International Human Rights Group Honors 8 of Its Monitors : World affairs: In L.A., watchdog organization’s representatives from Asia, Africa and South America tell of struggles in working against political brutality.

Their concerns are among the great issues of our day: political killings, forced migrations, genocide. Some have served time as political prisoners; others have been forced into exile. All live with threats and have lost colleagues.

Human Rights Watch, an independent group that challenges rights violations worldwide, honored eight of its “monitors” Wednesday during the group’s fourth annual benefit dinner, held at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel. This year’s honorees are from Asia, Africa and South America, exhibiting the reach of an organization that has expanded to 70 countries since its founding in 1978.

“We find that the human rights problem is a growth industry, unfortunately,” noted Jane Olson, co-chair of Human Rights Watch/California.

The honored monitors present each addressed the Hollywood luminaries and others at the dinner, chaired by Clarissa and Edgar Bronfman Jr., chairman of Seagram Co., the new owner of entertainment giant MCA Inc.

During a visit to the Los Angeles Times, the monitors spoke about themselves and their work.

MOROCCO: Driss Benzekri

Vice president of the Moroccan Organization for Human Rights, the soft-spoken Benzekri was imprisoned in 1974 and held for 17 years. He was released as the Moroccan government launched a reform effort aimed in part at improving its image abroad.

“North Africa is going through a very hard time at the moment,” said Benzekri, citing the brutal civil war in Algeria and political pressures in Tunisia and Morocco.

Asked by Times Editor Shelby Coffey III what kept him going while behind bars, Benzekri, speaking in French, said: “I had a chance to read a lot, study, follow the world situation--and to understand the value of a human being.”

UZBEKISTAN: Mikhail Dimitrievich Ardzinov

Ardzinov is deputy chairman of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan. The group has been banned and its members hounded in the authoritarian former Soviet republic. Soviet authorities once held Ardzinov in a psychiatric clinic.

“He is not only a communist--he is a convinced communist,” Ardzinov said in Russian of Uzbek President Islam A. Karimov. “We have the same authoritarian, communist regime as before.”

COLOMBIA: Maria Victoria Fallon

A lawyer, Fallon is a member of the Permanent Committee for Human Rights-Hector Abad Gomez, based in Medellin. The group is named for its founder, who was killed in a 1987 attack in Medellin, base of a notorious drug cartel. Fallon is the lead attorney before the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights in the case of the Villatina massacre, in which armed men thought to be police officers opened fire on a group of young people, killing eight but leaving one survivor, who hid beneath his friends’ bodies.

“This 8-year-old, from that moment on, could not sleep without a light on,” Fallon said in Spanish. “Two years later, at the age of 10, he died of a heart attack.”

RWANDA: Jean-Paul Biramvu

His human rights activities made him a target during the ethnic slaughter that marked the civil war of 1993-94.

“Since the genocide, we have a big task in Rwanda in terms of education, tolerance and respect of human rights and life,” said Biramvu. He devotes his time to rebuilding an effective human rights movement.

MYANMAR: Hseng Noung Linter

She spent six years in the underground Shan opposition movement before becoming a photographer and translator. She has done extensive work on the fate of girls and women trafficked to Thailand from Myanmar, frequently to be held as sex slaves. She also has examined the predicaments of hundreds of thousands of Burmese refugees.

“They live a terrible life,” she said, “but they prefer it to being in [Myanmar].”

PERU: Francisco Soberon Garrido

Founder and director of the Pro-Human Rights Assn., which documented violations during Peru’s brutal guerrilla conflict. The association has assisted hundreds of victims of arbitrary detention and wrongful prosecution.

“We have two principal themes that occupy us,” said Soberon. “First is the fate of those taken prisoner without justification under charges of being terrorists. And second is the question of the impunity of the state.”

VIETNAM: Doan Viet Hoat

One of Vietnam’s best-known political prisoners, he published an underground journal of news, opinion and public commentary. He is now serving a 15-year prison sentence for his antigovernment stance, Human Rights Watch says.

“I never regret for one moment what my husband has done,” said his wife, Tran Thi Thuc, a Minnesota resident who represented him here. “We want human rights groups to keep putting pressure on the government to release my husband and other prisoners of conscience.”

TURKEY: Mahmut Sakar

A Kurd by birth, he is a lawyer and activist with the Human Rights Assn. of Turkey. His branch gathers information on abuses in the nation’s southeast, where human rights monitors charge the military with waging a brutal campaign against Kurdish separatists. Human Rights Watch says Sakar could not attend the dinner because the government would not let him leave the country.