Painful protest

Press, 19 October 1976, Page 16

Painful protest

NZPA .Moscow The wife of a defector to Sweden stabbed herself in front of visa officials when they refused her permission to join her husband, Swedish sources said, according to a United Press International report. The sources said Mrs Ludmilla Agapov was taken to a hospital but was not believed to be in a serious condition. They said she had been depressed and talked of suicide, but her gesture was “a political protest.” Mrs Agapov’s husband, Valentin, who defected two years ago while an engineer on a Soviet merchant ship, threatened last year to kill himself in front of the Soviet Embassy on the anniversary of the October Revolution in protest over his enforced separation from his family. The Swedish sources said Mrs Agapov has applied sev-i eral times for permission to emigrate with her 12-year-old daughter and L>6-year-old mother-in-law., Mr Agapov works in Sweden as a factory technician. The sources said Mrs Agapov was told originally she could not leave the Soviet Union for at least five years' because she had worked in a factory connected with the space programme. She has since lost the job. Mrs Agapov, aged 37, was called to the offices of v>sa officials and told her application had been rejected again, the sources said. Officials also refused to say why or for how long she might have to wait for the case to be reviewed again. At this point she pulled out a small knife and stabbed herself several times in the midriff, they said.