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Created in 1976 as an independent agency to monitor and encourage compliance with the 1975 Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), the Commission has carried out its responsiblities in a variety of ways during the 95th Congress. Primary focus of Commission activity during the past two years was on the Belgrade CSCE review conference which met from June 1977 to March 1978 to review implementation by all signatories of the military and security, economic and scientific, humanitarian and other goals of the Helsinki Final Act. The Commission was instrumental in formulating U.S. policy for the Belgrade meeting and then played an important and active role as part of the U.S. delegation to the review conference. It has also been active in planning for and staffing official U.S. delegations to a subsequent meeting of scientific experts in Bonn, as well as other conferences within the CSCE process. In addition to carrying out its monitoring and informational responsibilities in major international fora, the Commission has been extremely active on a day-to-day basis in promoting implementation of the Helsinki accords. Extensive and continuing hearings during the last two years have provided an important source of information on the state of Helsinki Final Act implementation, particularly in the human rights area. Human rights, especially family reunification, was also the subject of a large number of Commission meetings and staff interviews during the 95th Congress. As a result, the Commission has been able to provide a regular flow of reports and information to the Congress, press and public on human rights and other issues involving Helsinki Final Act implementation. The Commission has a unique role in policy formulation and coordination on CSCE; during the past two years, Commissioners and staff held extensive meetings with officials of the Executive Branch to review and initiate CSCE policy issues. In addition, periodic consultations were held with officials of the other signatory governments. It is likely that this process will intensify and expand in anticipation of the next major review conference at Madrid in 1980.

Between February 3, 1977 and June 1, 1978, twenty Soviet citizens active in the defense of human rights in five different Republics were arrested and imprisoned; two others, traveling abroad on Soviet passports, were stripped of their citizenship and denied the right to return to the USSR. All are members of the Public Groups to Promote Observance of the Helsinki Agreement in the USSR (the Soviet Helsinki Watch) or, in the case of two men, of its subsidiary Working Commission to Investi­gate the Abuse of Psychiatry for Political Purposes. The twenty-one men and one woman are being punished under a variety of different criminal charges. Their "crime," however, is identical: political dissent, ex­pressed in the non-violent, open effort to spur Soviet authorities to implement the human rights and humanitarian undertakings of the August 1975 Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the Helsinki Accord.) The following study by the staff of the U. S. Commission on . Security and Cooperation in Europe examines the workings of Soviet law and criminal procedure as applied in these cases of political dissent. It discusses the guarantees of Soviet law, including international covenants ratified by the USSR, against arbitrary arrest and unfair trial and compares those to the practices used against the Helsinki Watchers. From the study it is evident that those guarantees -- both substantive and procedural -- have been repeatedly violated in the persecution and prosecution of the twenty-two human rights activists. The violations uncovered range from improper conduct of pre-arrest house searches through illegally prolonged pre-trial detention to unlawful denial of the rights of the defense at the trial. This pattern of official conduct toward free, but dissenting political expression is not new in the Soviet Union. In the treatment of the Soviet Helsinki Watch, however, it has been systematic and can be termed, without question, a gross and intentional violation of both the pledges in the Final Act and the safeguards promised by the Soviet Constitution, Criminal Codes and Codes of Criminal Procedure.

In December 1976, at the conclusion of an 18-day study mission in Europe, five members of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe reported that the "potential" of the 1975 Helsinki accords "for improving East-West relations over the long term is far more significant than their initial impact." Eight months of inquiry later-on the second anniversary of the signing of the Final Act-the Commission remains confident of the constructive "potential" of the 35-nation agreement. It finds, however, that much of the potential is yet to be realized. The potential has been dramatized by the popular response in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to the Helsinki accord provisions on human rights, eased conditions for travel and family reunification and freer flow of information. The impact of the Final Act on private individuals -- thanks to its immediate and widespread publication in the Warsaw Pact states -- has been great. Its publication stimulated significant expectations of change in governmental conduct. Those expectations, however, have been dashed in some instances, realized only partially in many others. Signatories have been obliged by a variety of political considerations to move cautiously, if at all, to tailor their foreign or domestic conduct to the specifications endorsed at the Helsinki summit of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Having "declare[d] their determination to act in accordance with the provisions contained" in the Final Act,2 the participating states have -- with a few significant exceptions -- generally continued to act with limited regard for the undertakings they gave one another on August 1, 1975. The Final Act was meant to give an impulse toward a common code of European and North Atlantic diplomatic and civil conduct. Both an expression of and a political stimulus to the process of international detente, the Final Act is also, quite specifically, a framework for relaxation of East-West tensions and the promotion of more stable relations between different and differing social systems. As a nonbinding declaration of intentions (not a treaty), however, it could do no more than define aspirations and outline the manner in which they were to be met. The record of its implementation is the test of its impact. The record of the first 2 years has been more productive than the Commission expected, though far short of the high promises which the language of the Final Act holds forth. Signatory nations have treated the document seriously, though respect for some of its provisionsparticularly in the area of human rights -- has not matched either the commitments given nor the hopes those pledges aroused. The Helsinki accord has not brought dramatic changes in East-West relations, but history may note it as more than a small step toward peace and a stability based on something more than mutual fear. Two years is a relatively short time in which to alter the long standing practices of sovereign nations, either in regard to one another or to their citizenries. In measuring the achievements of the Helsinki accord, Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance cautioned the Commission, "I do not think that one can take a look at it in this moment alone and say it has either been a success or a failure. I think what you have now is a mixture of things. We have some slight movement forward in certain areas; we have no movement in others; and we have retrogression in others. But I think that a process has been started. . . and that we must stay with that process and continue to press what we believe to be correct." The Commission concurs in stressing the value of a process which has made it possible for the officials and private citizens of the 35 signatories to engage one another in discussions and exchanges made legitimate and significant by the Final Act. At the international level, the conference of the participating states in Belgrade this year creates the first opportunity to evaluate jointly the progress that has and has not been made and to impart fresh momentum to the process which the Final Act set in motion. The conferees at Belgrade, however, have little reason for self-congratulation. As they review the record of implementation. they must conclude-as this Commission does-that the distance to be covered toward the Final Act's goal of "peace, security and justice and the continuing development of friendly relations and cooperation" is far greater than the very limited advances already achieved. No participant in the Belgrade meeting can convincingly claim for his nation a perfect record of compliance with all Final Act principles and provisions. All too often the intentions the signatories expressed have been ignored in practice. On occasion-and, in some instances, systematically-the letter and spirit of the Helsinki accord have been violated. The burden of responsibility for failures of omission and commission in human rights and humanitarian matters does fall more heavily on the countries of the Warsaw Pact than on the other 28 si-natories, either individually or in various groupings. It must be recognized that the Final Act, by the nature of its provisions, calls for more action by the Soviet Union and its East European allies to alter existing practices than it requires of the Western signatories. It would be a mistake, however, to consider all Warsaw Pact states as having entirely common policies in this regard. There is a degree of East European govern- ment concern over human rights to which Western observers are sometimes insensitive. A relatively open society has little difficulty honoring commitments such as those of the Final Act signatories -- to ease travel, contact, and flow of information across frontiers. The adjustment -- though it has not yet been fully made in the visa-issuing practices of France, Great Britain, and the United States, for instance -- need not be politically wrenching. Rapid, full compliance would, however, be unsettling to the traditions and attitudes of the Communist nations. Yet even where gestures of compliance have been made, they have been dilatory and largely cosmetic. Progress, in summary, has been inadequate. Measured against either the hopes voiced at the Helsinki summit or the need for smoother and more stable relations among the signatories, the implementation of the Final Act has fallen short.

Study Mission of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe visited 18 signatories of the Helsinki Final Act between November 5 and November 23, 1976. The purpose of the Mission was to gather information about the current status of implementation of the provisions of the Helsinki accords and to establish contacts with key European political and governmental officials as well as private individuals and organizations concerned with various aspects of the implementation process. The CSCE Study Mission was composed of Rep. Dante B. Fascell, D-Fla. (Commission chairman); Sen. Claiborne Pell, D-R.I. (co-chairman); Rep. Jonathan Bingham, D-N.Y.; Rep. Millicent Fenwick, R-N.J.; and Rep. Paul Simon, D-Ill. Travelling individually, Commissioners and staff aides met with government officials and parliamentarians in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, the Netherlands,' Norway, the Holy See, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Yugoslavia, as well as with experts at NATO, the European Community, the Council of Europe, UNESCO, the Intergovernmental Committee on European Migration, the OECD, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. The Mission regrets that it could not confer with all signatory countries at this time and intends to do so in the future. The limited time available precluded visits to some countries. The Warsaw Pact countries, however, refused to permit the Commissioners to visit their countries, an action which runs counter to the very spirit of Helsinki. Additionally, the Study Mission met with half a dozen private refugee organizations, a number of recent Soviet exiles, more than 30 businessmen and organizations active in East-West trade, a cross section of journalists specializing in Eastern European affairs, and more than 20 individuals and private institutions conducting research on Helsinki implementation questions. Commission members Mansfield Sprague and James G. Poor from the Departments of Commerce and Defense, respectively, attended the initial and final joint Study Mission sessions in Brussels and London, and Commissioner Monroe Leigh of the Department of State attended the Brussels meetings.