Europe
After a series of dramatic political developments, all political prisoners in Greece and Portugal were released. In Turkey a major amnesty followed a lengthy political crisis. In all, 261 adopted prisoners were released in the three countries during 1974. But these welcome changes were neither permanent nor did they extend to other parts of Europe. In Turkey some prisoners were not included in the amnesty, and others have since been arrested. In Portugal new groups are now in prison, and in Spain the present situation is one of grave deterioration in all aspects of human rights. Only in Greece has the new government shown a serious determination to create a society in which there is freedom of conscience, and there are signs-releases and reductions of sentences- that in future a more liberal attitude towards conscientious objectors may
prevail.
Work on eastern Europe has concentrated on Yugoslavia where a series of political trials afforded Amnesty International the opportunity of sending two observer missions during the last 12 months. In the Soviet Union, a major report on the treatment of prisoners in camps and psychiatric hospitals has been written for publication. While welcoming the Soviet amnesty for women. prisoners, Al protested in the strongest terms against the arrest of three members of the Moscow Al group.
AI
Lawyers have attended trials in Spain, the Dutch member of the International Executive Committee undertook a legal mission to examine the working of the Emergency Provisions Act in Northern Ireland, and an Austrian lawyer attempted unsuccessfully to attend the Supreme Court appeal in Bulgaria of a United Nations economist sentenced to death for economic espionage.
During the year there has been a program of research and action on impris- oned conscientious objectors. AI has adopted conscientious objectors in eight European countries. The attitudes of these various states to conscientious objection are by no means the same, nor are the positions taken by the conscientious objectors themselves.
In some European countries-West Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, The Netherlands-the right to conscientious objection exists, but only for men who object to fighting in all wars for religious or philosophical reasons. Yet even