Leningrad refusenik Nadezhda Fradkova was convicted Tuesday of “parasitism” and sentenced to two years in a labor camp, the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry reported today.
The 39-year-old Jewish activist, who first applied to emigrate to Israel in 1978, has been periodically confined to a psychiatric hospital since April 1983 because Soviet authorities insisted that “she must be suffering from hallucinations since she insists on receiving an exit visa for Israel.”
Fradkova was denied a visa on the grounds of the secrecy of her father’s work, although she has not lived with her father since she was six years old, the Conference said.
In March 1983 and again in December 1983, Fradkova went on a hunger strike, saying life in the Soviet Union had become intolerable for her, as she was being visited daily by the police and the KGB. While in the psychiatric hospital, Fradkova was brutally force-fed and drugged by hospital authorities. Fradkova is one of 10 Soviet Jewish activists recently arrested and imprisoned because of a desire to live in Israel, the Conference stated.
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