Klaipėda
At the beginning of 1985, two men from Klaipėda accused of illegal commerce, Murauskas and Janulis, were arrested. In Gargždai, in private quarters, they had printed holy cards for Christmas and Easter, as souveniers of Baptism, Confirmation and First Communion, and the Way of the Cross sung in Samogitia. The arrested are being held in Vilnius prison.
Sergei Kovalev, back from exile, writes: "... I returned from Magadan in the beginning of December. Within two weeks I was already officially accused by the local militia as an offender against passport regulations, and even as a vagrant, although I never spent three full days at home. Even my wife is a dangerous transgressor of the law — she allowed her unregistered husband to spend the night. I live in Kalinin. The house is in the village. I have my own corner which I take care of, and am in the process of repairing. After much trouble, I have finally obtained employment. For a month now, I have been working as a night watchman at construction sites. My current address is:
170007,
Kalinin oblactnoy,
2-aya Hovozavodskaya ul. dom. 114
Kovalev, Sergei Adomovich
April, 1985
Sergei Kovalev in exile, Magadan region, March 1982, with wife and daughter. He was sentenced in December, 1975, in Vilnius for disseminating the Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania.
Mordovia
On June 13, 1981, Docent Vytautas Skuodis, in a letter to Chairman Leonid Brezhnev of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, USSR, and to the Prosecutor General A.M. Rekunkov, of the USSR, explained logically that lie will express his beliefs by hunger strikes on the following days: June 15, the day on which the Lithuanian state lost its sovereignty: October 30, USSR Political Prisoner Day and December 10, International Human Rights and Basic Freedoms day. Docent Skuodis has aiinouned that he will fast on one designated day a week until he receives a satisfactory response from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Lithuania to a letter in which, based on documents of international law, he has explained that the Regulations for Lithuanian Religious Associations are illegal.
Recently, in the camp in Mordovia, hunger strikes have become "the worst disrupters of discipline", for which prisoners are put in punishment cells and the camp prosecutor claims that to torture prisoners in solitary confinement and punishment cells for proclaiming
Vytautas Skuodis
hunger strikes is a completely normal thing, in keeping with the principles of the code for USSR corrective work camps and with the norms of Soviet law in general.
On October 30, 1984, Docent Vytautas Skuodis, "for annoucing an unjustified hunger strike", was locked in a punishment cell for ten days and nights, five days and nights of which he was completely without food. In September, the camp administration transferred Docent Skuodis from the laundry to work as a dishwasher and janitor in the dining hall, without the right of having days off or celebrating holidays. Lately most letters and postcards addressed to Skuodis have not been reaching him. Petitions and complaints written by the prisoner to the highest authorities concerning similar arbitrariness on the part of the camp administration do not leave the camp or are sent to the camp prosecutor for "investigation and response".
Mordovia
Galina Ivanovna Barac, a Hungarian woman , born in Transcar-pathia, was employed until 1977 on the history faculty of the State University of Moscow. Her husband, Vasili Barac, is an engineer, a specialist in computers and a former officer of the general staff. In 1977, on account of unwarranted KGB persecution, Vasili Barac was three times subjected to compulsory "treatment" in psychiatric hospitals and suffered paralysis of the right side from aminazine injections.
Galina and Vasili Barac resigned from the Communist Party, renounced Soviet citizenship and asked permission to emigrate to any non-Socialist country. Politburo member Grishin personally spoke with Galina Barac as a former Communist, and promised to allow her to emigrate. Galina Barac was transferred from the faculty to the gardening division of the same university at a salary of 70 rubles. Her husband was unemployed: it was not until a year later that he obtained employment in a laundry as a laborer.
In August 1982, Vasili Barac went on emigration matters to the City of Rovno, where he was beaten unconscious by KGB agents. For ten days, Galina did not know where her husband had disappeared. Vasili Barac proclaimed a hunger strike, demanding that for his arrest, a warrant be issued (he fasted thirteen days). After thirteen days, they took him to Rostov-on-the-Don, where, in a secret trial they sentenced him to nine years of strict regime labor camp.
Vasili Barac is confined in the camp at Perm. Galina Barac came from Moscow to Rostov-on-the-Don to find out when her husband would be tried, but she was arrested on the spot and like her husband was sentenced in a secret trial to six years in a strict regime camp and three years of exile. When they brought her to camp, Galina was not given clothing for almost a month, even though she had been stripped almost to her underwear. In 1983, Galina Barac went on long fasts five times (fifty-eight days altogether). From June 9-19, 1984, she was confined to a punishment cell.
Galina Barac suffers from rheumatism and arthritis, and cannot take medication. Her spectacles were returned to her, but lately they are too weak. Her huband's letters hardly ever reach Galina Barac. Her petitions to the prosecutor receive no replies and no relatives come to visit. Vasili and Galina Barac have been vilified in a number of newspapers. Both are believers — Pentecostals. In one letter, Galina Barac writes:
"Everything will be as God wishes, for man proposes but God disposes. Besides, what can man do to us if God is with us, for we know that for those who love God, who are called by His will, all things work together for good. Let us live with God, Pray for us! God bless you!"
