The Guardian of Liberty - Nemzetőr, 1981 (4. évfolyam, 3-6. szám)
1981-05-01 / 3. szám
12 COMMUNISM AGAINST RELIGIOUS BELIEVERS DIOCESAN COUNCIL PROTESTS A council of 12 priests, representing the Catholic clergy of Telsiai diocese in Lithuania, has written three complaints to the USSR Procurator General about the communist authorities' attacks on the Church and religious believers. „We cannot," they state, „give details of all the crimes committed against the Church, so we shall try to describe only the outstanding facts of the last three years, in Telsiai diocese alone.” They list 24 cases of desecration and burglary of churches, arson and destruction of graves. They also mention the murder of Father Leonas Sapoka and express the outrage felt by believers over the State’s continuing refusal to return the church at Klaipeda to the Catholics. Diocesan councils of priesters were formed in Lithuania in 1979 to help implement the decisions of the Second Vatican Council. The three formerly independent Baltic republics, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, were annexed by the USSR in 1940 in accordance with the terms of the Nazi German-Soviet Non-Agression Treaty of 1939. Truth is for Strangers, a book about this re-colonisation of Lithuania, has been published in the United States by Doubleday and Company, priced $ 6 95c. AILING PRIEST JOINS PRISON-CAMP FAST The ailing Father Gleb Yakunin, a founder of the Christian Committee for the Defence of Believers’ Rights, joined Dr. Yuri Orlov and ten other Soviet prisoners of conscience in a one-day fast in Perm Prison Camp Number 37 on May 4. This hunger strike was intended to draw world public attention to the Soviet Government's continuing violation of the fundamental human rights which it pledged to safeguard through its signature of the 1975 Helsinki Agreement. The fast was initiated by Dr. Orlov, founder of the Helsinki Monitoring Group in Moscow, to coincide with the resumption of debate at the Madrid conference reviewing implementation of the Helsinki Agreement. In August, 1980, Father Yakunin, a Russian Orthodox priest, was sentenced to five years’ strict-regime imprisonment to be followed by five years' "internat exile.* The court decided that his activitv related to the Christian Committee amounted to „anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda." His appeal against sentence was rejected last March. Although very thin and suffering from the effects of hiah b'ood pressure, he is constantly being harassed by the camp authorities. His hair and beard have been shaved off. Father Yakunin's address is: 618801, Permskaya Ob'ast, Chusovskoi Raion, st. Polovinka, VS-389/37. 36 BAPTISTS ARRESTED Thirty-six Soviet Baptists have been arrested since the end of the Moscow Olympic Games on August 3, 1980. Those sentenced include Yuri Seifert and Eduard Evert (tried at Makinsk, Kazakhstan, and given two and a half years’ imprisonment); Andrei Neufeld (also at Makinsk, three years); an Anatoli Levtsenyuk (at Dubno, Rovno region, western Ukraine, three years). Alexei Kozorezov, pastor at Voroshilovgrad, has been sentenced to three years in a strict-regime prison camp. His wife, Alexandra Kozorezova, who is president of the unregistered Soviet Baptists’ Council of Prisoners’ Relatives, is awaiting her own trial, which has been postponed several times. Georgi Nikita, choirmaster of an unregistered church at Strasheny, Moldavia, has been sentenced to four years’ imorinsonment with confiscation of property. Another Baptist prisoner of conscience, Valentin Naprienko, was recently released from a penal labour camp one day enrlv - perhaps to frustrate a plan by Christians to hold a big welcome party outside the camp gates. As he had been deprived of his civilian clothes, he was taken in prison uniform to a police station. There he was stripped to his underwear and driven home. AN OPPORTUNITY POR TOUR FRIENDS: IF YOU HAVE fntndt who you thmk would he mteretted n THE GUARDIAN OF LIBERTY (NtmwetAr) we wtll gledly tend tpeetmen eoptet free of dtergt. All you need do u to fill m unmet end edd rettet below end tend them to ml. We wtll do the rtu. Plteut tend ,penmen coptet of THE GUARDIAN OF LIBERTY (Nemittör) to the following: THE GUARDIAN OF LIBERTY NEMZETŐR) Edited by the Editorial Board Verleger, Herausgeber und Eigentümer TIBOR KECSKÊSI TOLLAS Journalist, Schriftsteller, München Ferchenbachstraße 88, D-8000 München 50 GERMAN FEDERAL REPUBLIC Verantwortlicher Redakteur (Editor): MIKLÓS VARY Ferchenbachstraße 88, D-8000 München 50 Drude (print): DANUBIA DRUCKEREI GMBH Ferchenbachstraße 88, D-8000 München 50 AFRICA REPRESENTATIVES & SALE CAMEROON: L. T. 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PRICES: Surface mail: 1 copy AFRICA 1.80 Sh (100 CFA), Britain 35 P, Australia, USA, Canada: 90 cents, Germany: DM 2.— Annual subscription: AFRICA Sh 10 (500 CFA), Britain 2.—-£, Germany/Europe: DM 10.- (or equivalent) Australia USA, Canada: $ 5.— For air mail add 50 Vo For students 50 %> discount Our BANK ACCOUNT: No. 2605756 Commerzbank AG. Munich, German Federal Republic, MAY-JUNE, 1981 WALLENBERG HONOURED Honorary citizenship of the United States has been conferred on Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who was arrested by the Russians in Hungary in 1945 after he had saved many thousands of Hungarian Jews from being sent to Hitler's gas chambers. In the years immediately after the Second World War the Soviet authorities claimed to know nothing about what had happened to Wallenberg, but since 1957 they have alleged that he died in Moscow’s Lubyanka Prison in July, 1947. Since 1957 there have been several unconfirmed reports of the sighting of Wallenberg in Soviet penal institutions.