Dissident ‘signed away his rights’

Press, 25 February 1986, Page 8

Dissident ‘signed away his rights’

NZPA-AP London The Soviet dissident, Andrei -Sakharov, signed away his rights to travel overseas in exchange for permission for his wife, Yelena Bonner, to receive medical treatment in the West, the “Sunday Observer” has reported. The weekly, in a second instalment of letters smuggled to Mrs Bonner’s relatives who live in Boston, Massachusetts, said Sakharov appealed directly to the Soviet leader, Mr Mikhail Gorbachev, in June, 1985. At the time Sakharov was on hunger strike and being brutally force-fed in a hospital in Gorky, it said.

The newspaper reported that the relatives believe Soviet leaders already had decided to let Mrs Bonner out but wanted to extract a con-

cession from Sakharov. He agreed to accept the authorities’ right not to allow him to go overseas and signed a paper to that effect last September. In one of the letters, Sakharov said he still did not accept the decision to exile him to the closed city of Gorky for activity on behalf of political prisoners. “These measures I still consider unfair and unlawful,” he wrote. Mr Gorbachev told an interviewer two weeks ago that Sakharov, a nuclear physicist, knew State secrets and would not be allowed to leave the Soviet Union. Another concession made by Sakharov was that his wife should not meet “representatives of the mass media while abroad or take part in any

press conference.” She has abided by that condition since going to the United States in December for eye and heart treatment!

Sakharov, who helped develop the Soviet hydrogen bomb in the 19505, was banished to Gorky in January, 1980, after criticising the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The “Observer” said the K.G.B. secret police doctored a film to show him apparently living normally while in fact he was on hunger-strike and being force-fed.

It said that a film sent to the West showed Sakharov in v a hospital "reading foreign journals, watching television, using an exercise bicycle, eating well and otherwise enjoying himself against the background of a

calendar supposedly marking the early days of June, 1985.” The relatives examined the film and say it was a careful compilation shot with a hidden camera over a period of more than a year, skillfully cut and joined to give the impression that in June, 1985, Sakharov was receiving proper treatment. The newspaper said that in fact, he had begun a hunger strike on April 16, that lasted until July 11, to demand the lifting of a five-year conviction on his wife for distributing anti-Soviet material. The conviction meant that his wife could no longer visit Moscow nor maintain contact with friends from Gorky. Sakharov ended his fast on July 11 in order to be reunited with his wife and

he was released immediately — in time for the tenth anniversary meeting of the Helsinki International Human Rights Conference. Two weeks later he began the fast — his fourth since 1981 — that secured permission for his wife to leave. Sakharov endured a different kind of force-feed-ing, from one in 1984 that The “Observer” said last Sunday left him with uncontrollable body shakes and distorted vision. He wrote that his doctors “administered subcutaneous (into both thighs) and intravenous drips containing glucose and protein preparations — 15 subcutaneous and 10 intravenous. The sheer quantity of the drip was enormous. My legs blew up like pillows and were painful.”