Rights and Opinion

Nobel Peace Prize winner Sean MacBride said yesterday the most important method of protecting human rights is through informed public opinion.

MacBride, the keynote speaker yesterday afternoon at the Conference on International Human Rights sponsored by the Harvard International Law Society, said the public, especially lawyers, "should take the lead in protecting human rights."

Good System

"You have a good judicial system in the U.S., as you have learned from the Nixon-Watergate period," he said. "Now you must extend it to the rest of the world."

MacBride, who won the peace prize in 1974, is currently the United Nations commissioner for Namibia (South-West Africa). He has also served as Ireland's Minister for External Affairs, president of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, and secretary-general of the International Commission of Jurists.

After MacBride's speech, five human rights experts, Charles Runyon '35, T. Michael Peay, John Carey, Joshua Rubinstein and C. Clyde Ferguson Jr., focused on violations of human rights in the Middle East, Southern Africa and South America.

Peay, a member of the Southern Africa Project and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, said repression similar to what exists in Southern Africa could begin in the United States "by backdoor means."

He called Senate Bill No. 1, which deals with the treatment of criminals, an example of "creeping fascism."