The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry sharply attacked the scheduled participation of American crime control equipment firms in a “Crimtechnika 74” exposition in Moscow this Aug. as “a completely immoral act which can only further the ability of the KGB to wipe out any voice of dissent in the USSR.”
Scores of U.S. firms have been invited to participate in the display for the benefit of Soviet police and secret police officials Aug. 14-28. According to information learned by SSSJ, the Kremlin has made strenuous efforts to insure the presence of many companies, whose highly sophisticated equipment will probably be purchased quickly thereafter.
“This exposition should be called ‘Repression ’74,” a SSSJ spokesman declared, the equipment will be used to wipe out the Jewish emigration movement and the few voices of freedom that can still be heard in Russia. It seems that President Nixon’s statement that the U.S. cannot involve itself in the ‘internal affairs’ of the USSR and his lack of reaction to anti-Jewish brutality during his recent Soviet visit will give the Kremlin license to extend the Gulag Archipelago to every home in the USSR.”
The SSSJ issued an appeal “to every American who values basic human rights to contact” Congress to ban the sale of the equipment.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
