Soviet Police Resort to Force to End Protest for Jewish Activist : People Shoved, ABC Camera Cable Cut as Demonstration Enters Its 3rd Day

Plainclothesmen pushed protesters out of a shopping mall today, the third day of demonstrations for a Jewish activist who refused the Kremlin pardon that freed 140 other imprisoned dissidents.

The protesters also demonstrated for the right to emigrate. They carried placards reading “Let Us Go to Israel” and “Free Josef Begun,” who was given a seven-year prison term in October, 1983.

U.S. Ambassador Arthur A. Hartman called the mass release a “step in the right direction,” but he said the United States continues pressing for freer emigration.

He told a news conference he had appealed to Soviet authorities to let dissident Naum Meiman attend his wife’s funeral in the United States.

Refused Since 1975

Inna Meiman, 54, died Monday in Washington, where she had received cancer treatment since leaving the Soviet Union last month. Hartman said the refusal since 1975 to grant Meiman an exit visa violated “Soviet practice and Soviet law.”

“In the last little while, the Soviet government has recognized that their treatment of individuals has had an effect on their relations with other countries,” the ambassador said.

“They have been moving to dampen that effect. I don’t think it’s because they’ve changed their basic approach to the relation of the individual to the state.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady Gerasimov said at a news briefing Tuesday that 140 dissidents had been released and as many other cases were being examined. His announcement has not been reported to the Soviet public.

Criminal Code Reviewed

Gerasimov also said government commissions were reviewing the criminal code, but he gave no details.

About 20 Soviets who have been refused emigration visas gathered this morning for their third day of protest in the Arbat shopping mall.

Authorities put Begun’s wife, Inna, and son Boris under house arrest Tuesday. Boris Begun managed to join the demonstrators today, but his mother remained at home.

Police did not interfere with the Monday and Tuesday protests, but today plainclothesmen took away the placards. They shoved and punched Western journalists and television cameramen trying to report the event.

Camera Cable Cut

One cut the cable of a camera carried by a crew from the ABC Moscow bureau.

Some people in a crowd that gathered expressed support for the protesters, but others shouted anti-Semitic slogans referring to the Nazi extermination of Jews.

After about 20 minutes a man identifying himself as a city official told the protesters their demonstration was illegal.

The plainclothesmen and bystanders shoved the demonstrators together. They tried to resist but were pushed out of the mall into a side street.

Uniformed police nearby took no action. None of the protesters reported injuries.

900-Calorie Diet

Boris Begun said later that his father had been put on a harsh diet at Chistopol prison, 500 miles east of Moscow.

“He gets 900 calories per day,” the son said. “That’s a small loaf of bread, about 60 grams (two ounces) of salt herring, some porridge and soup that is little more than water. It’s like slow torture by hunger.”

The mass release Gerasimov announced covered some dissidents jailed under a law forbidding “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.”

Gerasimov said Josef Begun declined to submit an application for pardon and his son said the activist was believed to be the only person still imprisoned under that law at Chistopol. How many are in labor camps is not known.