The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry charged today that the new Soviet regulations reportedly easing emigration procedures “are merely a smokescreen to cover the new and very real campaign of harassment and terror against Russian Jews seeking freedom.”
Reports from Moscow indicate that the Soviet Union is overhauling its emigration procedures by cutting emigration visa fees from 400 to 300 rubles and by simplifying the bureaucratic process. The aim is an apparent show of compliance with the Helsinki declaration. However, emigrants to Israel will continue to pay 500 additional rubles ($665) to renounce their Soviet citizenship which Moscow requires because it has no diplomatic relations with Israel.
The SSSJ said that the reduction in exit visa fees is “meaningless since most exit applicants are dismissed from work or reduced to menial jobs after asking to leave and have almost no money anyway.” The SSSJ said the other changes are “tokenism at best” because local officials in many areas refuse to accept exit applications and many young men are either drafted or imprisoned after they apply for emigration.
Meanwhile, the SSSJ has learned of a new Soviet Jewish “Prisoner of Conscience,” Lydia Abatorovna Nisanova of Derbent who was sentenced recently to a year-and-a-half for speculation. Nisanova, 32, who applied to emigrate in July 1975 and was told last September that she would be charged with speculation. The prosecution witnesses during her trial were six persons she had never seen before, the SSSJ reported.
Commenting on the report from Moscow that Dr. Alexander Luntz, one of Moscow’s most active Jewish dissidents and a leading mathematician, will be allowed to emigrate to Israel, the SSSJ said this is welcome confirmation of the effect of public pressure. However, the SSSJ added, it clearly deflates the Soviet argument that Jews are denied exit for “state security” reasons. For the past three years, Dr. Luntz has been told he possessed “secrets” and would not be allowed to leave, then continually persecuted for his Jewish activities.
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