Seventy distinguished scientists from 12 countries called on the Soviet Union this week to stop denying exit visas to Jewish scientists on grounds that they possess state secrets.
The appeal was made in Brussels at a one-day symposium of the International Federation of Scientists for Soviet Refuseniks, a London-based organization. The guest of honor was Viktor Brailovsky, a computer scientist from Moscow who was allowed to leave for Israel in September after waiting 15 years for an exit permit.
A resolution adopted at the gathering urged the Soviet Union “to promulgate a law defining national security and the effect of knowledge of ‘state secrets’ on individual rights.” It also called on the Soviets to establish a limit to how long they could prevent people from leaving the country for possession of classified material and to inform all scientists of this before they begin their work.
The period a scientist is denied emigration permission should not exceed one year from the time the individual last had access to national security information, the resolution said. A copy will be sent to the Soviet authorities.
At a similar gathering in Eugene, Ore, this week, 175 scientists participating in the annual meeting of the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics petitioned Soviet scientific and government officials to allow the emigration of two colleagues, Benjamin Charny and Leonid Dikii, who have been refused permission to emigrate since 1979.
About 239 Jewish scientists in the USSR reportedly have been forced to wait years for exit visas, during which time they are denied access to scientific institutions and are not allowed to attend meetings in their particular fields. The families of these scientists are often impeded from leaving the country.
On Nov. 23, more than 100 refuseniks convened in Moscow for a seminar on the state secrecy problem, the Coalition to Free Soviet Jews reported in New York. With members of the international press in attendance, overflow crowds in a two-room apartment met in workshops to discuss Soviet laws and procedures governing emigration, comparing these regulations with those of other countries. Many participants denied having ever had access to classified material.
One of the seminar’s organizers, Pavel Abramovich, a 16-year refusenik, was fired from his job as an electronics engineer in 1971. He is presently compiling the second of two journals containing articles on the issue of “state secrecy.” He hopes to have this second volume of over 60 articles published in the West.
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