TNAG-0559-FCO40-654-Resettlement-of-Vietnamese-refugees-from-Hong-Kong-into-othe-1975 — Page 119

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10 different countries. In April 1975, the International Executive Committee took a step of considerable significance when it agreed to establish a formal documentation center to provide a professional information retrieval system for the International Secretariat.

The increase in staff has also enabled the Research Department to work on countries which hitherto had been neglected because of the practical difficulties of obtaining information in tightly controlled societies. Research on Cuba has been a priority, and the extension of systematic work on eastern Europe has resulted in two observer missions to Yugoslavia and a legal intervention to avert a death sentence in Bulgaria. Between June and December 1974, the number of adopted cases in "socialist" countries rose by 33%. But, increasingly, the concept of of political balance is seen in regional rather than global terms. Classic examples of this are the Syria/Israel report and the mission to North and South Yemen.

Within the last 18 months, the AI organization has firmly established itself outside Europe. Strong national sections exist in Japan, Australia and the United States. Field secretaries in South Asia and Latin America have publicized AI work in countries which detain prisoners of conscience. In the past, pressure on the International Secretariat to act came largely from individuals in Germany, Holland or Sweden. Now the appeals may also come from Tokyo or California— places much closer than London to Taiwan, Mexico and other areas of imprisonment.

The effect of this development on the Research Department has been to emphasize the paramount importance of maintaining comprehensive and up to date information on cases and problems which may well fall outside the normal group work program. In this situation, the quality of research assumes critical importance in enabling the International Secretariat to decide the correct response to a request for action. When urgent appeals are made for an AI initiative in response to reported torture or a threatened death sentence, accurate information is the single guarantee that the decision will rest on the facts of the situation itself rather than on the immediacy with which the appeal is expressed.