Yehuda Blum, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, denounced the 12-year sentence imposed on Soviet Jewish activist losif Begun, in a letter to UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar yesterday.
The Israeli envoy charged that the sentence, pronounced October 14, of seven years’ imprisonment and five years internal exile “constitutes yet another violation of the fundamental human rights denied so long to Soviet Jews who are persecuted both for wishing to preserve their religious and cultural heritage as well as for their desire to emigrate to Israel.”
Blum noted that the punishment given Begun was for alleged “anti-Soviet” propaganda but in actuality was for Begun having studied and taught the Hebrew language and for his insistence that he be allowed to emigrate to Israel. He called the sentence an “act of cruelty.”
The verdict, the Israeli envoy wrote, “made use of habitual Soviet terminology to excuse the suppression by the Soviet authorities of fundamental liberties and other human rights and the persecution of prisoners of Zion, many of whom still languish under the most brutal conditions.” Blum asked that his letter be circulated as an official document of the General Assembly.
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