<< No 33 : 10 December 1974 >>

SIX ITEMS

[1]

Ivar Zhukovskis, a journalist dealing with international affairs, was convicted in 1969 for giving, while in Yugoslavia, an interview to a Yugoslav newspaper about the events in Czechoslovakia, He was released from Camp 19 in the Mordovian complex during the summer of 1973 (CCE 32.12).

As Zhukovskis relates, the following incident happened to him in June 1974: One day a woman (a stranger to him) asked him in a shop to try on a coat because, she said, he was of similar build to her son; then the woman asked Zhukovskis to put on his own raincoat, over the coat; Zhukovskis agreed to this request too; then the woman started shouting that she had caught a thief. A record was drawn up. In August Zhukovskis was sentenced to two (or 2 ½) years for stealing.

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[2]

In the files of Case No. 109, in which ten Crimean Tatars were tried in Tashkent in July 1969 (CCE 9.2) there is a document, dated March or April 1969, and signed by investigator Berezovsky and Procurator Ruzmetov, to the effect that, due to his death, the accused Fevzi Seidalliyev (CCE 31.3) has been eliminated from the case.

Not long before this, Mamedi Chobanov (CCE 7.7, CCE 31.6) had met F. Seidalliyev in a convoy of prisoners between Simferopol and Dnepropetrovsk: Seidalliyev was on hunger strike and was extremely emaciated.

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[3]

Alexander Feldman (CCE 30.5, CCE 32.12) has been transferred from the punishment cells in camp MKh 324/98 (in the Khmelnitsky Region) to those in another camp, penal institution YuZ 17/10, Darevka village (Belozersky district, Kherson Region).

On 3 October Feldman was released from the punishment cells before his time was up (40 days before his term in it was due to end), in view of his state of extreme physical exhaustion. Although recommended for hospital treatment, by 22 October he still had not been transferred to the hospital. Common criminals among the prisoners beat Feldman up, smashed his spectacles, and robbed him (taking letters, papers and personal effects).

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[4]

Andrei Tverdokhlebov has compiled a collection of selected reports, On Prisoners’ Conditions [¹]. The collection has these sections: ‘A Strict-regime Corrective Labour Camp’, ‘On the Food in Vladimir Prison’, the ‘The Pre-trial Prison of Lefortovo’ and ‘Concerning Order 020’.

Besides these, the collection includes the full text of a letter addressed to the Human Rights Committee by political prisoners in camp 19 in the Mordovian complex. (See ‘In the Mordovian Camps’, sub-section ‘Camp 19’, in this issue.)

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[5]

In August 1974, Lukyanenko, Kudirka, Chernoglaz, Bukovsky, Yatsishin and Afanasov found themselves all together in the same cell in Vladimir Prison.

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[6]

A. D. Sakharov has been awarded the ‘Cino del Duca’ prize. In a letter of thanks A. D. Sakharov stated: ‘The award of this prize is evidence of a concern not only for myself personally, but also to an even greater extent for that complex of people, problems and events which fate has often caused to be connected with my name.’

A. D. Sakharov’s wife, Elena Bonner, has made use of the prize money by placing 50,000 francs in a Paris bank so as to establish a fund for assistance to the children of political prisoners in the Soviet Union. In announcing the establishment of this fund, she expressed the hope that ‘the provision of the necessities of life for children of political prisoners will not be a matter of indifference to people in many countries, and that they will contribute to the fund’.

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NOTE

1. Included in the book Andrei Tverdokhlebov – v zashchitu prav cheloveka (Andrei Tverdokhlebov in Defence of Human Rights), edited by V. Chalidze, Khronika Press, New York, 1974.
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