‘Slave labour integral part of Soviet economy’

Press, 19 February 1986, Page 9

‘Slave labour integral part of Soviet economy’

Slave labour camps in the Soviet Union are an integral part of the Soviet economy, according to an Australian Jesuit priest, the Rev. Greg Jordan. Prisoners in labour camps and prisons worked in inhuman conditions to produce cheap goods for export to the West, Father Jordan said in Christchurch yesterday. These goods ranged from components for cars and cameras to wooden toys. The Russian system of working prisoners gave the State cheap labour for production and the resulting oppression maintained the totalitarian State, he said.

"We cannot say here and now that any particular item which lands on a wharf in New Zealand — such as the Lada cars — is definitely wholly or partly made by slave labour,” he said. “But we know that no Lada exported to the West is free from input from prisoners. We should not

be buying them.” More than four million people, more than the population of New Zealand, were labouring as slaves in prisons in the U.S.S.R., he said. Many of these people were “ordinary criminals,” convicted murderers, thieves, or drug runners. Others were prisoners of conscience, imprisoned for religious beliefs or for speaking out against the State system. It was the prisoners of conscience about whom Father Jordan was especially concerned. He is the president of Friends of the Prisoners, a group which writes to prisoners of conscience aiming to keep their hopes alive. Friends of the Prisoners has about 500 New Zealand members. The group, unlike Amnesty International, did not try to improve conditions for the prisoners, although that often happened because of their letters. “We just try to

comfort by letting them know that their plight is known outside the Soviet bloc.” Father Jordan bases his claims on information from international organisations working for prisoners of conscience and from “dissidents" who have been exiled or

who have defected to the West. Keston College, run by an English Anglican priest, the Rev. Michael Bourdeaux, had many contacts inside the Soviet Union. These were set up in 1959 when Mr Bourdeaux went to Russia for a year as a university exchange scholar.

Another information source was a paper printed by Christians in Lithuania. This “Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania” is banned by officials and people found with it were imprisoned, but copies were occasionally smuggled out to the West.

“The ‘Chronicle’ tells true stories of what life is like for Christians in Lithuania,” Father Jordan said. “Children ostracised at school because their parents attend church; Christians convicted of crimes against the State with perjured evidence set up by the K.G.8.” People could be Christian in the Soviet bloc so

long as they were prepared to toe the line, he said.

“Being open about believing means you are denied a university education, you do not get job promotions, and you can be imprisoned if you speak against the State,” he said. This meant there were always plenty of prisoners to be sent to labour camps, as there were about 50 million people “brave enough” to admit they were believers. In the labour camps and prisons, people worked in return for food, having to produce high numbers of goods or face ration cuts. Protective clothing when working with dangerous chemicals, glass dust, or asbestos was not provided.

“The food is inadequate. They get scurvy and their teeth fall out,” Father Jordan said. “People in labour camps are perhaps luckier because they can eaijgrass

to combat the scurvy; grass is not. available to people in the prisons.”

He had a video of labour-camp prisoners in Latvia, being taken to work in Latvia’s capital city, Riga. “There are large trucks, and on the back of the trucks are big metal boxes, with a grille door at the end. In front of the grille are guards armed with sub-machine-guns, and there is a big German shepherd dog as well. “Through the grille you can see the prisoners’ hands, holding on to the bars.”

These people were taken from the labour camps to work in chemical or electrical plants, or to build new factories. Their work-sites became mini labour camps, surrrounded by barbed wire and guards, and at the end of the day they went back to their labour camps.

“The year - after that video was made our

people went back to try to get more film. They fund that a canvas awning had been put over the grilles so that people could not see the prisoners,” Father Jordan said. Russian goods should be banned, not only because of legislation banning the use of prison labour in exported goods but because stopping the imports would hurt the Soviet economy, he said. “We should do nothing to smooth the path of those people who have established and who maintain this inhuman system.” He cited New Zealand’s nuclear-ship ban as an example of the back-to-front thinking the West held. “The Americans won’t say which of their ships are nuclear-powered or armed, so we blanket-ban everything, which says they are all guilty until proven innocent The Russians won’t say anything about prisoners’

labour in their exported goods, so we do nothing and treat them as innocent until proven guilty.” Mr Vladimir Bocharov, technical representative of the Volga Automobile Plant in the Soviet Union, who is working with Lada importers,. Avto Import N.Z., Ltd, in Petone, disputed the allegations, the Press Association reported from Wellington. Mr Bocharov, who has worked for 20 years in the Soviet car industry as an engineer, including 15 years at the Togliatti plant on the banks of the Volga, said that the vast plant produced a car every 22 seconds — it was impossible to keep it running with components supplied from camps 600 km away. . Chassis components did not need to be made separately, because Ladas were built up completely on the spot, without frames, he said. Robots were used for much of the welding. $