Three Soviet Jewish refuseniks, all suffering from various forms of cancer, held a news conference last week in Moscow demanding their right to leave the Soviet Union for medical treatment in the West, according to the National Conference on Soviet Jewry. The three refuseniks are Benjamin Charney who has melanoma, or skin cancer; Inna Meiman, who has sarcoma, or tumor of the bones; and Tanya Bogomolny, who suffers from breast cancer.
The refuseniks said in a letter distributed at the news conference and addressed to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that they are “cancer patients, living in the Soviet Union who have all been told that there is no hope and that further treatment will be useless.”
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