Political prisoners seek Reagan's aid in urging inspection of Soviet camps (03/20/83)

Political prisoners seek Reagan's aid in urging inspection of Soviet camps

JERSEY CITY, N.J. - Copies of an open letter to President Ronald Reagan written sometime last year by 10 Soviet political prisoners have recently reached the West, reported the External Representation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group.

The 10, all prisoners in Camp No. 36, part of a vast penal complex in the northern city of Perm in the Russian SFSR, asked Mr. Reagan to help form an international commission to inspect Soviet labor camps.

They said that Soviet abuses of political prisoners are "so widespread that it is no longer merely a question of violations of human rights, but of premeditated inhumanity, of physical and psychological torture, of terrorizing the spirit and exhibiting moral contempt for culture."

The letter was signed by Mykola Rudenko, Oles Shevchenko, Myroslav Marynovych, Viktor Nekipelov, Alexander Ogorodnikov, Henrich Altunian, Antanas Terliatskas, Viktor Niytsoo, Norair Grygorian and Vladimir Balakhonov.

Mr. Rudenko, 62, a founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, was sentenced in 1977 to seven years in a labor camp and five years' internal exile, a form of enforced residence. Mr. Marynovych, another member of the group, was sentenced a year later to an identical sentence. The other Ukrainian, Mr. Shevchenko, was sentenced in 1980, also to 12 years' labor camp and exile.

The other prisoners come from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and were involved in different phases of the dissident movement. Mr. Ogorodnikov, 32, was sentenced in 1980 to six years in a labor camp and five years' exile for his religious activities, while Mr. Nekipelov, a 52-year-old novelist and member of the Moscow Helsinki Group, was sentenced the same year to an identical term for his writings.

Mr. Altunian, a 50-year-old electrical engineer from Kharkiv, was sentenced in 1981 to a total of 12 years' imprisonment for possessing unsanctioned literature, while Mr. Niytsoo, a 31-year-old Estonian also tried in 1981, is serving a two-year labor term to be followed by two years' exile.

Mr. Terliatskas, a 55-year-old Lithuanian, was tried in 1980 and sentenced to three years in a labor camp to be followed by five years' internal exile. Mr. Balakhonov, 48, a translator, was sentenced in 1973 to 12 years in a labor camp. Details concerning the case of Mr. Grygorian are unavailable.

In the letter, the prisoners cite numerous instances of harassment and brutality in the labor camp. The full text of the letter to the president appears below.

* * *

Mr. President:

It is often difficult for a resident of the West to imagine the atmosphere of lawlessness in which the inmates of Soviet political prison camps exist today. Recently (end of 1981 - first half of 1982) the conditions of our imprisonment have worsened so sharply that we feel compelled to appeal to you. It is probable that this "tightening of the screws," or, as the saying went during the Stalin years, "clamp-down," is equally the result of individual instances in which the regime has disgraced itself (Poland, Afghanistan) and of the general crisis that the system is undergoing. The invariable companions of a tyranny growing decrepit - cruelty and absurdity - today permeate all spheres of our life, all aspects of our prison existence.

On April 18, 1982, the prisoners Myroslav Marynovych, Viktor Nekipelov and Mykola Rudenko were dragged away directly from a humble prison table, at which 14 prisoners had gathered to celebrate Easter with prayer and an Easter meal, and thrown into a punishment cell ("kartser") for half a month as "organizers of a mob." Strange as it may seem, the celebration of Christ's Resurrection was regarded as a gathering of a "mob" that had to be dispersed. It is difficult for us to imagine that there can exist another prison in the world, in which the observance of a religious ritual would be punishable by incarceration in a punishment cell. Even in 1932, the authorities at Stalin's Solovky special-regime camp permitted not only the Easter service, but even the procession with a cross that precedes the Easter divine liturgy.

On February 13, 1982, Rudenko, an invalid of World War II with a severe spinal injury, was deprived of his invalid status for no known reason and thereby declared capable of performing heavy manual labor. We can only assume that this was done because a collection of his poems appeared in the West.

In March of 1982, the prisoner Vladimir Balakhonov was deprived of a visit from his daughter on completely absurd and immoral grounds, namely, his failure to fulfill his work quota. This was to have been his first visit in 10 years. The use of punishment cells as a form of persecution is becoming commonplace, a part of our everyday life. After all, anyone can be thrown there for any, even the most insignificant, reason: a button left undone, leaving the work site 10 minutes before the end of the shift (even if the prisoner has met his daily output quota), or even, as happened in the case of the prisoner Alexander Ogorodnikov already serving a term in the punishment cell, for sharing a spoonful of soup with a cellmate who was to have spent the day on bread and water under the conditions of his regime.

Just as frequently and readily we are deprived of what is most precious to us, that is, visits with our relatives. Since visits are allowed not once a week or once a month, but once a year, this constitutes a very harsh punishment indeed. Between February and April 1982, Oles Shevchenko (for celebrating Easter among other reasons), Viktor Niytsoo and others had their visits from relatives cancelled under various ridiculous "pretexts." After traveling thousands of kilometers to the camp, the relatives of Henrich Altunian, Norair Grygorian and Ogorodnikov were turned back and not permitted to meet with the prisoners. In the first instance, there was allegedly no available room for the meeting; Grygorian was placed in the punishment cell on the eve of his expected visit; and Ogorodnikov's wife was told that she could not meet with her husband, because this marriage had been registered only in church.

Repressions and privations stalk us at every step. Our correspondence is subjected to the harshest ideological censorship, our letters are shamelessly confiscated (for this to happen, it is enough for a letter to be deemed "suspicious in content") or they "disappear along the way." Not a single letter from abroad has reached the camp in the last several years. Since those who send letters themselves become "suspicious in content," in general, only letters from family members get through the censor's fine sieve.

The confiscations conducted in the camp are senseless and blasphemous: poems are confiscated from poets, written prayers from believers. The authorities confiscated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from the prisoner Nekipelov as also "suspicious in content." It had been sent to him by his wife in a letter. The Bible and other religious literature is prohibited in the camp and they have been confiscated from prisoners. The hunt for the written word is being carried to such absurd lengths that every scrap of paper is wrenched from our hands, every handwritten line.

There are frequent instances of what might be called ideological revenge. A prisoner's independent stance and his participation in collective protests, especially signing human-rights documents and appeals which might be published in the West, leave him open to a wide range of repressions - up to and including several months of imprisonment in the camp prison or even several years in the special prison in the city of Chistopol. For example, one of the real reasons for incarcerating the prisoner Dan Arenberg in Chistopol prison in September 1981 was his attempt to send a congratulatory telegram (in a perfectly legal manner) to Prime Minister Begin of Israel on the latter's election to his post.

As far as publication abroad is concerned, at this very moment KGB officers are conducting repressions among prisoners in connection with our appeal to you, Mr. President, upon your inauguration. Antanas Terliatskas was warned that he and the other authors of this appeal might receive new prison terms for their action.

Punishments were meted out to all 16 members of the "strike of despair," which took lace because the camp authorities refused to call a specialists to examine the critically ill (with acute nephritis) Nekipelov, who was failing rapidly. In the end the prisoners' demand was met and a physician arrived, but at a very high cost to all involved. Ten strikers were placed in the punishment cell, from which three of them - Altunian, Ogorodnikov and Rudenko - were transferred to "cell-type premises" (PKT) in the camp. A month later, Nekipelov was also taken there directly from his hospital bed. The prisoner Yu. Fedorov was transferred back to a special-regimen camp.

The list of similar example of lawlessness could be continued without end, Mr. President. They are so widespread that it is no longer merely a question of violation of human rights, but of premeditated inhumanity, of physical and psychological torture, of terrorizing the spirit and exhibiting moral contempt for culture.

This forces us to raise an issue which our predecessors have been raising for some 10 to 15 years now, namely, international inspection of Soviet political prison camps. An impartial commission of independent and politically unaffiliated Western humanitarians - writers and lawyers - after visiting the camps of any country, be they in Ulster, South Africa or the Soviet Union, could draw up an authoritative conclusion about the contingent of prisoners here and, consequently, about the moral right of the government of this country to condemn others for using imprisonment to suppress dissent.

Knowing of your resoluteness in the defense of freedom and humanity in the world, Mr. President, we appeal to you to support the creation of such a commission. We would like your project "Truth" in include the facts about Soviet political prison camps. By whatever means best suit you - be it the Madrid Conference or in direct talks - you could assist in ridding the world of this cruel foulness. The existence of political prisoners in our enlightened age is as anachronistic as the slave trade. The champions of the primacy of morality in the whole world have long since known that no measures or spheres of trust can be extended to a country that incarcerates in prisons and camps its political, national, religious and moral opposition.

Very respectfully yours,
Prisoners of Camp No. 36
in Kuchino:

Henrich Altunian, Vladimir Balakhonov, Norair Grygorian, Myroslav Marynovych, Viktor Nekipelov, Viktor Niytsoo, Alexander Ogorodnikov, Mykola Rudenko, Antanas Terliatskas, Oles Shevchenko.

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