Yugoslav Human Rights

In: Index on censorship, Volume 6, Issue 5, p. 47-47

Abstract

On 15 June this year an international conference opened in Belgrade with the aim of reviewing the progress made since September 1975 by the 35 signatories of the Helsinki Declaration on Détente and Cooperation in Europe, an important part of which is the so-called Basket Three dealing with human and civil rights. The Yugoslav authorities, who are playing hosts to the conference, continue to deny accusations of human rights infringements, such as the treatment - and indeed the very existence - of political prisoners in their country. Evidence of these infringements in Yugoslavia is provided in the three articles that follow. The first is an 'Open Letter' sent to the Yugoslav authorities before the Belgrade conference by Akim Djilas, a younger brother of the best-known Yugoslav dissident, Milovan Djilas. The section also includes an account of political trials and persecution in Slovenia, and finally some excerpts from a book by the Croatian poet Mirko Vidovic who spent five years in Yugoslav prisons before being released thanks to diplomatic representations by the French government. In his book, The Hidden Face of the Moon, Vidovic describes his treatment at the hands of the Yugoslav secret police and gives an interesting account of the hunger strike organised by himself and Mihailo Mihajlov.