Release Dzhemilev

To the Editors:

We hope your readers will be interested in the following letter we sent recently to Mr. Oleg Troyanovsky, Permanent Representative of the USSR to the United Nations, Soviet Mission, New York, New York.

Dear Mr. Troyanovsky:

We, the undersigned, call upon the Soviet government to release immediately Mustafa Dzhemilev and to cease its harassment of him. Dzhemilev’s only “crime” was his defense of the right of Crimean Tatars to live in Crimea. This is an elementary democratic right. For exercising it, he suffered imprisonment in the past and now has been apprehended again. In the name of humanity, we demand that he be permitted to live wherever he wishes to live.

Eqbal Ahmad, Institute for Policy Studies¹ ; Eric Bentley, playwright; Daniel Berrigan, antiwar activist, poet; Phillip Berrigan, antiwar activist; Richard Falk, Professor of International Law, Princeton University; Jules Feiffer, satirical cartoonist; Leon Harris, Chelsea NAACP;² David McReynolds, War Resisters League;³ Kate Millett, feminist, writer; George Novack, Socialist Workers Party; Grace Paley, writer; Paul Siegal, Professor Emeritus, Long Island University