The Jewish Community Council has announced that it will sponsor a vigil for Soviet Jewry here July 24 to protest “the repression of basic civil rights in the Soviet Union.” Specifically, the demonstration will demand freedom for Boris Kochubiyevsky, a Russian-Jewish engineer, who was sentenced in May to three years in a prison camp for allegedly slandering the Soviet Union.
Mr. Kochubiyevsky had applied in vain for an exit permit to go to Israel. In a letter to Soviet Communist Party chief Leonid I. Brezhnev before his arrest he demanded the right of emigration and was critical of the Soviet Union for denying Jews their own life, a right granted other ethnic minorities in the USSR. A similar vigil on behalf of Mr. Kochubiyevsky was begun by the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington, D.C. The Jewish Federation-Council of Los Angeles said it may hold protest meetings.
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