After being interrogated and harassed by KGB agents for more than nine months, the political and antisemitic harassment of Leonid Solomin, the leader of the independent labor movement in Kazakstan, was finally halted when his case was closed in Almaty on Thursday, September 11, 1997. UCSJ National Director Micah H. Naftalin pronounced his organization's grassroots campaign, including letters to Kazak officials and appeals from UCSJ's website, "a resounding success. Much of the success is due to the efforts of the AFL-CIO, which joined in our campaign, and to the Department of State, especially its Human Rights Bureau and its Central Asia and Kazakstan desks. Credit also goes to the U.S. Embassy in Almaty, who let the Kazak government know of our concerns."

Mr. Solomin will meet with UCSJ leaders in the national office in Washington early this week. Among other topics, he will brief them on his treatment by Kazakstani officials and the current state of labor and human rights in the Central Asian nation.

Naftalin said he was happy for Solomin and his family, but cautioned that the case raised some very troubling issues about the conduct of security officials (SEE BACKGROUND BELOW). "The Kazak KGB brought trumped-up charges against Solomin in retaliation for his activism in the independent labor movement," Naftalin said. "They continually made reference to his Jewish identity while interrogating him and his associates. They tried to intimidate his family and colleagues into turning him in. These authoritarian practices are simply unacceptable, and so UCSJ will continue to monitor abuse of fundamental human rights by the government of Kazakstan through our Kazak-American Human Rights Bureau in Almaty."

Background

On November 17, 1996, Solomin and Mr. Pyotr Svoik, the leader of the Kazakh Social Democratic Party, led a silent protest in Almaty, the Kazakh capital, that was attended by 500 members of the Trade Union and the democratic movement Azamat. Protesting deep economic deprivations, the demonstrators, with their mouths sealed with tape, protested the government's refusal to meet with workers and other citizens. Earlier, over the course of several months, the labor movement had organized several hunger strikes to protest the economic crisis. For their involvement, they were tried and convicted; Svoik received a suspended sentence while Solomin was assessed a fine.

Thereafter, the KGB opened criminal investigation case No. 248 against Solomin on January 6 and launched a nationwide intimidation campaign, exhorting Trade Union leaders to abandon the independent Confederation and provide incriminating evidence against him. Many union leaders stated that KGB interviewers tried to intimidate them, accusing them of "selling themselves to the Jew, Solomin" and alleging that the Independent Trade Unions are Jewish.

In mid-February 1997, Solomin was called into the office of KGB investigator P. Shumeiko and requested to give evidence against himself. Solomin was accused of a violation of hard currency operations under Article 74.1, Criminal Code of Kazakstan. Shumeiko was the investigator who, last December, had publicly solicited compromising information about Solomin. Another KGB investigator, K. Diusupov, acknowledged that he ordered the interrogation of people in the provinces. Financial books and records of the Trade Union were neither requested nor examined by the KGB, even though leaders who were interrogated were told that Solomin was a thief and should be in prison.

For three days, February 24-26, S. Melnikova, the Trade Confederation's bookkeeper, was detained, intimidated and continuously interrogated by KGB investigator Tikhomirov. Threatening to imprison her for 12 years, the KGB forced her into giving false evidence of the Union's finances. Only after her release, in late February, did investigators Shumeiko and Tikkhomirov visit the Confederation office in Almaty and seize financial documents. Clearly, she was coerced into divulging information about the location of the documents. As a consequence of her treatment, she suffered from severe depression, her legs were numb, and she needed time to recuperate at home.

On February 26, Solomin's apartment was broken into, and all Union financial records and diskettes (which he had taken home to prepare for the investigation) were stolen by persons unknown. One can hardly doubt that the burglary was actually an illegal KGB search and seizure.

In March, Solomin's defense attorney, A. Pologov, was interrogated and harassed by KGB agents for four hours and, on threat of reprisals, was pressed to abandon his representation of Solomin. These tactics were unsuccessful.

During his own interrogation, Solomin was urged by one of the KGB investigators to "leave Kazakstan before it is too late," a proposition that clearly marked the case as political, not criminal (it is also a common threat leveled at the country's Jewish citizens). Solomin responded, in a letter to the Procurator General: "I have no place to go and, in any event, I will not leave, because I am responsible for the fate of the people, the common workers, who believe in me."

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