The Guardian of Liberty - Nemzetőr, 1988 (11. évfolyam, 1-6. szám)

1988-01-01 / 1. szám

PoÊice Act against Seminar Journalist Jailed for 10 Years Afghanistan's Soviet-controlled regime an­nounced on January 4 that a special revolution­ary court in Kabul had sentenced Alain Guillo, a 45-year-old French journalist and photo­grapher, to 10 years’ imprisonment for spying. Earlier, in Moscow, 50 journalists from all over the USSR had appealed in a written state­ment for his immediate release from custody. He had been under arrest since being captured at Mainama, in Afghanistan’s Faryab Province, on September 12, 1987. The statement, a copy of which was released in Paris and quoted by Le Monde, said: "The arrest of Alain Guillo is further proof of the absence of freedom of expression and of infor­mation in the Communist countries, freedom without which democracy is impossible." Guillo is one of a number of journalists from non-Communist countries who have risked death or imprisonment by covering the Afghanistan war - a task forbidden to all reporters except those approved by the Soviet military occupa­tion authorities. He was making his ninth clan­destine journey into the country. The statement by the 50 Soviet journalists was drafted at an unofficial seminar on human rights which opened in Moscow on December 10 and is believed to have lasted several days. It was convened by the Glasnost Press Club, a new independent group associated with a privately circulated (Samizdat) journal called SUPER-POWER 'RESPONSIBLE FOR TERRORISM IN PAKISTAN’ (Continued from page 2) explosives and the placing of bombs. He also confirmed the presence of Soviet officers in the training camps. WAD agents often infiltrate into Pakistan with groups of refugees fleeing from the fighing in Afghanistan, and Afghan resistance groups now assist the Pakistani authorities in screening new arrivals. One obvious characteristic of the agents, according to Pakistani officials, is that they always look better fed than the exhaused refugees they mingle with. Dr. Rlizvi also describes how the Kabul regime's Ministry of Tribes and Nationalities fans ethnic and sectarian tensions in the tribal areas of Pakistan's border provinces. By spreading rumours and disinformation, supplemented by bribery and the supply of weapons, the Ministry s agents seek to provoke mistrust and conflict both within the Afghan refugee camps and between the refugees and the local Pakistani population. These disputes often lead to open clashes. In the Kurram Agency, for example, recent fighting between Sunni Afghans and the Shi’ite Tun tribe in the Parachinar district has been traced to the suborning of certain local mullahs by WAD agents. Murder - Russian Slyle was published on December 27, 1987, the eighth anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, by the Ibne-Sina Publishers in Oehran. It was printed at the AI-Thawrah Press in Beirut. Glasnost; it is edited by Sergei Grigoryants, a writer who was freed last year after serving four years of a 10-year sentence for engaging in "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda." The implementation of Gorbachev's policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restruc­turing) did not prevent police using violence, threats or deceit to limit the number of people attending the seminar. For example, Sabrie Seutova, a Crimean Tatar leader, was arrested with other would-be parti­cipants when travelling to Moscow. She was thrown so hard into a militia vehidle that she was knocked out. on the door-frame and severely concussed. She was then put in a psychiatric hospital for two days before being treated in another hospital for the concussion. In Lvov, police beat up a Ukrainian, Vasily Barladyanu, before he left Lvov for Moscow via Odessa. They told him: "We shall kill you, dog, if you come to Lvov again." At Erevan, police similarly threatened an Armenian but refrained from assaulting him. Four human rights’ activists from the Ukraine were detained for a while on fabricated charges of drug trafficking. The three Ukrainians among 1hem were told formally, but illegally, that they were "categorically forbidden” to leave Lvov. Dmitry Volchek was at his home in Leningrad given the false message, allegedly from Grig­oryants, that the seminar had been postponed. However, he knew that that was untrue, as he had only recently spoken to Grigoryants. Sergei Kuznetsov, a Sverdlovsk architect, even­tually succeeded in taking part in the seminar. However, on the way there he was stopped three times by the same officials checking his personal papers. Catching a train at the last moment, he left behind these documents and others relating to an unauthorised demonstra­tion held in Sverdlovsk in support of Boris Yeltsin, the former head of the Moscow City Communist Party who was disgraced recently because of his desire to implement glasnost at a rate too fast for Gorbachev. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the authoritative Swiss daily, reported that between 50 to 100 people took part in the opening session of the seminar, despite it having been described as "illegal" in innumerable warnings from the militia. According to other Press reports, the 30 or so foreign participants included Jan Urban, a prominent member of Charter 77, the Czecho­slovak human rights’ organisation. Many other foreigners wishing to attend the seminar were refused permission to enter the USSR. Among them were two leading members of the West German Green Party, Petra Kelly and ex-General Gerd Bastian, both of whom have campaigned for many years against NATO’s possession of nuclear weapons. Norm­ally they had no difficulty in obtaining Soviet entry visas. A seminar similar to the Moscow one was held in Leningrad on December 5 and 6. It was attended by representatives of various indepen­dent "informal groups," including the recently established Leningrad branch of the Internatio­nal Society for Human Rights. Producers of samizdat journals were also there. Sentences on Priest’s Murderers Cut The Polish Government spokesman, Jerzy Urban, announced on January 5 that the sent­ences on the security police officers who murdered Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko in October, 1984, had been reduced. The sentence on ex-Col. Adam Pietruszka had been cut from 15 to 10 years; that on ex-Capt. Grzegorz Piotrowski from 25 to 15 years; that on ex-Lt.. Leszek Pekala from 10 to six years; and that on ex-Lt. Waldemar Chmielewski from eight to four and half years. All four had been reduced to the ranks when ihey were put on trial. The sentences on all but Piotrowski had been already reduced once, in October, 1986. Piotrowski was the officer in command of the group of three who committed the murder; the other two, the lieuter.anis, were apparently reluctant to accomplish the task given them. The trial was described fully in our issue of January-February, 1985. Urban gave as the reason for the reduction in the sentences that "The decision was justified by the Supreme Court by humanitarian reasons, by pleas from the families based on, among other things, the good of small children and the deteriorating health of Pietruszka and Chmielewski”. The announcement however leaves one wondering whether similar pleas from families of the security police's victims would have been given so sympafhethic a hearing, and what sort of conditions the former security officers are being held in. On the other hand, the sentences are still long, even after the reductions, and the murderers of Fr. Popieluszko are not the only beneficiaries from this amnesty. 4 AN OPPORTUNITY FOR YOUR FRIENDS: IF YOU HAVE friends wt-o you think would be interested in THE GUARDIAN OF LIBERTY (Nemzetőr) W« will gladly send specimen copies free of charge. All you reed do is to fill in names addresses be'ow and send them to us We will do the res* Please send specimen copies of THE GUARDIAN OF LIBERTY (Nemzetőr) to the foliowng: 1. ... 2. ... 5. ... 4. ... JANUARY-FEBRUARY, 1988

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