Hunger Strikes for Shcharansky

Thousands of Jews and non-Jews, including civic leaders, local and national legislators, participated in rallies, meetings and hunger strikes across the country to mark the first anniversary today of the arrest of Anatoly Shcharansky and his continued incarceration in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison. Similar activities are being held in Canada. West Europe and in Israel.

At the same time, some 140 Jewish activists across the Soviet Union issued a dramatic appeal declaring a hunger strike today to observe “the tragic anniversary.” The appeal included signatories from Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Vilnius, Tashkent, Kishinev, Tbilisi, Minsk and Kharkov, according to the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry and Union of Councils for Soviet Jews.

In New York, after hunger strikes on more than 20 campuses in the metropolitan area, hundreds of fasters and their supporters gathered at the Soviet Mission to the United Nations to join Avital Shcharansky, Anatoly’s wife, in protest against her husband’s imprisonment. Prior to the gathering at the Soviet Mission, the protesters gathered at the Minskoff Cultural Center on East 68th Street and then marched to the Mission a block away. The action was coordinated by the SSSJ and UCSJ.

In Washington, the wives of Congressmen held a meeting on Capital Hill in the office of Sen. Harrison Williams (D.NJ). The Congressional Wives Committee for Soviet Jewry, headed by Mrs. Sidney Yates, petitioned Soviet authorities to allow Shcharansky to emigrate. Meeting with the women was Spencer Oliver, staff director of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The Committee, which is a project of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, stated in its petition that the plans to put Shcharansky on trial on charges of treason and espionage for allegedly working for the CIA “are a clear violation of international human rights treaties, and reflect the low standard to which Soviet authorities have fallen. Clearly, Shcharansky conducted himself openly and within the legal bounds of the Soviet juridical system in seeking to emigrate to Israel.”

In Cincinnati, Ohio, Jewish and Christian clerics, led by the city’s Board of Rabbis and the Jewish Community Relations Council, along with U.S. Congressmen from Ohio and Mayor Jerry Springer, participated in a hunger strike-protest meeting. In a message to the meeting from Washington, Sen. John Glenn (D. Ohio) said “We must keep the pressure on the Russians” and expressed his support for the hunger strike. In New York, the State Legislature observed a minute of silence and more than 250 faculty members of Stanford University in California issued an appeal to Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev.