16457: Chamberlain: Haiti human rights activist killed in Baghdad blast (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Aug 21 (AP) -- Arthur Helton, who actively defended the
rights of Haitians fleeing by boat to the United States, died Tuesday in
the terrorist attack on U.N. headquarters in Baghdad. He was 54.
   Helton was believed to have been meeting with U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira
de Mello when the bomb exploded Tuesday, killing more than 20 people
including de Mello, officials said Wednesday.
   A lawyer, human rights activist, teacher and author, Helton was program
director of peace and conflict studies and senior fellow for refugee
studies and preventive action at the Council on Foreign Relations, a
Washington-based think tank where he had worked since 1999.
   Helton, who lived in New York City, was in Baghdad to assess
humanitarian conditions in Iraq for a series of articles he was planning to
write for openDemocracy, an online news agency, according the council.
   He often testified as an international expert in U.S. courts and in
Congress on migrants' rights and the protection of refugees. He was an
adjunct professor at Columbia University's law school and, from 1982 to
1994, directed the refugee project of the New York-based Lawyers Committee
for Human Rights.
   He dedicated many years to defending the right of Haitians seeking
refuge in the United States from poverty and political repression during
the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier and after Duvalier's ouster in
1986.
   Helton wrote more than 80 scholarly articles and several books on
refugees.