Zakhar Zunshain, a Riga physicist, who was recently sentenced to three years in prison for “defaming the Soviet state,” at a KGB-packed trial, has been placed in solitary confinement, it was reported by the National Conference on Soviet Jewry (NCSJ).
The NCSJ also reported that more than 100 Jews from Riga and Leningrad declared successive hunger strikes to publicize Zunshain’s plight, and described the strikes as a “dramatic and unprecedented show of support.”
A spokesman for the NCSJ said the hunger strikes began July 10 in Riga and Leningrad and are scheduled to continue for more than 100 days. The source said that the strike is being conducted on a sort of rotating basis, in which several Jews in the two cities strike for two or three days and then another small group strikes for a few days until all of the more than 100 protesters will have participated.
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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.
