Speech #920206693

Speaker. life in the Soviet Union for Russian Jews continues to be a matter of great concern to all of us. In many cases Soviet Jews have been relegated to the status of secondclass citizens in a nation that professes the ideal of equality as basic and paramount. They have been denied the right to exercise their religion freely. their right to emigrate is seriously abridged. and many other basic human rights that we here in the United States take for granted. are known in theory but not in reality by the Jews and other Soviet minority groups. As a Member of the Congress of the United States and as an American Jew. I am cosponsoring House Concurrent Resolution 471 with the hope that the conscience of mankind in general and certain parties in particular. will lead to action that will alleviate the plight of the Jews and other minorities in the U.S.S.R. This resolution declares it to be the sense of the Congress that the President urge the Soviet Union to permit free expression of ideas. end discrimination against religious minorities. and allow Soviet citizens the right to emigrate. The State Department is called upon to raise in the General Assembly of the United Nations the issue of the Soviet Unions transgression of the Declaration of Human Rights. I believe. in addition to the general feeling we all have that human .beings everywhere regardless of creed. color. or other distinctive characteristics. should be accorded basic rights on an equal basis. that there are specific points that argue strongly in favor of a liberalization of minority treatment by the Soviet Union.