Human Rights Activist Revels in New Freedom

Two years ago, Mart Niklus, an Estonian human rights activist, spent his days monotonously attaching electrical cords onto irons in a labor camp in the Soviet Union.

But on Saturday, Niklus, whose imprisonment was widely decried throughout the Western world, was sitting in the den of a Bell Canyon residence speaking whimsically about hummingbirds.

“I’d like very much to see the birds of America,” he told his host, Jaak Treiman, the honorary counsel for Estonians in Los Angeles. “I have never seen a hummingbird before.”

Niklus had just spent an hour talking intensely about his experience in Soviet prisons and the plight of the Baltic states. At his feet lay dozens of articles, commendations, photographs and other documents about his ordeal and his people’s struggle for freedom.

Perhaps it says something about the resiliency of the human spirit that Niklus, who spent half his adult life in Soviet prisons, could still appreciate a bird’s song.

The Estonian ornithologist is in Los Angeles to accept the Freedom Award given by the Baltic American Freedom League. He will visit former President Ronald Reagan at his Century City office Monday to thank him for his diplomatic efforts to get human rights activists released.

The Los Angeles group honored Niklus two years ago, but he was forbidden by the Soviet government to leave the country. Instead, the group was linked to its honoree by an emotional telephone call.

On Saturday, Treiman presented a transcript of that telephone call and the 2-year-old award before an audience of about 100 mostly elderly Estonians. The group had kept the framed award for fear it never would reach Niklus.

“You asked us not to send it back because you were afraid the Soviets would confiscate it,” Treiman told Niklus.

Gathered at the Estonian House meeting hall in the West Adams District of Los Angeles, the Estonians munched radish and egg sandwiches and peppered the guest with questions. Niklus, who wore a lapel pin with the flags of Estonia and the United States on his sport coat, avoided talking about his years in prison. He seemed most animated when he spoke in Estonian and discussed his homeland’s future.

“Our goal is to restore the legitimate government in Estonia,” he said. “We hope the free world will support us and will understand us.”

No longer prohibited from traveling, Niklus, 55, has been visiting throughout the West since May. At each stop, he expresses his skepticism about reforming communism. It must instead be replaced, he said.

“Certainly there have been great changes in the Soviet Union,” Niklus said at Treiman’s residence Saturday morning. But he added, “The system is nowhere close to being democratic.”

Niklus, who tends to pace as he talks, frowned when asked about Americans’ enchantment with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

“I think the free world should get rid of Gorby-mania,” Niklus said. “He doesn’t deserve it. The free world lets itself be hoodwinked by the Communists.”

Niklus also is a politician. He was elected as a delegate to the Congress of Estonia and the Council of Estonia, a 70-member standing committee of the Congress. At one of the first sessions of Congress, Niklus arrived wearing his striped prison uniform, which he smuggled out of a labor camp.

Niklus was first imprisoned in 1958 for smuggling censored photographs of Estonia to the West. He has been incarcerated three times since, often kept in tiny isolation cells.

Over the years, his cause had been championed by Amnesty International, the National Academy of Science, the International PEN clubs and others. In 1984, nearly 200 U.S. congressmen sent Niklus greetings on his 50th birthday.

He said it was the outside help that prompted his early release from prison.

“Right now I should be somewhere in Siberia,” Niklus said with a smile.