President. the Czechoslovak National Council sent the following wire to Secretary of State William Rogers and Attorney General John Mitchell: Public opinion in the United States. Canada. Australia and other free countries has been seriously disturbed by recent evidence of a new form of harassment of refugees from Czechoslovakia by agencies of the Prague government. Many refugees have received communict.tions from Czechoslovak authorities informing them about pending trials initiated against them for having illegally left Czechoslovakia or for not returning from abroad. The Czechoslovak authorities urged refugees to transmit sizeable sums of money to cover the fees of officially assigned defence lawyers. The letters contain a veiled threat that in case of nonpayment the refugees relatives in Czechoslovakia might be called upon to defray the defense expenses. This despicable form of blackmail is a logical consequence of the communist unwillingness to respect the fundamental human right of every individual permitting him to leave at will his own country and to settle in any country of his own choice. Basically this is the same evil which is found in the cruel denial of permission to Jews to emigrate from the Soviet Union to Israel. The Czechoslovak National Council of America is deeply shocked by the apparent inability of the American government to convince the communist governments of the imperative need to Implement more accurately the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Czechoslovak National Council urges the Departments of Justice/ State to find new and better ways of representing this need to the communist governments of East Central Europe.
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emigrate refugees