The Guardian of Liberty - Nemzetőr, 1983 (6. évfolyam, 1-6. szám)

1983-11-01 / 6. szám

RELIGION Imprisoned Baptist Re-sentenced Two Soviet Baptist prisoners of conscience, Rudolf Klassen and Yakov Skornyakov, were recently sentenced to three years* imprison­ment in “strict regime“ labour camps on completion of earlier sentences. In June, 1980, Klassen was sentenced to three years* labour-camp imprisonment for engaging in Christian youth work. In June, 1983, 17 days before he was due to be released, he was transferred from a labour camp to a KGB-staffed investigation prison. There he was told that he would suffer the same fate as that of Pastor Nikolai Khrapov, who died in November, 1982, while serving a three-year sentence as a prisoner of conscience. In prison Klassen was beaten and forced to stand for hours against a wall with his hands raised. He was told that he would receive even worse treatment if, during his imminent trial, he so much as glanced at the public benches in the courtroom. Shortly after he began his present sentence, his third, his wife visited him. She has re­ported that he has refused the authorities* offer to free him in exchange for his re­nouncing his faith. Skornyakov, who is aged 55 and has a stomach ulcer, has begun his fifth sentence as a prisoner of conscience. He was last arrested in July, 1978, and sentenced to five years* imprisonment for leading the worship in an unregistered Baptist church at Dzham­­bul, Kazakhstan, and for organising the production of Christian literature. Before completing his previous sentence he refused a KGB offer to free him if he quit the unregistered Baptists and stopped criticising the restrictions that the Soviet authorities impose when registering places of worship. Other Soviet Baptists sentenced recently include: Emil Kerstan, from Samarkand, who was given five years* imprisonment in labour camps; Mikhail Sigarev, two and a half years in “strict regime“ camps; arid Stepan Germanyuk, three years* “strict regime“. Kerstan is married with five dependent children. 12 Skull Broken in Prison Beating Sergei Khodorovich, a former administrator in Moscow of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Russian Social Fund for Aid to Political Prisoners and their Families, is in the hospital of the city’s notorious Butyrskaya Prison. He has been systematically beaten up in the prison in recent months, lastly in August when his skull was fractured. Arrested in April, 1982, he staged a 20-day hunger strike in June, 1983. News of the persecution of 42-year-old Khodorovich was revealed recently by Boris Mikhailov, the new administrator of the Social Fund. It is financed by the royalties from Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. In his statement reporting Khodorovich’s plight, Mikhailov said that the Soviet prosecution authorities were trying to "criminalise“ the activities of the Social Fund and to tar its voluntary helpers and recepients of aid with the brush of “treason“. He added: “Russia has bent her knee only to God. We shall not bow to brute force, nor shall we be silenced. “All people, irrespective of race or position in society, have the inviolable right to appeal for and to receive assistance, as they are endowed with the God-given urge to sympathise with another’s plight and to give help. This ist the basis on wich the Russian Social Fund for Aid to Political Prisoners and their Families operates. The Fund has no other motives and does not contravene our country’s laws in any way.“ Khodorovich and Mikhailov are practising members of the Russian Orthodox Church. So is Andrei Kistyakovsky, who briefly succeeded Khodorovich as Social Fund administrator and who is now seriously ill. Aged 40, Mikhailov is married with five small children. An art expert employed by the Museum of Feudal Art in Ostankino, he is the author of a book, Ostankino, published in the USSR, and of articles in the Russian refugee Press. 307 CHRISTIAN PRISONERS Keston College, the British centre for the study of religious practice in com­munist countries, has compiled the names of 307 Christian prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union. The centre's updated and expanded list is published in an il­lustrated booklet, Christian Prisoners in the USSR, 1983-4, available from Keston College, Heathfield Road, Keston, Kent, BR2 6BA, England. CHRISTIANITY A VARIETY OF SCHIZOPHRENIA’ "Christianity is a variety of schizophrenia", Senior Lieutenant L. N. Butkevich, head of Section Three of Dnepropetrovsk Special Pris­on (RB YaE-308), is reported to have said. The lieutenant, later promoted to captain, was speaking to losef Terelya, a member of the catacomb Ukrainian Catholic Church who has spent a total of 18 yaers in Soviet prisons, penal labour camps and "special wards" of pchychiatric hospitals because of his out­spokenness about violations of human rights. Terelya reported Lieutenant Butkevich's re­mark in a samizdat document, probably writ­ten in 1981 but only recently passed out of the USSR. Terelya spent three years in the "Special Prison" — in reality one of the Special Psychiatric Hospitals run by the MVD, the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs. He also reported the fatal beating-up of a teacher surnamed Sereda. None of the ward­ers participating in the assault, wiCh was sanctioned by the lieutenant, was punished. Terelya mentioned two other deaths in the hospital, those of Nikolai Sorokin, a human rights activist, and Valery Zaks, a Dewish would-be hijacker. Zaks "fell" from the sixth floor of a section of the hospital wich was under construction. A fortnight later, a colonel on the hospital staff told Terelya that people who spoke too much had "accidents". In Deember, 1982, Terelya was given a one-year sentence of hard labour. THE GUARDIA! OF LIBERTY (NEMZETŐR) Edited by the Editorial Board Verleger, Herausgeber und Inhaber TIBOR KECSKÊSI TOLLAS Journalist, Schriftsteller, München Ferchenbachstraße 88, D-8000 München 50 GERMAN FEDERAL REPUBLIC Verantwortlicher Redak'eur (Editor): MIKLÓS VARY Ferchenbachstraße 88, D-8000 München 50 Druck (print): DANUBIA DRUCKEREI GMBH Ferchenbachstraße 88, D-8000 München 50 AFRICA REPRESENTATIVES & SALE CAMEROON: L. T. JOHNSON, Divisional Inspectorate of Education, NKAMBE, North West Province, United Rép. of CAMEROON. EAST AFRICA: <2.— Sh, by air) (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania): General-Representa'ive: International African Literary Agents. P.O. Box 46055 NAIROBI, Kenya; NIGERIA (2.— Sh): Yemi OYENEYE, P. M. 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Munich, German Federal Republic. r iiiiiiTii'iiiiiiiiiiifininniiiiinBaiiBnRimnninHniiimminiiiiiitiit MIRROR AID TO THE CHURCH IN NEED In AUSTRALIA: ACN, Box 11 PO, EAST- | WOOD N.S.W. 2122 in GREAT BRITAIN: ACN, UK, 3-5 North Street, CHICHESTER West Sussex PO 19 1LB In IRELAND: ACN, The Norbertine Fo-1 fhers, Kilnacrott, BALLYJAMESDUFF, Co. I Cavan ind: ACN, Northern Ireland Sub-Centre, i PO Box No 76, BELFAST BT13 2DX In the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: j ACN, PO Box 1000, EL TORO, CA 92630 S inniUÍOIIUlMnMHBBBHMHMni NOVEMBER—DECEMBER, 1985

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