Catholic University Student Ends 25-day Hunger Strike on Behalf of a Soviet Refusenik Denied a Visa

Lisa Paul, a University of Minnesota senior who grew up a Catholic in Appleton, Wisconsin, ended a 25-day hunger strike yesterday that she began on behalf of Soviet Jewish refusenik Inna Meiman who has been denied a visa to go to the West for treatment of cancer.

Paul, 24, fought back tears as she told of her friendship with Meiman and other refuseniks and dissidents at a Capitol press conference sponsored by the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews and hosted by Sen. Paul Simon (D.III.). The young woman, whose major is Russian studies, spent two years in the Soviet Union as a domestic taking care of children. She said she met Meiman, 54, a former professor of English, when she sought a tutor in the Russian language.

Paul said she undertook her hunger strike, with the reluctant approval of Meiman, in the hope it would arouse awareness of Meiman’s case. If nothing else, she said, it may have offered her a spark of hope.

BACKGROUND OF MEIMAN’S PLIGHT

Meiman first applied for a visa to go to Israel in 1979. It was denied initially on grounds that she had no close relatives there. More recently she was informed she could not leave the USSR because her mathematician husband, Naum Meiman, 74, was privy to classified information which made her a security risk.

Meiman’s classified work ended in 1955 when he left the Institute of Physical Problems at the Soviet Academy of Science. He maintains it involved pure mathematics which has long ceased to have any significance in security matters.

He has obtained the signature of the director of the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics where he worked until 1975–when he was fired after applying for an exit visa to Israel–on a certificate confirming that he was involved only in abstract mathematics and that the results of his work have been published in Soviet scientific journals.

The certificate was also signed by the secretary of the local Communist Party branch and the head of the local trade union, but to no avail.

Two years ago, Inna Maiman discovered a cancerous growth in the muscle tissue of her neck. She has undergone four major operations. Soviet doctors told her further surgery was unfeasible. Her condition deteriorated.

In a CBS-TV videotape interview arranged by Paul when she was in Moscow last summer, Meiman said the tumor, diagnosed as sarcoma of the soft tissues, was dangerously close to her brain and spine. She said treatment by non-surgical means, such as radiation, was obtainable only in the West.

Her husband, meanwhile, wrote an open letter to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev last October about his wife’s condition. As a consequence, she was invited to receive treatment by cancer clinics in Sweden, France, the United States and Israel.

Paul described a Catch-22 situation. She said Meiman was told by Soviet visa authorities that she would need a note from the Health Ministry confirming that she required treatment abroad. But Health Ministry officials said they were forbidden to issue such statements. Since Paul returned to the U.S. six months ago she has written letters to Congressmen and Reagan Administration officials, including Vice President George Bush, on behalf of Meiman. Concluding that she had exhausted all other options, she decided to undertake a 25-day hunger strike to focus not only on Inna Meiman’s struggle but the issue it represents. She won her friend’s reluctant approval in a telephone conversation and subsequently in a letter urging that she fast not just for her personally but for the cause of all refuseniks.

PREPARING FOR THE FAST

Paul said she prepared for her fast by gradually reducing her food intake. During the 25 days she went without food but did consume fruit juices and vitamins.

Her fast, she said, was far less dramatic than the one undertaken by the most famous Soviet dissident, Nobel Laureate Andrei Sakharov who drank only water during several prolonged hunger strikes on behalf of his wife, Yelena Bonner, who was in urgent need of treatment for eye and heart ailments.

Sakharov was successful; Bonner was issued a 90-day exit visa. She will undergo heart surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital next week.

In addition to Simon and Sen. Gary Hart (D. Colo.), both of whom visited Meiman in Moscow, Paul’s press conference was attended by other members of Congress and by the daughter of Meiman’s husband, Olga Plum, a resident of Colorado. The press conference was addressed by William Taylor, director of the Center for National Policy Review at Catholic University Law School in Washington, D.C.

Taylor who met with Meiman and her husband, speculated that the Soviets might be content to let her die. He said the couple had contemplated a hunger strike of their own but decided it would be ineffective.