Russians still block mail, telephones

Press, 7 August 1976, Page 12

Russians still block mail, telephones

In spite of the agreements signed a year ago in Helsinki, the Russian Government still interferes with the freedom of communication between East and West. Peter Reddaway reports from London.

A group of Russian citizens have been monitoring the K'-emhn’s observance of the Helsinki agreements since May, and sending their findings to the 35 Moscow embassies whose governments signed the summit declaration a year ago. Their reports concentrate on the humanitarian provisions. such as divided families, postal and telephonic communication, penal policy, and certain types of political oppression. The Soviet authorities have reacted swiftly to the formation of this “Public Group to Promote the Observance of the Helsinki Agreements in the U.S.S R.” On May 15. three days after its first document appeared, its leader, Dr Yury Orlov, was picked up by the K.G.B. i.i a Moscow street and threatened with arrest. The official news agency, Tass, spoke of his “anti-con-stitutional activity” and his “attempt to question in the eyes of the international

public the sincerity of the Soviet Union’s efforts to implement undeviatingly the international obligations it has assumed.” The Tass attack on Dr Orlov was sharply rebutted by Dr Andrei Sakharov and by the chairman of the Moscow Amnesty group, Mr Valentin Turchin, who welcomed th< group’s formation and regarded its work as “extremely important.” Among the other members of the' group are a former Maio r-General, . Pyyotr Grigorenko, who was interned for five year; in mental hospitals for his dissenting activity. Mrs Malva Landa, a geolog'.t who has long campaigned for prison reform; and Dr Vitaly Rubin, a scholar on China who recently emigrated to Israel and now acts as the group’s representative -broad.

The group’s report on postal and telephonic communication is of special interest, because much of it concerns contacts with people in the West. It quotes the article of the Helsinki Final Act on how the signatories intend to facilitate contact with people in different countries, and points out that as “free movement” in and out of the U.S.S.R. is impossible for Soviet citizens, “postal and telephonic communication plays an exceptionally important role in establishing more direct contacts between people.” But in 1972 the Soviet authorities issued a decree which says: “The use of the telephone for purposes contrary to State interests and public order is forbidden.” This effectively legalised telephone tapping. It also

led to the disconnecting of many telephones whose subscribers were carrying on “undesirable conversations,” especially with people abroad.

The report then lists 43 subscribers in various cities whose telephones have been cut off, some before the signing ot the Helsinki Final Act, some after. It also points out that in certain cases, like that of Dr Sakharov, telephones are not cut off, but calls from abroad are either disconnected or made inaudible by jamming. And it reports on a system of calculated lying by Moscow switchboard operators. These operators tell the initiators of carefully planned telephone conversations: “Your number is not answering”, and brazen it out wnen told this cannot be true

More difficult to prove, the report says, is the blocking of letters. Here the Soviet authorities invariably put rhe blame on the foreign postal services. But in some cases the blocking “is more than obvious.” When, for example, the Jewish activist

Vladimir Slepak went on hunger strike in Moscow last year. American supporters sent him about 4000 telegrams. But “he did not receive even one.”

The report describes in detail the experiences of Dr Turchin chairman of the Amnesty group. For some months after the group was established, normal communications took place with the secretariat of Amnesty International in London. When, in early 1975, letters ceased to be delivered, Dr Turchin used the telephone. Last December this too was cut.

A similar fate awaited the dozens of letters sent by Dr Turchin's group to official bodies in Sri Lanka, Spain, and Yugoslavia to help its adopted political prisoners in th ise countries.

The report on divided families shows that there are -.till hundreds of Jewish families whose reunion is prevented by the arbitrary refusal of Soviet exit visas.

The 24-page dossier on Soviet penal conditions points to “gross violations” of the Final Act, as this

commits the signatories to observjg the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which, in turn, outlaws “torture and cruel, inhuman or humiliating treatment or punishment.” This, as the report documents is exactly what goes on in many Soviet prisons and forced labour camps.

Another report examines the case of Mr Mustafa Dzhemilev, a leader of the Crimean Tartars. This nation has now been exiled from its Crimean homeland for 32 years. The signatories regard Mr Dzhemilev’s recent imprisonment as a violation of those points in the Final Act, which, concern freedom of expression and the right of peoples to self-determina-tion.

The group has called on the peoples whose governments signed the Helsinki agreements to form monitoring groups in each country. Its eye is clearly fixed on the foilow-up conference, which will review the progress ot the agreements in Belgrade in a year’s time. 0.1-.N.5.. Copyright.