Common Ground : Human rights: Foreign activists tour Southland, finding similarities to problems in their countries.

Police brutality. Scapegoating of unpopular groups. Deprivation of civil liberties.

All are concerns distressingly familiar to Peter Volmink, a longtime South African activist, and fellow human rights crusaders worldwide.

In recent days, however, Volmink and civil rights monitors from Brazil, Zaire, Haiti, Bulgaria and Pakistan have been receiving a singular civics lesson, learning about similar vexing dilemmas right here in Southern California.

“The situation in South Africa and here is obviously not exactly the same, but there are parallels,” said Volmink, who is known for his work in the “Street Law” program, which educates youth about their rights.

He and eight other monitors were honored Tuesday evening at the third annual Los Angeles dinner benefiting Human Rights Watch, the U.S.-based watchdog group. Barred from leaving their countries and honored in absentia were Moncef Marzouqi, who heads Tunisia’s only independent human rights organization, and Bao Tong, currently imprisoned in China. Deborah LaBelle, a Michigan lawyer who defends prisoners, was also among the honorees.

Donors paid $250 a plate for the dinner at a Beverly Hills hotel. But the activists have spent time recently exploring humbler settings.

U.S. laws usually offer greater protections than in the monitors’ nations--and there is clearly no U.S. equivalent to excesses such as the Mobutu Sese Seko dictatorship in Zaire or the unpunished murders of peasants in Brazil’s Amazon region. Nor do U.S. activists generally face the life-threatening situations that are often the norm in many other countries. But the monitors found similarities during a wide-ranging tour that included stops in Watts, East Los Angeles and Little Tokyo.

“The similarities are real,” said Jean-Claude Jean, who works for democratic reform in Haiti and noted disparities of wealth and poverty in both countries.

During a visit to Los Angeles’ Japanese American National Museum, the monitors heard of the World War II-era internment of more than 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry. Inevitably, conversation turned toward Proposition 187, the successful ballot initiative that targets illegal immigrants. Proponents argued that the measure was needed to stem unlawful immigration, but Chris M. Komai of the museum staff had a different view.

“The people of California, in my personal opinion, were looking for scapegoats for the bad economy,” Komai said.

That theme was familiar to Dimitrina Petrova, a Bulgarian native who monitors rights issues in Eastern Europe. She cited the Gypsies, long a targeted minority, who have experienced renewed discrimination in post-Communist Eastern Europe.

“What’s happening to the Gypsies in my country is the same type of thing that is going on with immigrants here,” said Petrova, who was a dissident under her country’s former Communist regime. “Everyone wants to blame their problems on someone else.”

Joseph Mudumbi pointed out that civil war in Rwanda earlier this year sent about 1 million refugees fleeing into neighboring Zaire within a matter of weeks--almost as many refugees as the United States admitted legally during the past 10 years. The influx far outstripped Zaire’s limited infrastructure.

“We need international aid for this problem,” Mudumbi said. “It is too much for Zaire alone.”

Police abuse was a main topic when the monitors visited the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. The ACLU, said the local branch’s executive director, Ramona Ripston, was disparaged as the “criminals’ lobby” by former U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese, reflecting a lack of popularity often shared by rights groups worldwide.

In her homeland, Petrova noted, there is a saying: “Bulgaria doesn’t need foreign enemies as long as it has its human rights monitors.”

I.A. Rehman, a former journalist who directs the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, raised a different dilemma: “What about the rights of the family members of those convicted by the state?” These families, while blameless, often suffer economic ruin and social rejection, Rehman noted.

On Tuesday, the monitors learned about gang violence and its effects from mothers at Dolores Mission Roman Catholic Church in Boyle Heights. Marta Sosa, whose 18-year-old son was killed in a gang-related incident last year, related how she now endeavors to promote peace among all area youths--including members of the gang responsible for her son’s death.

Outside a church day-care center, Father Ricardo Rezende, who works with peasants in the Brazilian Amazon region, was showing some black and white photographs of victims of violence in his parish to area residents. Delia Lopez, a 55-year-old mother, pointed to an image of a teen who had been shot in the neck.

“They shot me too,” she said.

Stray bullets intended for a gang member flew into her apartment one night in 1991, one piercing her chest and lung. While the young perpetrators were very distinct from the pistoleiros of Brazil, Rezende said the shattering effects of their actions were much the same.