The Guardian of Liberty - Nemzetőr, 1980 (3. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)

1980-05-01 / 3. szám

Racialism Motivates Mob Violence Racialism is a serious problem in Yakutia, an inhospitable area of Siberia to which many human rights activists are sent to serve varying numbers of years of „internal exile" thousands of kilometres from their homes. This punishment, which usually follows terms of imprisonment in labour camps or jails, is similar to the sentence of „restriction" imposed on nationalist poli­ticians in African countries in the colonial era. A former political exile in Yakutia, Vyacheslav Chornovil, a journalist and a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Monitoring Group, has described various racial incidents, some violent, in a samizdat open letter addressed to the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Yakut Auto­nomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR). Dated August 30, 1979, the letter was only recently passed out of the USSR, that is shortly before (Continued from page 2) in exchange for the right to fish in Russian waters. Within a fortnight of these Soviet espionage reports from Japan came news from France of a Soviet official being caught spying in Mar­seilles. Gennadi Travkov, a Soviet consular of­ficial there, was caught on February 9 as he was taking delivery of secrets concerning the Mirage 2000 combat aircraft. He was expelled the following day. It is not only diplomatic staff from Soviet em­bassies and consulates who have been expelled from different countries already this year. In Madrid on February 15 Oleg Suranov, manager of the Soviet air'ine, Aeroflot, was expelled after being arrested in possession of what was called „Soanish military material". The orevious day a first secretary in the Soviet embassy in Madrid, Anatoli Krasilnikov, was told to leave Spain. Soanish officials then said that six other susoected Soviet agents were to be expelled soon, and that the government would reduce the access by Russian fishing vessels to the Canary Islands, where these traw'ers aie be­lieved to have been involved in esoionaae. Next, at the end February, it was reocrted that o Soviet consul, Yuri Kisavev. had been told to leave Eouatoria! Guinea. He was ex­pelled after confirmation by the Eaualorial Guinean authorities „that he had estabhshed a series of contacts aimed at obtaining infor­mation on matters of Guinean security". Barely three weeks later a fresh case of So­viet esnionage wgs revealed, and this time from Singapore. A court in Singapore on March 26 sentenced Alan Wee Khang Soon, a 30-yenr-old former cypher clerk at the island republic’s embassy in Moscow, to 10 year's imprisonment for di­vulging State secrets to a KGB prostitute known in Soviet slang as a „swallow". Wee, a husband and father, was first at­tracted to Luba Lubova in Moscow in March, 1979. Three weeks later she began blackmailing him. In 10 months he gave her information on coding and de-coding technigues and official documents In the Soviet capital the KGB has several „swallows’ nests" — apartments reserved for its prostitutes. Electronic listening devices and ca­meras are concealed in the „nests". Chornovil was sentenced at Yakutsk in June to five years’ imprisonment in penal labour camps; the charge of rape, on which he was sentenced, is regarded by everybody who knows him as having been fabricated by the KGB. A particularly ugly incident was a pitched battle at Yakutsk in June, 1979, between several hundred Yakuts and Russians, including students of Yakutsk University. According to Chornovil, those killed „in an attempt to put an end to the Carnage" reportedly included the minister’s own bodyguard. The mob did not disperse until troops were called in. Chornovil described several incidents in which he was the victim of unprovocated violence. For example, in October, 1978, 12 young Yakut men, some of them drunk and all due shortly to be conscripted into the army, pulled off his clothes and shouted „uucha, nuucha", a term of abuse usually applied to Russians, members of the settler community. Many Muslim guerrillas (Muiahideen) have been „burned alive" in Kabul shops which Russian soldiers have looted and then set on fire, according to a repori in Nawa-i-Waqt. This Pakistani newspaper also quoted an Afghan refugee leader’s view that the Soviet occupation authorities in Afgha­nistan would place in office General Quadir Dogral following Babrak Komal’s failure to realise Moscow's „imperialist dreams'. He seems to have been saved from serious injury solely because one of the youths re­cognised him to be a former prisoner of con­science. As Chornovil explained: Perhaps things would not have ended with a beating up and I would have been left to rot in the swamps of the coniferous forest, but I was saved by my explanation of who I was and by the fact that one of them had seen me before and now recognised me. The majority voted not to harm the po'itical exile, and Dulled off me those who disagreed with that decision." A similar assault occurred in July, 1979, but again he avoided being badly iniured bv de­claring his status as a former prisoner of con-science. On another occasion, thugs threaded to kill Chornovil when they broke into his apartment and smashed its windows. A common attitude among the Russians, the white settlers, was illustrated by a conversation which occured when a Russian motorist offered Chornovil a lift and implied that the offer would not have been made to any Yakut. The Russian said to Chornovil: „Sorry, at first I mistook you for a Yakut. Get in." Chornovil also quoted a remark once made to him by a Russified Ukrainian: „Those without slit eyes can count themselves Russian." Footnote: The economically important Yakut ASSR has deports of natural gas, coal, dia­monds and gold. First colonised by the Russians in the 17th century, the area has been used since Tsarist times as a place of exile for na­tionalists and other political opponents. The indigenous people, the Yakuts, are descended from local Siberian tribes who inter-married with Turkic nomads many centuries ago. niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin MAY-JUNE, 1980 „BURNED ALIVE" MUSLÏM FAMILY SYSTEM „BEING BROKEN UP“ The Muslim fami'y system in Kampuchea (Cambodia) was being broken up, a Cambo­dian refugee spokesman, Ha.ii Mahmood Is­mail. told the recent Islamic Foreign Ministers’ Conference in Islamabad. He declared in a written appeal to dele­gates: „To weaken the religion ... Muslim children are separated from their parents and put in communist centres to be indoctrinated or eliminated. Young Muslim girls have been raped. Muslim youths are conscripted into slavery.“ Another appeal, signed by M. Zen, Chair­man of the Cambodian Muslim We'fare As­sociation in Kuala Lumpur, urged the Islamic Conference to promote the resettlment of Cambodian Muslim refugees in Islamic coun­tries. The appeal also asked for financial aid „to keep us, the Cham Muslims, alive“. KORAN CONFISCATED New instances of the Soviet authorities con­fiscating religious literature from Crimean Tartars are reported in the Chronicle of Cur­rent Events, the samizdat news-letter re­cognised worldwide as an authoritative source of information on human rights’ violations in the USSR. A recent issue of the Chronicle reported that a Koran had been removed from the home of M. Chobanov and that extracts from the Koran had been taken from the home of M. Osmanov. A blind invalid. Osmanov arrived home from hospital to discover the police conducting their seventh search of his personal possessions. During the Second World War the whole community of the Crimean Tartars was exi’ed from the Crimea, this Islamic people’s home of many centuries. Since then the Tartars have campaigned ceaselessly to be allowed to return there. After much bureaucratic delay, one Tartar, E. Ablaev, did recently manage to obtain per­mission to live in the Crimea in a house which he had previously bought. However, shortly after he and his family arrived there, they were put in a cell and then expelled from the Crimea under armed escort. On arrival at what he had hoped wou'd be his new home, he had been met by a hostile crowd of policemen and members of the DOSAAF, an official organisation mainlv for young men due to be conscripted into the armed forces. Some of his possessions were smashed. The mob .jeered at him, saying that his Second World War medals — he is an invalid as a result of war wounds — had not been earned. 3 NO JOKE „The largest country in the world is Cuba", the People’s Daily, oraan oF the Chinese Communist Party, said in a recent article. It added: Cuba's „government is in Moscow, its graveyard in Angola and its people in the USA". The article was entitled „A Joke which is not a Joke".

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