U.S. says Soviets spend too much on
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U.S. chief delegate Michael Novak, addressing the United Nations Human Rights Commission, also condemned the use of chemical weapons against people who resisted "the imperialist ambitions of the Soviet Union and its satellites."
Mr. Novak accused the Kremlin of depriving people of food to pay for "the most massive arms build-up in the history of the human race."
He said thousands of the sane people had been interned in psychiatric institutions in the Soviet Union over the past 20 years for peaceful dissent. He also said dissidents were often given drugs which caused serious side-effects.
This was an example of the use of scientific discoveries for the purpose of torture, he said. In his wide-ranging attack, Mr. Novak said defenceless women and children in Afghanistan, Laos and Kampuchea were dying as a result of chemical warfare. The Soviet Union did not immediately reply, but Byelorussia accused the United States of trying to divert attention from its development of neutron warheads.
Mr. Novak said the right to life included freedom from fear. International terrorism, grown more sophisticated because of scientific and technological developments in travel and communications, was a deadly abuse of this freedom, "My delegation loathes such terrorism whether committed by those of the right or of the left, whether by foes or by those who think they are friends," he said. "We condemn it on all sides in El Salvador."
In Washington, an annual human rights report issued by the State Department said there was widespread circumstantial evidence of torture by police in India. It said that press reports indicated police brutality in the capital, New Delhi, and in four states. It also noted that prisoners in India waited for as long as 10 years for trial. The report added that in Pakistan there were at least four cases last year in which prisoners allegedly died while in police custody.
