Global Trek Planned for 2nd Amnesty Tour

Rock stars Sting, Jackson Browne and Robert Cray joined with Amnesty International officials Tuesday in accepting a $10-million commitment from Reebok International, the athletic footwear company, to underwrite a worldwide tour this fall.

Jack Healey, executive director of Amnesty International in the U.S., said the Reebok funds guarantee the tour--with an estimated $22 million in expenses--will go beyond the typical and profitable rock tour stops in North America and Europe to areas where expenses will most certainly outdistance box-office receipts. The Reebok funds will be used to cover any deficit.

“Amnesty and human rights are not just a Western message,” Healey said in an interview before a press conference Tuesday at A&M; Records in Hollywood.

“The human rights message is a universal message and we want to show by the geography of the tour that it represents a true universal feeling about the importance of governments everywhere renewing their commitment to human rights.”

The tour is scheduled to begin Sept. 4 in London or Paris and then proceed to more than a dozen other countries including Italy, Spain, Thailand, Zimbabwe, India, Japan, Costa Rica, Brazil and Argentina. There will apparently be only two U.S. concerts, one of which will be in Los Angeles or San Francisco.

The tour organizers are also exploring the possibility of performances in China, Poland and the Soviet Union, but Healy said the international human rights organization may not be able to get government permission to perform in some of the desired countries.

On that point, Sting said at the press conference, “It’s very important to call on all the governments of the world to open their arms to us . . . to help us out . . . to say, ‘You are welcome here. We are not afraid of your message.’ ”

The tour--”Human Rights Now!”--is the outgrowth of a highly successful six-city, 1986 Amnesty-sponsored tour of the United States.

Titled “A Conspiracy of Hope,” the U.S. tour--which included a stop at the Forum in Inglewood--was designed to raise public awareness of the organization which works to stop the arrest and torture of persons for matters of political conscience.

About 120,000 people attended the shows which were tied to the 25th anniversary of Amnesty. They netted $2.1 million in box-office receipts and attracted an estimated 34,000 new members for the organization.

During the tour, Amnesty officials also collected an estimated 30,000 post cards calling for the release of specific prisoners in six countries. They were adopted by the tour musicians as symbols of the more than 4,500 prisoners Amnesty believes have been unjustly imprisoned around the world. Tatyana Osipova, one of the “prisoners of conscience” singled out by the post-card campaign, was subsequently released by the Soviet Union and attended the press conference to express her thanks to the musicians and the organization.

This year’s tour coincides with Amnesty’s drive to publicize the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations in 1948.

The tour will be produced by Bill Graham, the San Francisco-based promoter who also coordinated the 1986 tour.

Joining Sting, Browne and Cray at the press conference were nearly a dozen other musicians who will presumably perform on some tour dates: Suzanne Vega, Nona Hendryx, Bonnie Raitt, Michael McDonald, Robert Lamm of Chicago, Richard Page of Mr. Mister and Gloria Estefan. Peter Gabriel, a tour co-leader with Sting, spoke to the reporters via a phone hook-up from his home in England.

Several other artists from the 1986 U.S. Amnesty tour are also expected to participate in this year’s tour: Bryan Adams, Joan Baez and Lou Reed. U2, the Irish rock band which co-headlined the 1986 tour, is working on an album and film, and its availability is uncertain.

Besides pledging the $10 million in tour funds, Joe LaBonte, president of Reebok International Ltd., said the Reebok foundation is also establishing a $100,000 annual Human Rights Award.

As part of the campaign, Amnesty will circulate the full text of the declaration to as many people as possible in more than 45 languages. A petition calling on governments to observe the declaration and protect human rights will be circulated and presented by the tour committed to governments and the United Nations in December.

“We want it to be a unique moment in human rights and reach prisoners of conscience around the world and let them know that there is a new energy force in this world supporting them,” Healey said. “We also want to remind them that they have their own Magna Charta and their own Bill of Rights. It’s called the declaration and they should demand of their governments the protections outlined in the declaration.”

Healey estimated 900,000 people will see the tour.

“One of the goals of this campaign,” he said, “is to also reach illiterate people in Third-World countries. . . . The only way we can spread the message is through music. We couldn’t print anything and get it out to them. This tour helps us break new boundaries.”