Righting Wrongs : O.C.’s Amnesty International Opening Doors for Dissidents

The photograph taken years earlier doesn’t seem like much. It shows a young man, Yako Toko Chabi, looking relaxed, leaning against a wall of a house in Benin, a west African country once ruled by France.

But to the Irvine chapter of Amnesty International, the human rights advocacy organization, this snapshot is no ordinary picture. Toko Chabi, a 35-year textile engineer, has been imprisoned since 1985 in Benin without charge or trial for his activities related to an outlawed political party in that Marxist-oriented authoritarian state.

Amnesty International, which mounts letter-writing campaigns worldwide to support the rights of nonviolent dissidents, has assigned the Toko Chabi case to the 30-member Irvine group.

The first wave of letters, sent to Benin authorities urging his release, produced nothing but silence, says chapter coordinator Sandra Gardner. Then letters from Toko Chabi, carefully and tersely worded but acknowledging the Amnesty International support, began to arrive in Irvine.

“We were absolutely elated because direct communication with any prisoners is not that common. We knew for sure we were getting through,” Gardner says.

The snapshot, mailed by one of Toko Chabi’s friends and received last year, was an even rarer bonus. “It made us feel that much closer to him and his family--that they are more than names in a report,” Gardner says.

The chapter has sent food and clothing to Toko Chabi’s destitute wife and two children. It has even sent him new eyeglasses, ground from the prescription he had mailed from Benin.

And the chapter’s letter-writing campaign on its “adopted prisoner of conscience” hasn’t let up. The chapter still fires off inquiries to the Benin authorities--and still receives no replies.

The chapter has also sought American intervention. It received a formal reply--but no promises--from the U.S. State Department. It has yet to get a reply for a letter sent to President Bush.

Gardner adds: “We’re keeping up the pressure. And we want him to know we’re still there--we are not about to forget or abandon him.”

The 10-year-old Irvine group is one of four Amnesty International “prisoner adoption” chapters in Orange County. (The largest metropolitan areas still have more chapters: 12 in the San Francisco Bay Area, 11 in Los Angeles County.)

Its work to free “prisoners of conscience” along with other human-rights advocacy, is typical of the organization, which claims a worldwide membership of 700,000 in more than 150 countries--including 400,000 members alone in the United States.

And membership in Orange County, which has swelled in five years from 2,000 to 4,000 mailing-list backers, reflects the statewide growth, according to Western Regional Director David Hinkley.

He credits the overall rising awareness in human rights as a national policy issue: “The pro-democracy tragedy in China has brought about tremendous new awareness for the rights movement.” He also cites the publicity, especially aimed at younger people, generated by two popular rock-concert benefits with such stars as Bruce Springsteen, U2 and Sting.

But Hinkley and other officials acknowledge that the organization still suffers from an “image problem,” even though Amnesty International was a Nobel Peace Prize recipient (in 1977) and is wholly nonpartisan.

The organization’s mission hasn’t changed since its founding in 1961. It not only seeks the release of all nonviolent prisoners of conscience but the “fair and prompt trials” for all political prisoners and “an end to torture and executions in all cases.”

Some detractors still depict the organization as “some kind of leftist-oriented, wacky group,” says Tami Jacoby, an Amnesty International membership coordinator for Orange County. This stigma is compounded by the organization’s outspoken opposition to the death penalty, she says.

And disputes do flare up, such as last year in Orange County. The Orange/Santa Ana chapter’s bid to set up an information booth at the annual street fair in Orange was rejected by the fair’s committee. And students’ requests to form groups to meet during school hours at Dana Hills and Capistrano High Schools were rejected by that district’s school board.

Such setbacks reflect an overall misunderstanding of the organization’s role, its officials say.

“We don’t march or demonstrate--that’s not our style,” said Mitsuye Yamada, an Irvine chapter co-founder and a member of Amnesty International USA’s national board of directors. “We seek only to educate and persuade and to remain nonpolitical and independent. Our cause, human rights, is universal and above ideology.”

Some Amnesty International members who had been activists in politics and the anti-Vietnam War movement gravitated naturally to the organization in the ‘70s. But many more are like Huntington Beach member Glen Nielsen, an electrical contractor who is a more recent volunteer.

“I never was an activist. But one day (in 1985), I was watching television and seeing all those (rights abuse) stories, and I felt it was about time I got off my seat and did something,” says Nielsen, now a membership coordinator for Orange County.

Jacoby, who’s in entertainment promotion, joined two years ago after attending a rock-concert benefit in Los Angeles. Others were introduced to the cause through campus groups.

But the frustrations over official silences and the case details themselves can take their emotional toll on members. Membership turnover remains extremely high.

Says teacher Chris Baron, a founding member of the Irvine chapter: “It is depressing work and at every meeting, some people have dropped out, while others have just joined. It’s not glamorous work, and a lot of people will find it tedious and repetitious.”

Yet she and other veteran members seem to thrive on the group’s quiet relentlessness.

Members join Amnesty International’s various nationwide appeals, such as seeking to eliminate the death penalty and to mount “urgent action” petition campaigns to protect the rights of pro-democracy dissidents in China.

The network includes 200 “active regulars” in the 13 student affiliate groups--three with colleges and 10 with high schools. The UC Irvine and Cal State Fullerton affiliates date back to the mid-1970s.

Three chapters have been formed since 1979, when the Irvine one was organized: Orange/Santa Ana in 1980, and the Laguna Beach and Huntington Beach chapters, both established in 1987.

Each chapter is assigned one or two “adoption” cases at a time--the 17 to date in the county have represented prisoners in such other countries as Myanmar (formerly Burma), Chile, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Uruguay.

Each chapter claims 15 to 30 “active regulars” who attend the monthly meetings in homes or community halls, where they receive briefings on various campaigns, including their own “adoption cases,” and spend up to three hours that night writing letters and signing petitions.

(For details on meetings and campaigns, the information line for Orange County is (714) 854-3064, and for Amnesty International’s western regional office, (213) 388-1237.)

Using Amnesty International guidelines, they send letters to the governments using direct, but diplomatic language.

A wall of silence usually follows. “It can be terribly frustrating--not a word from the authorities holding the prisoner or anyone else there,” says David Hartman, chairman of Rancho Santiago College’s political science department and a member of the Orange/Santa Ana chapter.

Hartman cites the case of one Soviet Union dissident, a Hare Krishna follower, imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital near Moscow. “We tried everything possible to reach the officials and then the prisoner himself. One time, with the help of our interpreter, we even tracked him to his ward. We got the nurse on the line, but all she told us was, ‘He’s asleep now,’ and hung up.”

Even though the prisoners in 12 of the Orange County cases have been released, the details of most of these cases remain sketchy or withheld. (Worldwide, Amnesty International reports that 1,689 prisoners were released in 1987, when the organization’s caseload totaled 3,534 prisoners.)

Says Joan Marcus-Colvin of the Laguna Beach chapter, who served five years as Amnesty International membership coordinator for Orange County: “We have been lucky in (the higher incidence of prisoner) releases. But basically there is so little we know about most cases, and there is much uncertainty on just how much of an impact we have made.”

Sometimes, there are exceptions, however. Many released prisoners have stated that Amnesty International letters played important--often crucial--roles in their prison treatment and eventual freedom.

Soviet dissident Nikolai Bobarykin, an Irvine chapter “adoptee,” is a dramatic example.

The chapter in 1985 was assigned the case of Bobarykin, a leader of the Pentecostal movement in the Soviet Union, who had already spent nearly eight years in Siberian prisons. Despite more than 1,000 letters to Soviet authorities, including Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the chapter received no replies.

But in 1987, Bobarykin was released. And in January, he visited Orange County to meet his Irvine chapter benefactors.

Chapter co-founder Bruce Baron, an elementary-school principal, remembers the visit as the group’s emotional high point in a decade of rights advocacy. “It was beyond anything we could have hoped for. I mean, there he was, our adoptee in person and safe, telling us how our letters had brought about better treatment for him. And we all cried. We all hugged--like old friends.”