34
A Chronicle of Current Events
Journal of the Human Rights Movement in the USSR
Numbers 28-31
Publications
made by the Information and Publications Department to develop better channels of international distribution of AI reports. The cooperation of national sections in opening such channels in their own country is vital to this new program.
Another innovation during the year arose from the IEC-authorized purchase of an IBM Composer for typesetting. The Spanish edition of the Chile Report, the new edition of A Chronicle of Current Events and this Annual Report were all typeset, designed and layed out inside the International Secretariat by department staff.
Efforts were made to increase the general information outflow from the International Secretariat. In addition to the 50 news releases and a number of feature articles produced during the year, individual lists of
trade unionists, journalists and women in prison were published and circulated throughout the world. There was also an increasing interest shown in the special Spanish-language bulletin produced for distribution in Latin America and Spain. For economic reasons, however, publication of the bulletin was cut back from monthly to once every two months.
After a proposal by Sean MacBride that Amnesty International sponsor a multilingual international magazine devoted entirely to human rights, the International Council authorized the International Executive Committee to examine the proposal and also AI's entire public information policy. The IEC established a special committee of international publishing experts for this pur- pose, and the committee's report will be submitted to the meeting of the council in St Gallen, Switzerland, in September 1975.
Multilingualism in Al's information and publications outflow was taken a step further with an IEC decision in principle to establish a translation and printing operation in Paris to produce more material in French.
The department also produced the printed Workshop on Human Rights: Report and Recommendation, the results of the workshop held in London 29 November-1 December 1974 by the Campaign for the Abolition of Torture (see chapter on CAT). A new, illustrated CAT leaflet, a new general AI-leaflet and a leaflet explaining Al's position on violence were also produced. In addition, the department produced booklets in English, French and Spanish containing Al's proposals to the Fifth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, being held in Toronto, Canada, 1-12 September 1975.