program to freely talk about democratic rights in Russia in a mass way, a figure comparable in Russia to Noam Chomsky in the West. A call for a Russian Movement for Democratic and Human Rights was made, with a founding conference to be held in Moscow on November 27.
In an effort to stress that Yeltsin can't operate against his opponents with impunity, and to lend the maximum protection possible to Russian activists for workers' and human rights, the US committee held two other press conferences in Moscow before its members left.
The committee received coverage on the two major television stations, both state and independent, the major radio station that broadcasts throughout the ex-USSR and many newspapers including Solidarnost, the newspaper of the Moscow Federation of Trade Unions. Izvestia ran an interview with Elizabeth Bowman, one of the initiators of the committee, and the press conferences were covered by Spanish, French, Ukrainian, Greek and other international press.