Mr. Speaker. today I participated in the Second Annual Congressional Prayer Vigil for Soviet Jewery on behalf of the millions of Soviet Jews who are being denied the right to emigrate from the Soviet Union by the Soviet Government. Each participant in the vigil was asked to adopt and pray for a refusenik. a Soviet Jew who has been refused permission to emigrate. I participated in todays vigil on behalf of Nadezhda Fradkova. who has been a refusnik since 1978 when she first applied to emigrate to Israel from the Soviet Union. Following 5 years of denial. she protested by beginning a hunger strike on March 1. 1983. Soviet Jews throughout her nation and the world learned of her brave struggle and supported her cause by circulating petitions urging the Soviet Government to allow her to emigrate to Israel. Her hunger strike continued until April 13. 1983. when Soviet police broke into her apartment and took her away to a hospital where she was drugged and fed intravenously to end her hunger strike. Following her release from the hospital. the Soviet KGB continued to threaten Nadezhda and her friends.
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