THE NEW TRIBALISM: Defending Human Rights in an Age of Ethnic Conflict : Critics See U.N. Conference Doing Too Little, Too Late : Draft document is ‘riddled with contradictions,’ says Amnesty International.

LONDON — It began with an idea--that of British lawyer Peter Benenson, who wrote an article in the Observer, May 28, 1961, calling attention to six “forgotten” prisoners, jailed on both sides of the East-West divide for their political beliefs.

The story called for public support, and within a month more than 1,000 offers of help flooded in for this concept of an international campaign to protect human rights.

And what began as a stirring but limited appeal grew into a worldwide movement, headquartered in London, called Amnesty International--sometimes described as “the voice of the voiceless.”

It is a role the organization plans to pursue at next week’s U.N. conference in Vienna, which Amnesty International contends shows every indication of producing far too little, too late in defense of the “countless millions” deprived of their basic rights.

If it emerges as a voice in the political wilderness, it would be somewhat in character. Founder Benenson’s basic idea at first seemed amateurish: The group’s supporters using postcard campaigns to bring pressure on governments on behalf of political victims. But by the end of 1961, about 5,000 messages were either sent to, or on behalf of, a dozen prisoners in several countries.

And today, operating from a four-story, red-brick building in Central London, Amnesty International boasts more than 1.1 million members, subscribers and regular donors in some 150 countries. About 8,000 local groups have been formed in 70 nations.

Under the direction of Secretary General Pierre Sane, a Senegalese development specialist, 400 staff members from 50 countries operate the worldwide network.

The organization’s self-proclaimed mandate: to free all “prisoners of conscience” detained anywhere because of their beliefs, their ethnic origin, sex, color or language, so long as they have not used or advocated violence. It also seeks “fair and prompt trials for political prisoners” and abolishment of “the death penalty, torture and other cruel treatment of prisoners and extrajudicial executions and disappearances.” In 1977, the group was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Through the years, Amnesty International workers have been heartened by letters like the one received from former Soviet dissident Vladimir Balankhonov, who spent years in a Siberian labor camp. “Please accept my most profound thanks for keeping my memory alive for almost 17 years,” he wrote, adding that knowledge of the group’s efforts “did help me to remain alive and unbroken despite my uncertainty of what was going on behind the impenetrable barrier of walls and barbed wire surrounding the hell of the gulag.”

This spring, Amnesty International volunteer groups were working on behalf of 11,045 individuals in 82 countries. In a program called Urgent Action, 50,000 volunteers are mobilized on behalf of prisoners facing immediate danger like torture and execution, appealing to governments via electronic mail, telex, fax, air express and airmail for those at risk.

While most of the political prisoners are held by authoritarian regimes--in Chad, Myanmar, Syria and Turkey, to name a few--Amnesty International also criticizes Western democracies like the United States, for capital punishment and police brutality, and Britain, for violating prisoners’ rights in Northern Ireland.

Currently, the organization is expressing strong reservations about the upcoming U.N. World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, which it will attend as a non-governmental organization. The conference, Secretary General Sane says, presents “a fresh and unexpected threat to human rights.”

Displaying the first draft of the expected Declaration on Human Rights, which is expected to be the final document of the conference, Sane declared that it is “riddled with contradictions.”

He argued that governments waited until “virtually the last minute before drafting a final document for Vienna, and it shows.”

“The draft document reflects the deep divisions on basic human rights issues that have dogged the preparations for this conference from the very beginning,” he said.

Amnesty International believes there are still too many countries in Asia and Africa that overlook human rights abuses in pursuit of their economic and political goals and do not want to sign any international conventions with real teeth.

Amnesty International has come up with a 10-point proposal for the conference, including a call for naming a special commissioner for human rights.

“What is at stake in Vienna,” Sane said, “is a vision of a world in which all human beings can live in the knowledge that certain basic rights are inviolable.

“The success of the world conference will not be measured in fine-sounding words,” Sane said, “but on whether it will have any real impact on the lives of countless millions of victims suffering daily.”