Bukovsky Scores Soviet System After Gaining Freedom In Exchange (12/26/76)

Bukovsky Scores Soviet System After Gaining Freedom In Exchange

ZURICH, Switzerland. - Vladimir K. Bukovsky, leading Soviet human rights activist, who was freed as a result of a historic prisoner exchange between the Soviet and Chilean governments on Saturday, December 18, said in a press conference December 19th that conditions in Soviet prisons had become much worse for political prisoners after the signing of the Helsinki Accords. Accounts of the press conference, Bukovsky's first in the West, were circulated by the Associated Press.

In exchange for the release of Bukovsky, Chilean Communist leader, Luis Corvalan Lepe was freed. The exchange, which took place at Zurich's Kloten Airport, was mediated by the United States.

Bukovsky denounced the Soviet system and attacked the Helsinki Accords as a Soviet maneuver to disarm the West and curb the fight for human rights in the USSR.

At the news conference, arranged by Amnesty International, Bukovsky told the more than 100 reporters and cameramen in attendance that he intended to dedicate all his energies to the cause of political prisoners in the Soviet Union and throughout the world.

Conditions at the Vladimir prison, according to the 33-year-old dissident, "worsened considerably as soon as the Helsinki Accords were signed."

Bukovsky, who arrived in Zurich on a special Aeroflot plane with his mother, sister and an ill nephew, said: "I regard this exchange as an extraordinary event, as it is the first time that the Soviet government officially recognized it has political prisoners."

Last year Bukovsky, a Russian, said he was ashamed to be part of that nation, because of its cruel treatment of Ukrainians and other non-Russian nations of the USSR.

A Swiss physician said the dissident was underfed and had an accelerated heartbeat but was otherwise in surprisingly good health.

Bukovsky has spent ten of the last 15 years in Soviet prisons or psychiatric clinics under the standard Soviet method of silencing critics of the regime. Since 1974 he had been on a "severe regime" diet three times for periods of six months. He was rationed hot meals and one pound of bread only every second day.

Brainwashing and near-starvation diets are regularly used in the USSR "to change the attitude" of political prisoners, he said.

The release of Bukovsky came a little over two weeks after the Chilean delegation to the United Nations, in a statement dated December 3rd, became the first government representation to officially raise the issue of repression in the Soviet Union at the UN.

As reported in The Ukrainian Weekly, (December 19th) included in the document was a memorandum to the UN Secretary-General signed by Msgr. Dr. Basil Kushnir, president of the World Congress of Free Ukrainians.

The document was signed by Chilean Ambassador, Vice-Admiral Ismael Huerta Diaz, who asked that it be issued and circulated as an official document of the General Assembly.

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