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British Helsinki Human Rights GroupThe British Helsinki Human Rights Group, often abbreviated to the British Helsinki Group, is an Oxford-based non-governmental organization which monitors human rights in the 57 member states of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The group also uses the name OSCEwatch, indicating that it sees part of its mission as scrutinising the activities of the OSCE. The OSCEwatch and BHHRG websites are identical, and both websites openly refer to each other. Membership and funding The BHHRG was founded in 1992. It is run from the Oxford home of historian Professor Norman Stone, who has on occasion taken part in BHHRG activities, and was co-founded by his wife Christine Stone and fellow Oxford historian Mark Almond (who is also its chairman). Its trustees comprise Mark Almond, Anthony Daniels (who writes for the Daily Telegraph under the pseudonym Theodore Dalrymple), John Laughland, Christine Stone and Mary Walsh. Almond, Daniels, Laughland and Stone are prominent members of Britain's conservative intelligentsia and are regular contributors to British newspapers. Chad Nagle, an American lawyer who frequently contributes to the libertarian antiwar.com website, is also associated with the group. Noel Malcolm, a prominent Balkans specialist, appeared on a 1994 list of founders and spoke on its behalf as recently as 1999 but has apparently since left the group. The BHHRG is not an "official" Helsinki Committee and is not affiliated with the Helsinki Committees' umbrella organisation, the International Helsinki Federation (IHF). The United Kingdom's representative in the IHF is the British Helsinki Subcommittee of the Parliamentary Human Rights Group, which was established in 1976. This led to the BHHRG occasionally being mistakenly labelled the British Helsinki Committee. The British Helsinki Subcommittee asks visitors to its website to "PLEASE NOTE that the so-called British Helsinki Group is NOT affiliated with the IHF" http://www.ihf-hr.org/members/com_details.php?sec_id=2&com_id=47 . The IHF website of the British Helsinki Subcommittee lists no current projects, nor any current publications. For its part, the BHHRG website says nothing on the subject though it is debatable whether it has any moral obligation to do so. The European Commission, for instance, in 1999 established a "Helsinki Group on Women and Science" http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/science-society/women-science/helsinki_en.html, named after the Finnish capital where its first meeting took place, without clarifying any possible confusion on its use of the name Helsinki. The membership, management and funding of the BHHRG are somewhat obscure. These aspects do not appear to be discussed at all on its website, and the details of its trustees are given only in its legally required returns to the UK's Charity Commission. Its published accounts state that it received 417,332 in income between 1997-2003 and spent 449,086 in the same period. The organisation appears to have fallen on hard times recently, with its funding falling by nearly 99% after 2001. A possible reason is suggested by The Economist, which reports that "the group lost almost all its supporters when it threw its weight behind people like Mr Milosevic." http://www.economist.co.uk/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=3446916 The identity of its backers is also unclear. Speaking in 1999, Noel Malcolm explained that the group does not disclose its donors "for obvious reasons: they critics would then start to campaign the group with the financial backers." http://www.tol.cz/look/Transitions/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=7&NrIssue=21&NrSection=2&NrArticle=5598&search=search&SearchKeywords=%22War+of+the+monitors%22&SearchMode=on&SearchLevel=0 Only a few contributors are known by name. Material that the BHHRG issued in 1992 cited the Tory peer Lord Pearson of Rannoch and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation as donors. It has also received occasional funding from the British Government, though it has received no funding from this source since the mid-1990s and the BHHRG's "About Us" page states that it now "does not receive funding from any government" http://www.bhhrg.org/about.asp. It received funding from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for an election observer mission to Latvia http://www.bhhrg.org/CountryReport.asp?ReportID=146&CountryID=14, but according to a Foreign Office source quoted by journalist Jeremy Druker, funding was cut off because of dissatisfaction with the organisation's approach. Proponents of the BHHRG suggest that this demonstrates that the group is entirely independent of governments. Activities and achievements The BHHRG website states as the main activities of the Group: - Monitoring the conduct of elections in OSCE member states.
- Examining issues relating to press freedom and freedom of speech
- Reporting on conditions in prisons and psychiatric institutions
- Covering asylum and immigration issues
The Group also aims to be topical and timely in its activities: "The Group is alert to new developments and will report on human rights issues in the OSCE member states wherever possible." The BHHRG publishes reports from first-hand observers, concentrating particularly on election monitoring in central and eastern Europe, as well as publishing frequent unsigned commentaries about ongoing events in the region. A common theme in many of its publications has been a critical view of perceived Western "meddling in the internal affairs" of central and east European countries, notably the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (now Serbia and Montenegro) and Belarus. Among its achievements the BHHRG's website lists: - 1992 - BHHRG was the first NGO to expose the appalling human rights situation in the former Soviet republic of Georgia
- 1993 - BHHRG exposure of fraud in the conduct of Russia's constitutional referendum was later admitted by the authorities.
- 1996 - BHHRG report of election fraud in Armenia's presidential election was only acknowledged in 1998
- 1998 - BHHRG predicted war in Kosovo
- 1999 - BHHRG was the first human rights group to visit the notorious Sangatte camp for asylum seekers in France
- 2001 - BHHRG exposed the scandal of trafficking in women from Moldova
Controversial aspects The BHHRG has been remarkably high profile, despite its small size. The media connections of some of its members (especially John Laughland) has enabled it to propagate its views through a number of major newspapers in Britain. The organisation has been criticised by other human rights activists and official Helsinki Committees for publishing views which are markedly at odds with the generally promulgated picture of affairs in central and eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union. Opponents of the Group point at specific claims that have caused controversy: The last claim sparked a major controversy in November and December 2004, which prompted an unprecedented degree of critical commentary on the BHHRG in the mainstream media. The British newspapers The Economist and The Guardian both ran critical articles discussing the BHHRG, and the controversy attracted many comments in the blogosphere and on Usenet. However, the head of another observer mission concurred with the assessment of the BHHRG: Aleksandr Tsinker, Head of the Observer Mission from the Institute for East European and CIS Nations and Member of the Israeli Knesset said the election was a free expression of the voters' will. http://www.ukraine-eu.mfa.gov.ua/cgi-bin/valnews_miss.sh?lpos1200411020.shtml Some of the BHHRG's claims have attracted support from the neo-conservative and libertarian right; its criticism of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has been endorsed by organisations such as the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies http://www.defenddemocracy.org/in_the_media/in_the_media_show.htm?doc_id=225687, while its criticisms of the Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko have been supported by antiwar.com writers. Left-wing critics of US foreign policy have also cited its reports favourably, as have governments (such as that of Belarus) which are widely regarded as undemocratic. However, it is fair to say that the BHHRG's views are often markedly at odds with those of the majority of international human rights monitoring groups, as the BHHRG often acknowledges in its reports. It is equally fair to state that both opponents and proponents of the BHHRG come from both left and right, and sometimes even from both sides at the same time. The BHHRG's approach to election observing has aroused criticism, as the organisation's members often combine the roles of election monitors and journalists. This has been criticised by the OSCE, which publicly discourages its monitors from adopting a similar approach, although it does allow journalists to serve as election monitors (provided that they do not combine journalism and monitoring, which is hard to assess when - for instance - editors of national news programs serve as an observer in a country on which they later decide what to report). The two organisations also take a fundamentally different approach to observer missions. The BHHRG relies on short-term observer missions with a handful of people, while the OSCE often uses large-scale long-term missions of four to six weeks with dozens of experts and hundreds of observers. The OSCE regards the short-term approach, which it formerly used but abandoned in 1996, as being unsound. http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/200204010025.htm For its part, the BHHRG dismisses the OSCE's position as an attempt to stifle legitimate criticism and its proponents claim that the BHHRG approach allows observers to add personal observations, independent reports, and lesser-known facts to the general debate regarding the activities of international bodies. http://www.tol.cz/look/Transitions/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=7&NrIssue=21&NrSection=2&NrArticle=5598&search=search&SearchKeywords=%22War+of+the+monitors%22&SearchMode=on&SearchLevel=0 The often polemical tone of BHHRG reports and commentaries has been a significant cause of controversy, with its contributors often taking controversial stands on certain issues (for instance, John Laughland characterises the supporters of Ukraine's Viktor Yushchenko as being "neo-Nazis" and "druggy skinheads from Lvov"). Its critics have complained that the organisation often takes a predetermined ideological line, "making up their minds about the election report even before the election had taken place" (according to a British Foreign Office official quoted by Jeremy Druker). http://www.tol.cz/look/Transitions/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=7&NrIssue=21&NrSection=2&NrArticle=5598&search=search&SearchKeywords=%22War+of+the+monitors%22&SearchMode=on&SearchLevel=0 The BHHRG's commentaries often allege that Western governments and international organisations are seeking to implement a "New World Order" in central and eastern Europe http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22New+World+Order%22+site%3Abhhrg.org&btnG=Google+Search. The organisation also strongly opposes the activities of international organisations such as the UN and the OSCE on the grounds that they are undemocratic, unelected, unaccountable, non-transparent meddlers in matters that should be the internal affairs of the countries concerned. The Economist thus characterises the common thread of the BHHRG's thinking as being "an intense dislike of liberal internationalism." Tom Palmer of the Cato Institute, who has strongly criticised the BHHRG, summarises their position as being that - the mass movements to unseat in eastern Europe are nothing but stooges for the west, out to integrate those brave little authoritarian-socialist regimes into the 'New World Order,' privatize their state industries, and strip them of their assets. http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/016326.php
This is strongly disputed by supporters of the BHHRG, who claim that the organisation frequently exposes matters which Western governments and allegedly biased international organisations would prefer to ignore. For instance, it denounced human rights abuses committed in Georgia which (in its view) were ignored by organisations such as the OSCE and the Council of Europe. Similarly, it has criticised the NATO military intervention in Kosovo as a violation of international law which resulted in "cultural genocide" against Serbs. http://www.bhhrg.org/CountryReport.asp?CountryID=20&ReportID=218 The organisation has also been criticised for not clarifying the distinction between itself and the UK's officially recognised Helsinki Committee, which has prompted the International Helsinki Federation to publicly disclaim any connection with the BHHRG and has led others to accuse the BHHRG of "naming itself so as to usurp the prestige of its elder". http://www.ukar.org/barcla/barcla01.html Supporters of the BHHRG dispute this, asserting that no official imprimatur is needed for any group wishing to monitor the implementation of the Helsinki Accords for which the committees are named. The name "Helsinki" is in no way trademarked and the Helsinki Accords specifically encourage citizens of signatory states to organise themselves in order to monitor the activities of their governments. Links and references Articles by the BHHRG Articles by others about the BHHRG - International Helsinki Federation's statement on the status of the BHHRG
- " 'Helsinki' Doesn't Guarantee Faithfulness To Human Rights", Greek Helsinki Monitor, 3/8/1997
- "War of the Monitors", Jeremy Druker, Transitions Magazine, 15 February 1999
- criticism of 1999 report on Roma in Czech, by a member of the European Roma Rights Center
- "Can a lobbyist for dictators work as a journalist?", Lubomyr Prytulak, 19 November 2004
- "PR man to Europe's nastiest regimes", The Guardian (UK), 30 November 2004
- "Yanukovich's friends: A human-rights group that defends dictators", The Economist (UK), 2 December 2004
* "Something Is Rotting at the Periphery of the Libertarian Movement.....", Tom Palmer, 11 December 2004
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