Amnesty International issued a stern denunciation today of the Soviet Union’s suppression of human rights and called for the unconditional release of all Soviet Prisoners of Conscience and an end to the abuse of psychiatry for political purposes.
In a lengthy open letter to President Leonid Brezhnev, the London-based organization listed many categories of Soviet prisoners– from the 15 imprisoned monitors of the Helsinki agreements to the thousands of people of all nationalities and religions deprived of their freedom. It referred to Jewish prisoners among those detained for reasons of conscience or for seeking the right to emigrate.
Describing as “cruel, inhuman and degrading” the treatment of Prisoners of Conscience in camps, prisons and psychiatric hospitals, Amnesty International cited the example of the special regime corrective labor colony in Mordovia where political prisoners were forced to work at polishing glass for chandeliers:
“They must work without the equipment necessary to protect their lungs from glass dust and the industrial abrasives that endanger their health. Prisoners are known to have died in recent years from health hazards, including tuberculosis. Prisoners of Conscience there have been beaten. The calls are moist with dampness and infested with mice. Prisoners are meted out a mere 2000 calories a day in rotten cabbage soup, watery gruel and salty herring. Yet their work requires 3100-3900 calories by World Health Organization standards. They are on a diet of measured starvation.”
APPEALS FOR RELAXING HARSH POLICIES
The organization said it was appealing to the Soviet Union to relax its harsh policies in the light of next month’s anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution and next year’s Olympic Games in Moscow.
In contrast with the Olympic ideals, it said, the Soviet Union had ordered the transfer of Prisoners of Conscience out of prisons and psychiatric hospitals in or near the Moscow area and into distant areas. One potential effect was to conceal political imprisonment and to prevent any potential contact between these prisoners and the thousands of foreign visitors to Moscow during the Games.
Amnesty International warned Brezhnev that next April it would publish an updated and revised version of its 1975 report on imprisonment in the USSR. It would show that political imprisonment and related human rights violations had continued despite repeated Soviet denials that there was political imprisonment in its territory.
In conclusion, the letter appealed to the Soviet government to bring its practice regarding dissenters into line with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and with the obligations undertaken by the Soviet government in international law.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
