Some 150 delegates attending the recently concluded Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference here issued an appeal to the Soviet leadership on behalf of Soviet Jewish refusenik Viktor Brailovsky.
Brailovsky, accomplished in the field of pattern recognition, has been denied access to normal channels of scientific communication ever since he applied to emigrate from the Soviet Union in 1972.
He was subsequently dismissed from his position at the Institute of Electronic Control Machines. He helped organize an informal forum for scientific exchange, popularly known as the Moscow Sunday Seminar in an effort to offset his isolation from the official scientific community.
URGE SOVIETS TO FACILITATE BRAILOVSKY’S EMIGRATION
After repeated harassment by the Soviet police, he was arrested in 1980 and sentenced to internal exile for alleged “defamation of the Soviet state.” He returned to Moscow in 1984, resuming his quest to emigrate. He has since been denied permission to emigrate.
Citing their “commitment as scientists to free scientific exchange,” the signatories at the conference registered their regret that Brailovsky “is not able to join with us, colleagues in his field of expertise.” They urged the Soviets “to do all in (their) power to facilitate his emigration.”
Prof. Herbert Freeman of Rutgers University in New Jersey spearheaded the effort on behalf of Brailovsky. Freeman, who befriended Brailovsky while visiting Moscow in 1975, reported the conference action to the Committee of Concerned Scientists, a New York-based group of 5,000 American scientists dedicated to the protection and advancement of the human rights and scientific freedom of colleagues worldwide.
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