Nobel laureates seek political prisoners' release

NEW YORK - Seven Nobel Peace Prize winners, including exiled Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov, helped launch a worldwide signature drive by Amnesty International for the release of political prisoners.

The drive was opened on December 10, which is International Human Rights Day, and will continue through 1983. Petitions asking for the release of prisoners of conscience will be circulated, collected and presented to all heads of state and the president of the U.N. General Assembly.

In addition to Mr. Sakharov, who is confined in the Soviet city of Gorky, the other Nobel Peace Prize laureates to support the drive were former German chancellor Willy Brandt, England's Mairead Corrigan, Sean MacBride of Ireland, Alva Myrdal of Sweden (the 1982 recipient), Adolfo Perez Esquivel of Argentina and the late Philip Noel-Baker of Great Britain.

Also signing was Coretta King, widow of assassinated civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

The petitions call for the release of all prisoners of conscience - man and women imprisoned solely for their political or religious beliefs, race or ethnic origin and who have not used or advocated violence.

The petition declares: "None of these people should be in prison. The fact that they have been arrested and punished because of their believes or origins is an affront to humanity."

Moreover, the signers attest their belief that "there is an indissoluble link between human rights and peace."

Other Nobel laureates signing the first petitions were Heinrich Boll (economics, 1974) and Elias Canetti (literature, 1981).

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, December 26, 1982, No. 52, Vol. L

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