Rumanian Dissident Discusses Human Rights Transgressions

Paul Goma, a Rumanian novelist and dissident, discussed the human rights transgressions of the regime of President Nicolae Ceausescu and United States support of Ceausescu's government in a speech yesterday at the Center for International Affairs.

Goma, who was imprisoned for nine months in 1977 for his outspoken opposition to the Rumanian government, denounced "the myth that Rumania conducts an independent foreign policy. "Rumanian foreign policy is contined by a framework that is set down by the Soviet Union and is never exceeded," Goma said.

After French intellectuals, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Eugene Ionesco, called for his release, Goma was freed from prison last November and forced to emigrate to France.

Goma said that even though he worked to "reform and not reconstruct Rumania we in the movement were arrested, humiliated, drugged, tortured and finally thrown out into the street."

Questions

Goma said he holds the United States partially responsible for continuing human rights violations in his native country, because Rumania received preferential trade conditions from President Carter.

"In return for the most favored nation trade status, they were supposed to observe the basic human rights of men, which of course, they did not and do not. Still, they continue to receive the favored treatment," he added.