Speech #530132403

The purpose of this event is to make the public aware of the increasing persecution of Soviet Jews whose only request is to live with their families in the place of their choosing. The best way to understand the struggle of the large number of refuseniks. approximately 500.000. is to look at the characteristic plight of some individual refusenik. Viktor Brailovsky. whom I have symbolically adopted for todays vigil and for whom I have expressed concern for several years. represents the frustrating process Soviet Jews contend with in their search for religious freedom and the right to emigrate. Mr. Speaker. I would like to share with my colleagues a sample of Viktors struggles in the past dozen years so that we all can be reminded of our moral responsibility to do what we can to help relieve him and all other refuseniks from Soviet persecution. Viktor and his wife Irina. both wellrespected doctors of computer science. applied for permission to emigrate from the Soviet Union in 1972. The following year they were informed that their request was denied because. according to the government. Irina had had access to secret information as a computer scientist at Moscow University. That same year. Viktor and eight other scientists held a 17day hunger strike to protest Soviet policies on emigration. In 1974. Viktor was imprisoned for 15 days for attempting to hold an international session of the Moscow Seminar of Jewish Scientists. an organization he helped found. Later that year Viktor was granted permission to leave but he refused it since the rest of his family was denied emigration visas. Even when. in 1978. a university official said that the school had no objection to Irinas emigration. the government still refused to grant her permission to leave. Viktor was arrested again in 1980 and questioned about his publication of a cultural journal entitled "Jews in the U.S.S.R." Undaunted by previous harassment by the KGB. Viktor joined 237 fellow refuseniks in signing an appeal to President Brezhnev demanding exit visas for all refuseniks. Viktor was then arrested for a third time. In this case. however. he was tried and convicted for allegedly defaming the Soviet Union.