- 6-1. Vladimir Prison; Mordovia
- 6-2. Perm; statements by political prisoners; in defence of political prisoners; Releases
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M. DZHEMILEV
On 25 May 1976 the RSFSR Supreme Court considered the appeal in the case of Mustafa Dzhemilev (CCE 40.3) and upheld the sentence passed by the Omsk Regional Court.
On 25 June Dzhemilev was sent from Omsk Prison to a camp in the Far Eastern Khabarovsk Region (Krai).
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V. MOROZ
On 18 June an expert commission from the Serbsky Institute declared V. Ya. Moroz mentally healthy (see CCE 40.7).
On 1 July Moroz arrived at Camp 1 in the Mordovian complex (the special-regime camp).
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1. Vladimir Prison
In May Yakov Suslensky was again put on the hospital regime. His state of health is very bad, he suffers from a vascular heart condition and has a duodenal ulcer. During a visit from his wife Suslensky told her that he had no hope of living to see his release (his term of imprisonment ends in January of next year) and asked her to write a plea for a pardon on health grounds.
On 28 June Suslensky’s wife sent a declaration to the Main Medical Department of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, describing her husband’s state of health and asking for his release.
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Gabriel Superfin was transferred to the strict regime for three months at the end of May. His health seems to have got worse.
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Nikolai Budulak-Sharygin’s health is very bad.
He has frequent heart attacks. Letters to his wife in England complaining about his health have failed to reach her. Last summer Budulak-Sharygin wrote a declaration addressed to Kosygin. As he is a British subject, he asked that English doctors should be allowed to see him.
Budulak-Sharygin was deprived of his status as an invalid of the second group (CCE 39.2-2) immediately after this declaration. At the same time, he was quickly discharged from the prison hospital.
The prison governor told Budulak-Sharygin: ‘Our doctors weren’t allowed into Chile and we won’t allow yours in here.’
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SERHIYENKO
CCE 40.15 [1] reported the conversation between the mother of Alexander Sergiyenko, Oksana Meshko, and a tubercular specialist in the medical department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, concerning the health of her son. At that time, she was told that A. Sergiyenko was receiving treatment with medicines.
It has become known that in April 1976 a special session of the Work Fitness Medical Commission removed Sergiyenko, who suffers from focal tuberculosis, from the dispensary list.
On 20 June, during a routine visit to Sergiyenko by his mother, his wife and four-year old son, a man in MVD uniform, who knew Ukrainian, was present in addition to the woman supervisor: apparently, he had come specially for the visit. The two supervisors often interfered in the conversation.
Sergiyenko’s prison term is due to end in December 1976. He wants to request that he should not be sent back to camp 36 but to some other camp. The administration at camp 36, particularly Lyapunov, had acted in a hostile manner towards him.
After the visit to her son O. Ya. Meshko again had a talk in Moscow with Popov deputy-head of the medical department at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and chief tubercular specialist Starikov. She demanded that they review the decision to take her son off the dispensary list, suggesting that they ask for his medical history from the Kiev KGB (Sergiyenko’s medical history was removed from the tuberculosis clinic after his arrest, CCE 38.12-2).
On 25 June O. Ya. Meshko appealed in a letter to Amnesty International and the Committee in Defence of Human Rights in Frankfurt-on-Main. She asked for intervention, support and help.
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There is evidence that Vasily Fedorenko is in a dangerous state of health. He is on hunger-strike, demanding the repeal of his sentence.
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On 24 February Nikolai Bondar began a campaign of civil disobedience in solitary.
He announced his renunciation of Soviet citizenship and his intended boycott of the Soviet government, including the prison administration. On the same day Bondar went on hunger-strike.
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- Georgy Davydov was in the cooler for 30 days, from 14 April to 13 May.
- Bobur Shakirov spent 25 days in the cooler (11 April-6 May).
- Alexei Safronov spent 15 days there (14-29 April).
- After spending 15 days in the cooler (26 March-11 April, CCE 40.9-1), Vitold Abankin ended up there again on 14 April. This time he came out on 14 May.
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From May this year it has been allowed, in Vladimir Prison, to wear a cross round the neck.
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2. Mordovia
2.1: Camp 19
At the beginning of February 1976 Vladimir Osipov was summoned for a talk with KGB officials.
Osipov said then that it was the first and last time he would talk to secret policemen. On 9 April he was again summoned for a talk. Osipov refused to go. He was asked for a note of explanation. Osipov wrote a declaration to N. S. Pikulin, commandant of Camp 19, in which he explained that he refused to meet the KGB because they had described incorrectly a number of incidents in his case.
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At the beginning of April, the 50-year-old prisoner R. Konchur stumbled over a bolt sticking up from the workshop floor, fell and hit his head on a machine. The doctor, Seksyasov, refused to go into the work-zone. Konchur was carried out to the medical post. Two hours after his fall Konchur died.
In the winter of 1976 Povilas Stonkus died at work. Stonkus was born in 1906 in Lithuania, He took part in the post-war Resistance movement. In 1967 Stonkus was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in camps.
Cheremukhin, who had cancer of the liver, was recommended for release by a commission, but they did not release him quickly enough, he died in camp.
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In the spring Liudvikas Simutis was taken to the hospital.
After coming out of hospital Simutis was told that he was quite well and had never had spinal tuberculosis. Simutis was deprived of his invalid status, proclaimed fit for work and sent back to Camp 19.
Simutis was a member of the organization ‘Movement to Fight for the Liberation of Lithuania’. In the 1950s he was in hospital with spinal tuberculosis. He spent a number of years in a plaster cast. In 1955 he was arrested in a hospital and given a 3-year sentence. The case was later further investigated, and in 1956 Simutis was sentenced to be shot; this was commuted to 25 years’ imprisonment.
Simutis is now 41 years old, E. Kuznetsov spoke of him in his diaries (see also CCE 32.12).
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2.2: Camp 17
In June Vasyl Stus was given 15 days in the cooler. About ten prisoners went on hunger-strike in protest.
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2.3: Camp 3
The artist Stefania Shabatura refused to work in February this year, as a mark of protest against being forbidden to draw and the confiscation of her drawings.
At first, she was put in the cooler, then, in April, she was given six months in the punishment cells of Camp 2 (there is no suitable building in the women’s strict-regime camp-zone).
On 2 March the camp commandant Shorin announced that 150 works by Shabatura, which had earlier been confiscated during a search, had been burnt. On 16 March Shabatura went on a hunger-strike which lasted for 12 days.
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Irina Senik was put in the cooler on 14 March. The reason for this was her conflict with the camp authorities, who refused to pass on to her the journal Foreign Literature.
On the day that I. Senik was taken to the cooler she had an attack of high blood pressure.
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Irina Stasiv-Kalynets has appealed to the United Nations in a number of declarations, asking to be taken under U N protection. The declarations have been held back by the camp administration.
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Nadezhda Usoyeva (CCE 38.12-2) has been transferred back to the camp from a woman’s prison in Belorussia.
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Since October 1975 Nijole Sadunaite (CCE 37.5-1) has been ill. She spent December 1975 and February 1976 in the hospital.
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2.4: Camp 1 (special regime)
Trofim Shinkaruk was sent to Vladimir Prison from the camp in June.
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REBRYK
In July 1976 Bogdan Rebrik was beaten up.
He did not obey an order to transfer to another cell (with criminals) and asked that the order be officially confirmed. The guards threatened to put him in solitary, then called officer Kolesnichenko and began to beat him up. Kolesnichenko held Rebrik by the throat while senior warder Glinov beat him. Afterwards Rebrik was put in solitary for 15 days.
A number of political prisoners declared a hunger-strike in protest, demanding Glinov’s removal and asking that Kolesnichenko be punished.
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HEL
At the end of May 1976 Ivan Gel (Ukr. Hel) went on hunger strike. His hunger-strike is known to have been still continuing at the beginning of August. Forced feeding takes place twice a week.
His main demands are [1] to allow representatives of the independent press and the International Committee of the Red Cross into the camp, and [2] to grant a special statute for political prisoners. He also asks that prisoners should be given food of good quality (many prisoners suffer from diarrhoea and other illness of the stomach and intestine because of the low standard of food products). Gel is protesting against the endless humiliating searches, during which even letters which have already been censored are confiscated.
He asks that he be given qualified medical assistance. (In the spring of 1976 Gel was put in the camp hospital, where the doctors came to the conclusion that his headaches were due to insufficient nourishment of the brain cells. However, they did not render Gel any medical aid. A parcel of medicines sent by Gel’s wife was returned to her.)
Ivan Andreyevich GEL was born in 1937 in the Lvov area. In August 1965, while he was an evening student at Lvov University, in his sixth year in the faculty of history, he was arrested. Under Articles 62 and 64 (UkSSR Criminal Code = Articles 70 and 72, RSFSR Code) he got 3 years in a strict-regime labour camp, which he spent in Mordovia.
On 12 January 1972 he was arrested for the second time and got 10 years in special-regime camps [1], plus 5 years’ exile.
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A Chronicle of Current Events 