Excerpt from Denials of Human Rights in Eastern Europe: 15 Years After the Adoption of the Universal Declaration

Recognition of the inherent dignity, and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.

Thus opens the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whose 15th anniversary is being celebrated by the civilized world during this month of December 1963. Indeed, justice and peace in the world cannot be assured if the freedom of the individual, and through him of communities and nations, is denied. The principle that freedom 'is indivisible and that a divided world cannot live at peace, are universally accepted. Yet the European continent, the cradle of Western civilization, remains artificially divided by the Iron Curtain. On the one side are the free nations, living under governments of their own choosing, and on the other - nations subjected to regimes imposed by the Communists directed from Moscow and supported by the military might of the Soviet Union and its political agents. These regimes style themselves officially as dictatorships, and their philosophy of government is based on tyranny and aggression.

The Assembly of Captive European Nations, the free voice of the silenced peoples of Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania, takes this occasion of the celebra tion of the 15th anniversary of the proclamation of the Universal Declara tion of Human Rights to present briefly the special plight of the captive nations in this respect. Throughout all east-central Europe now under the Communist rule - as in other areas subject to Soviet domination - there exists a constant violation or a flat denial of fundamental human rights and freedoms, despite the recent slight trends toward eliminating, as unnecessary, some of the ugliest features of a system of terror and oppression.

The denials and violations of human rights in the countries of East Central Europe, which are so manifest and unquestionable, are of concern not only to the nations affected by them; they should be of equal concern to all other nations of the free world. To free peoples it is a matter of simple moral obligation to support and comfort the oppressed. There are also legal international obligations resulting from international agreements and treaties concluded during and after World War II between the Western Powers and the present violators of these contracted obligations.

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