Since a series of documents were sent to the UN in January 1974 (items 4, 5, 6, 20, 21, 22 in this issue), six Moscow rights activists addressed the following letter to Kurt Waldheim:
Dear Mr Secretary General,
We have become acquainted with the appeal of the Crimean Tatars which, together with the unanswered complaints to Soviet bodies and several other documents, was recently addressed to the UN by many representatives of this oppressed people.
We call on you to use your influence and all the opportunities available to you to see that the tragic position of the Crimean Tatars is quickly and effectively examined in the relevant commission of the UN.
In no measure does our request mean that we share a view expressed in these documents, namely that the suppression of the national freedoms of the Crimean Tatars is being executed by anti-socialist and imperialist forces who have been allowed to exploit the military and repressive might of a socialist State. We will also not analyze the question of whether the contemporary nationalities policy of the Soviet government corresponds to the political doctrine of V. I. Lenin.
But we vouch that the factual picture which is drawn in these documents of crimes, slander, abuse of power and judicial tyranny fully corresponds to what is known to us.
We call on you, Mr General Secretary, to facilitate in every possible way the return to their homeland of the Crimean Tatars, who are being administratively held in exile, despite the unambiguously expressed will of the people.
[Signed:]
Andrei Sakharov, Tatyana Velikanova, Sergei Kovalyov, Anatoly Levitin-Krasnov, Grigory Podyapolsky, Tatyana Khodorovich
1974
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A Chronicle of Current Events 