Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

January

29

More believers have been sentenced. Anna Vasilevna Mikhailenko, a Ukrainian
Catholic, was sentenced to compulsory psychiatric treatment by a court in
Odessa. She is a trained linguist and librarian charged with "anti-Soviet
agitation and propaganda". The authorities regard her as a Ukrainian nationalist

and her brief internment in a mental hospital in November 1980 was proof that
the authorities continued to imprison dissidents in mental hospitals for purely
political reasons. The Leningrad city court sentenced Natalya Mikhailovna
Lazarava, a member of the religiously oriented "Maria" club, to 10 months'
imprisonment. She was charged with "disseminating deliberately false faori-
cations" in connection with an article she wrote for Women and Russia. Her case
was used as a pretext for authorities to search homes of members of the "Maria"
club and the "37" religious seminar. (KNS)

"Chronique", the monthly periodical published by the French branch of Amnesty
International, reported the case of a 19 year old Yugoslav law student, Dobraslav
Paraga, who was arrested and imprisoned on 21 November on charges of "hostile
propaganda". He had signed a petition with 43 others, asking the head of state
to grant an amnesty to all political prisoners, as well as to stop harassment
of citizens suspected of having committed "political infractions". This was
the third petition of its kind to be sent since June, 1980. Lawyers, professors,
writers, religious leaders and two former prisoners of conscience, Franjo
Tudjman and Vlado Gotova, signed this last petition, which claimed that an
amnesty "would form a solid base upon which to build mutual confidence and
dialogue in the interest of all."

February

3

5-6

7

A Soviet sociologist, Alexei Lestnikov, who has written for leading Soviet
newspapers, was sentenced to 3 years in a labour camp, charged with "slander
against the State". He was arrested 5 months ago and has been held in prison
since then. He wrote an article describing the gap between the rights guar-
anteed in the 1977 Constitution and the reality of Soviet life. (IHT)

Dr. Franjo Tudjman, the Yugoslav war hero, writer and historian, was arrested
and charged with "hostile propaganda" and was to be tried in Zagreb on 17
February. He was charged along with writer and journalist Vlado Gotova, after
they had made statements to foreign newsmen regarding Croatian problems, claiming
that inequality existed among the individual nationalities and national minorities
of Yugoslavia. Both men voiced strong criticisms of Yugoslavia's political and
economic policies and pointed out the limitations on the citizen's right to
free expression. (Index on Censorship)

The trial of Oxana Meshko took place in Kiev. She is a member of the Ukrainian
Helsinki Group, under arrest since October 1980. She is 75 years old and has
been sentenced to 6 months' strict regime camp and 5 years' internal exile. While
interned in the Pavlov psychiatric hospital, she contracted purulent pleurisy.
(USSR News Brief)

On 4 February, Amnesty International sent a letter to Mr. Honecker, the East
German head of state, demanding that his Government review its penal legislation
in order to bring it into line with international agreements on human rights. The
human rights organisation has published a document outlining and reviewing the
many cases of imprisonment of those who have appealed for emigration to the West
or who have tried to escape. (See Monitoring Activities and Studies). The
East German Government considered the document "libellous". (M)

February

9

19

21

Keston News Service reported new arrests of unregistered Baptists in the USSR.
On 26 December 1980, Alexei Trofimovich Kozorezov, who had been living in hiding
for some time, was arrested near Novosibirsk. He previously served two sen-
tences totalling 8 years and had been unable to obtain employment since his
release in 1971. His wife, Alexandra, has since gone into hiding. She was
acting President of the Council of Prisoners' Relatives and has been under
threat of arrest for this activity. On 21 January, Dimitri Vasilevich
Minyakov was arrested near Rostov. He was a leader of the unregistered
Council of Churches of Evangelical Christians and Baptists and had also been
living in hiding due to constant harassment since finishing two prior terms of
imprisonment. He was the ninth member to be arrested. Only three members of
the Council were still at liberty: Gennadi Kryuchkov, the Chairman who has been
living in hiding for over 10 years; Kornei Kreker; and Mikhail Shuptala. There
is no official information on the number of reform Baptists in the USSR, but
a US organisation claims that the Council of Churches is made up of 2 000
church communities nationally, with as many as 100 000 members, not including
young people and children. Reform Baptists have a long history of persecution,
and since the Olympics this persecution seems to have been stepped up.
total number of imprisoned, active reform Baptists is 84; 59 of whom were
arrested in 1980 alone. (KNS, RFE/RL)

The

Hillel Butman is a former Soviet prisoner of conscience now living in Israel.
He has appealed to Keston College to support and publish the name of Russian
Orthodox prisoner Gennady Sheludko, a former cell-mate. Sheludko is 25 years
old and while serving a 3 year prison term for "contacts with foreigners and
speculation in foreign goods" he attempted to escape from the USSR. In 1977,
he hijacked a plane to Helsinki where he then gave himself up. The Finnish
authorities extradited him to the Soviet Union where he immediately was tried
and sentenced to 15 years' "deprivation of liberty". Gennady Sheludko has a sole
aim in life to reach the West in order to receive theological training and
become a priest. Mr. Butman appealed for support to be extended to this prisoner
of conscience by publishing his name and by sending material aid, since all money
he earns is confiscated to cover losses sustained by Aeroflot as a result of the
hijack. (KNS)

The leader of the unofficial Committee on the Right to Emigrate, Mr. Vasilii Barats, was detained by police in Moscow for psychiatric examination. This action followed the detention in psychiatric hospitals of other members of the group in other Soviet cities, including Andrei Korolev, Eduard Bulakh and Tamara Boyarouskaya. Barats and his wife first applied to emigrate more than 5 years ago. (UPI)

The Soviet psychiatrist, Anatoly Koryagin, was arrested by police at Belgorod while on a Kharkov to Moscow train. In January he had told a Financial Times correspondent that Mr. Alexei Nikitin, who had been interned in a psychiatric hospital after complaining of conditions in the Donetsk mines, was "perfectly sane".

The arrest would appear to be linked with Koryagin's support of Nikitin. Mr. Koryagin acted as a consultant to the unofficial Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes. (s.s.)

Dr. Franjo Tudjman was sentenced to 3 years' imprisonment on charges of "hostile propaganda" and "slander" and has been banned from publishing for five years. This was the first major dissident trial in Yugoslavia since the death of Tito.

[blocks in formation]

The court said that Dr. Tudjman had been given the minimum penalty in con-
sideration of his war record, fighting alongside Tito's Communist partisans.
The highest possible penalty would have been 15 years. (IHT)

The Lithuanian Information Centre reported that Vytautas Skuodis has been
sentenced to 7 years of strict regime labour camp and 5 years' internal
exile for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda". He wrote a statistical
study of atheist propaganda entitled, "Spiritual Genocide in Lithuania".
The trial is reported in issue no. 46 of the Chronicle of the Catholic Church
in Lithuania. Also sentenced with Mr. Skuodis were Gintautas Iesmantas, a
51 year old journalist who wrote an article on Lithuanian secession from the
USSR and Povilas Peceliunas, a teacher of Lithuanian language and literature,
charged with editing "Alma Mater' and circulating Lithuanian samizdat.

Amnesty International reminded readers of February's edition of its
publication "Chronique" that more than 200 dissidents had been arrested in the
USSR in the past 15 months. However, the organisation believed the actual number
to be much higher. Penalties were becoming more severe, the heaviest being
terms of 15 years' imprisonment. Three types of dissidents have particularly
suffered during these last months. Those who were members of unrecognised
Helsinki monitoring groups; those who criticised the Government's nationalist
policies, especially Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Estonians and Armenians; finally,
believers from diverse denominations, particularly Baptists, Seventh Day
Adventists, Pentecostalists and Russian Orthodox.

Word has reached the West that on 30 October 1980, a Czech priest, Joseph
Lahuda, was sentenced to 6 months' imprisonment for having celebrated a mass
and organised a prayer meeting for young people without official authorisation.
Emilie Kosegova was imprisoned for four months on the same charge. Josef
Barta, another Czech priest who has been refused the right to practise, was
imprisoned on 18 November for having organised a religious retreat with young
people. From 1952 to 1966 he was imprisoned on charges of "high treason". (AI)
Rudolph Battek, the celebrated Czech human rights activist imprisoned in June
1980 on charges of "assaulting a public official", was still awaiting trial.
He was gravely ill and began a hunger stike on 12 December after being ref-
used the right to see his wife and his lawyer. On 14 January, his wife received
news that the Public Prosecutor had prolonged his detention while awaiting the
results of investigations into other charges brought against Battek.
charge of "subversion" had been brought against him because he was in possession
of a manuscript entitled "On Freedom and Power", a text representing the Czech
contribution to an unofficial publication to be issued jointly with Polish
dissidents. It would seem that the persecution of Mr. Battek reflects the
regime's desire to force critics to emigrate. Also, it would seem that the
police were exaggerating the "Polish connection" in order to justify a higher
degree of interference. (AI, RFE/RL)

A new

A court has revoked the 10 month supplementary prison term handed down on
Petr Cibulka on 27 January. He received the sentence for having "insulted"
2 officials of the Plzen-Bory prison after he protested against the confiscation
of reading material he had been authorised to read. The court revoked the
sentence on the grounds that the prison officials had "gone beyond their rights".
Cibulka, a Charter 77 member imprisoned since April 1978, was originally sen -

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

tenced in November 1978 to 2 years' imprisonment for having diffused written
and sung material "hostile to the State". During 1979 he went on hunger strike
on 3 separate occasions to protest prison conditions and in March 1980 was
condemned to an additional year's imprisonment. He is now due to be rel-
eased in mid-April 1981. (AI)

Mr. Anatole Koryagin, the Soviet psychiatrist arrested after having informed
Western journalists that, upon private examination, he had found Mr. Alexei
Nikitin to be sane, has been charged with "anti-Soviet agitation". Mr.
Nikitin has subsequently been interned in a special psychiatric hospital.
Mr. Koryagin was awaiting trial. (s.s.)

Avital Shcharansky and Yosef Mendelevich gave a press conference in
Jerusalem at which they said that Anatoli Shcharansky was serving a 6 month
prison sentence in the Chistopol labour camp. Temperatures at the camp
reach 50°C below zero and prisoners lept without covers or mattresses. He
was permitted to write one letter every 60 days, which is considered normal.(ss)
After the recent Soviet-Polish summit in Moscow, there has been a further
clamp-down on dissent in Poland. Formal charges were brought against 4
anti-Communist dissidents; they were charged with seeking the violent overthrow
of Poland's constitutional system. The maximum penalty is death. Those
charged were: Robert Moczulski, Romuala Szeremitiewow, Tadeusz Statski and
Tadeusz Jandzi szak. Police had arrested Mr. Jacek Kuron, the leader of
KOR, the day prior to the announcement of the charges and they had unsuccessfully
tried to arrest Mr. Adam Michnik, who was later placed under the protection of
workers' guard. Solidarity protested the arrests and the detention of Mr. Kuron
and in its latest bulletin it advised members of their rights and how to behave
under questioning. Professor Bartoszewski, Secretary of the Polish PEN
Club, said that a concerted effort must be made by all to "incorporate the
gains of the past few months". In the past, bad information had destroyed
trust and increased tensions. Poland now had the chance of development through
"healthy, open debate." (T)

RFE/RL gave details of the case of 50 year old Gemma-Jadvyga Stanclyte, the
Lithuanian Catholic activist sentenced to 3 years' ordinary regime camp for
violating the public order. At her trial, Stanclyte said she had organised
and participated in a religious procession out of love for Lithuanian traditions
and out of concern over the rise in juvenile delinquency. The prosecution
charged her with "having insulted" the feelings of atheists as well as having
failed to obtain a permit for the procession. RFE/RL pointed out that the
severity of her sentence and the fact that the authorities had also tried to
convict her of "parasitism" indicated the vigour with which they were attempting
to halt the possible emergence of any figure as a focus for the movement for
religious rights in Lithuania.

Father Vaclav Maly and 6 other Charter 77 activists were taken by security
police from a Prague flat. He addressed a letter to the General Military
Procurator to protest the systematic beatings he received from his interrogators,
who were trying to make him divulge information. He refused to cooperate and
was tortured, later being told to sign a statement saying that "no physical
or psychological pressure" was used against him. Father Maly pointed out that
Czech security's behaviour had broken existing laws and in order to rid the
public of their mistrust of police, the authorities should take action. (KNS)

[blocks in formation]

Keston News Service received many reports from the USSR which would indicate
that the authorities were changing tactics towards religious dissidents and
organisations. It seemed that several dissidents who had recanted were
visiting priests and activists in an attempt to persuade them from sending
appeals and information to the West. The reason given was that the authorities
had decided to deal themselves with such complaints raised by the dissidents,
therefore it was no longer necessary to enlist foreign support. A new sami zdat
journal was on the point of being published, with the authorities' permission,
entitled "Monogaya Leta" (Many Years). Sources said that the editorial policy
seemed to be the justification of the persecution of believers in the USSR
"from a biblical standpoint".

The wife of Mr. Veljo Kalep, a leading Estonian dissident, told an Estonian living in exile that her husband faced a 12 year sentence for "anti-Soviet agitation" after he claimed to have "new evidence" relating to the Wallenberg affair. Apparently, no-one could say what the documents revealed, but sources believed they were a "good reason to arrest Kalep". (G)

Yuri Stepanov, the 33 year old dancer who defected to the United States last
year, but returned to the Soviet Union 3 months later, was released from
custody 2 hours after he was reported to have been detained. Sources said
he had met with foreign correspondents to talk of his denial of an Izvestia
article which he claimed was inaccurate in saying that he had repented of his
defection, telling them that life in the United States was intolerable.
Stepanov said he returned to the USSR because of concern for the fate of his
family in Moscow. He was warned to have no more meetings with foreigners.
(G, WR/TH)

Mrs. Irina Brailovsky, the wife of Viktor, was told by police that she would be expelled from Moscow if she continued holding scientific seminars in her apartment. (WR/TH)

Western news agencies reported that Alexander Chatravka, who has written books dealing with special psychiatric hospitals in the USSR and who spent 5 years in Soviet psychiatric hospitals after attempting to flee to the West in 1974, was rearrested in February and sent to a psychiatric hospital for further treatment. Since his release in 1979, he had been privately examined by Anatoli Koryagin and Alexander Voloshonovich who had pronounced him sane. (RFE-RL)

The wife of Vyacheslav Bakhmin received official notice that her husband's sentence had been annulled and that he was to be transferred to Moscow for a new investigation. It is possible that his case will be associated with that of Irina Grivnina and Felix Serebrov. (USSR News Brief)

Sources reported that the appeal against the sentence of Father Gleb Yakunin
was rejected. The appeal was heard on 12 March, six months after sentencing.
This was most unusual because appeals are usually heard a few weeks after
the court hearing. Father Gleb will be transported to a strict regime labour
camp to serve his 5 year sentence, followed by 5 years' internal exile. (KNS)
The samizdat journal "37" has ceased publication due to KGB pressure. The
Leningrad editor, Viktor Krivulin, said he had been forced to take the
decision after repeated warnings that he would be either expelled from the

« ÎnapoiContinuă »