Full-page advertisement recalls Myroslav Medvid's jump for freedom

NEW YORK - A total of 144 persons and organizations, including five senators, leaders of ethnic institutions and prominent journalists, endorsed a full-page ad recalling the failed attempted defection of a Ukrainian seaman who a year ago sought political asylum in the U.S.

The advertisement appeared in the Friday, October 24, edition of The New York City Tribune and marked the first anniversary of 25-year-old Myroslav Medvid's bid for freedom.

Mr. Medvid jumped from his Soviet freighter, the Marshal Koniev, on October 24, 1985, and asked U.S. authorities for political asylum. For reasons currently under investigation by the U.S. Helsinki Commission he was taken back to the ship and subsequently returned to the Soviet Union.

The five senators who expressed their concern over the treatment of Mr. Medvid by the U.S. government were Jeremiah A. Denton (R-Ala.); Jesse A. Helms (R-N.C.); Gordon J. Humphrey (R-N.H.); James A. McClure (R-Idaho); Steven D. Symms, (R-Idaho).

Among the other signatories to the advertisement, provided as a public service by The Tribune, were several Ukrainian organizations, including the Ukrainian National Association, Ukrainian American Coordinating Council, Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, Ukrainian American Bar Association, Ukrainian Medical Association, as well as scholarly, youth, women's, political and professional organizations. Other signatories were Nadia Svitlychna of the External Representation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Croup, former Soviet political prisoner Petro Grigorenko and Walter Polovchak, who is known as the youngest defector from the USSR.

In other news related to the Medvid case, Chicago attorney Julian E. Kulas, a public member of the U.S. delegation to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which began November 4 in Vienna, said he plans to bring up the Medvid case at the Helsinki Accords review conference.

"I don't know how much we can help Medvid at this point," Mr. Kulas told The Tribune. "But even if we can't help him, perhaps we can prevent other occurrences of that nature (mishandled defections) from happening in the future."

Mr. Kulas is also involved in a federal lawsuit which was filed on his behalf by the Ukrainian American Bar Association which alleges that he and another legal representative of Mr. Medvid were denied due process by not being allowed to represent the sailor at the time of his defection, reported The Tribune. Mr. Kulas had been hired by Mr. Medvid's U.S. relatives to represent him soon after his attempted defection, but the judge who presided over the case in New Orleans denied the attorney's motion that Mr. Medvid be present at a hearing.

The purpose of the lawsuit is to gain access through legal channels to pertinent information regarding other possible attempted defections with circumstances similar to those of the Medvid case, but which never have gained public attention.

"We might be able to discover that there were many other defectors in New Orleans or other ports where the Soviets have come for the purpose of purchasing our wheat," said Mr. Kulas. It is possible that some policy between Moscow and Washington exists whereby all defectors from Soviet ships will be returned so as not to hamper the process involved in the sale of wheat to the Soviets, he added.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, November 9, 1986, No. 45, Vol. LIV

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