Victims

To the Editors:

Valentyn Moroz is close to death in Vladimir Prison. The thirty-eight-year-old Ukrainian historian, author of Boomerang and Report from the Beria Reserve, has been on a hunger strike since July 1. Soviet authorities refuse to reveal his present physical and psychological condition, but it is clear that it must be desperate.

Moroz is now in the fourth year of his second term for anti-Soviet propaganda. He has ten years of imprisonment and exile ahead. His treatment, even by Soviet standards, has been unusually harsh: he has been starved and beaten by prison authorities, attacked and stabbed by criminal cell mates, confined with the insane, and isolated for two years in solitary confinement. In addition to his many physical ailments, he has feared for his own sanity.

Amnesty International, which is working on his case, urges phone calls, telegrams and letters requesting his release and information about his condition. They should be sent to: (1) Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, Embassy of the USSR, Washington, DC; and (2) to the Director of Vladimir Prison: USSR, gorod Vladimir, Uchrezhdeniye OD 1—ST.2, Nachal’nik Vitaly Fedorovich Zavyalkin.

Jeri Laber

New York, NY