Shortly after that,
the group released a report which accused 116 UN member nations of imprisoning
people solely for their beliefs or ethnic origins. Partly due to the organisation's
lack of governmental ties, Ai had helped free 10,000 of these prisoners.
However, political clout was also exercised for the benefit of human rights
when U.S. President Jimmy Carter used America's political and economic
influence to discourage human rights abuses.
And Carter was not
merely talking. Policies were altered and Argentina, Uruguay and Ethiopia
were the first to lose American aid. However, the Carter doctrine faced
numerous challenges. The first was that America's own human rights record
was far from spotless: AI's report condemned the unjust persecution of
Blacks and American Indians. Another problem was the unclear yet sweeping
definition of human rights. Yet another inconsistency was that of geo-political
pragmatism: U.S. allies, such as the Shah's Iran, were subject to less
criticism. In other cases, criticisms and sanctions were either ineffective
or counterproductive, such as efforts to curb the USSR crackdown on dissidents
which resulted in even harsher repression.
Nonetheless, there
were successes. Partly as a result of U.S. pressure, less Argentines "disappeared"
because of state -sponsored death squads and political prisoners went
free in many countries, including 35,000 between 1977 and 1980 in Indonesia
alone. At the same time, more Soviet Jews were allowed to emigrate, from
10,000 in 1976 to 51,000 in 1979. Meanwhile, emboldened students in Czechoslovakia
founded a group called Charter 77 which was devoted to monitoring the
government's adherence to the Helsinki Accords and the UN Universal Declaration
of Human Rights. Among the persecuted leaders of Chapter 77, Vaclav Havel,
a Czech playwright, would one day become president of his nation.
