Amnesty appeals for prisoners’ release

Press, 21 April 1979, Page 24

Amnesty appeals for prisoners’ release

PA Wellington Amnesty International members have been asked to appeal for the immediate release from imprisonment of Jassim Haddad, of Bahrain: Edival Nunes da Silva, of Brazil: and Bui Tuong Huan, of Vietnam.

Their case histories are contained in the April newsletter of the Londonbased human-rights organisation.

Jassim Haddad, a poet, has been held without charge of trial in Bahrain since August, 1975. He was first arrested in 1973 after participating in an Arab writers’ conference in Lebanon, and was released under an amnesty in 1974. He was again arrested in August. 1975, apparently to stifle any protest about the dissolution of Bahrain’s National Assembly at that time. Haddad was deatined until recently at Safra Prison. He is reported to have suffered serious injuries as a result of maltreatment.

Edival Nunes da Silva, who is 29, is a member of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Roman Catholic Church in Recife, Brazil.

He was detained without a warrant last May when armed men kidnapped him on his way home from a Church meeting. He was held for more than a month at Federal police headquarters and during this time was sub-

jected to electric-shock torture, forced standing, and beatings.

Nunes da Silva is being held incommunicado.

Bui Tuong Huan. a former Vietnamese university professor and political figure, has been held in a “re-education” camp in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam since the autumn of 1975.

During the 19605, Bui Tuong Huan. who was closely’ identified with the Buddhist cause, was jailed on several occasions in South Vietnam for protesting against religious and political repression.

In 1970. however, he was elected a member of the Senate.

After the change of Government. the new authorities issued a decree instructing all military personnel and civil servants of the former Administration to register for “re-education.” This was to be a maximum of three years, but four years have now passed.

Amnesty has received reports that tens of thousands of people are still detailed in “re-education” camps.

Amnesty international is also concerned that the former Algerian President, Ahmed Ben Bella, is still in detention 14 years after his arrest was ordered by his successor, President Houari Boumedienne, wTio died in Algiers on December 27, 1978.

Among the cases listed in Amnesty International’s campaign for the abolition

of torture in its recent newsletter is that of Lev Grigorievich Übozhko, a Soviet physicist, who has been confined in a series of special psychiatric hospitals since 1972.

It is believed that he has been subjected to “treatment” with powerful neuroleptic drugs, as has been done with others have been forcibly confined in such institutions. Übozhko was arrested in 1970 on charges of possessing and circulating “Samizdat” (underground) literature. He is alleged to have possessed a copy of an open letter written by the dissident Soviet hisorian, Andrei Amalrik, and was sentenced to three years imprisonment in a corrective labour colony.

Six months later, while still in the labour camp, he was tried again on charges of “a"ti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” and declared by a medical commission to be unaccountable for his actions. He was forcibly confined to Tashkent Special Psychiatric Hospital until 1974, when he was transferred to Chelyabinsk Psychiatric Hospital No 2. In 1975 he escaped from hospital, but in early 1976 he was recaptured and placed once more in Tashkent Special Psychiatric Hospital. Übozhko is reported to have been told that he faces indefinite confinement unless he renounces his “dissident” views.