Genya Intrator, vice-president of the Canadian Committee for Soviet Jewry, reported yesterday that three Soviet Jewish activists were apparently arrested while they were conversing with her Monday via telephone from Moscow. She said the phone conversation was interrupted when one of the activists said that several men entered their apartment ordering them to come along.
The three activists, she said, were Vladimir Prestin, Pavel Abromovitch and Viktor Yelistratov. The three have not been allowed to work since applying for exit visas to Israel. They were among the more than 60 refusniks who earlier Monday staged a sit-in at the Supreme Soviet office in Moscow demanding to know why they were being refused permission to emigrate and when the ban on their emigration would be lifted.
(Meanwhile, in New York, the National Conference on Soviet Jewry (NCSJ) said that it had learned of the numbers and names of Soviet Jewish refusniks who had demonstrated at local over offices across the Soviet Union in the past few days to obtain reasons for their exit permit refusals.
(According to information received, eight Jews demonstrated in Riga, 22 in Kishinev, two in Tiraspol, five in Bendery, 26 in Kharkov, 62 in Moscow and six in Kiev. Among those demonstrating in Kiev Feb. 18 and 21 were activists Vladimir Kislik, Isaac Tsiferblit, Ina Mizrukhina Elbert, Lev Elbert, Vadim Sheinis, Yan Monastyrski. The Kiev activists were told that within one month they would receive an answer with the reason for their refusal, the waiting period before they would receive visas and the citation in Soviet law which allows for such treatment, the NCSJ reported.)
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