Mr. Speaker. the human rights record of the Soviet Union is one of recorded historys most deplorable and this resolution. in a very personal sense. illustrates why. Viktor Brailovsky is a computer scientist who lost his job in 1972 when he first applied for emigration. Regularly harassed by Soviet authorities from that time on. he is now in ill health in a Soviet prison. The official charge leveled against Brailovsky at the time of his arrest was defaming the Soviet State and public order. The real reason. however. is best summarized by his wife. Irina. who says that it must be because of my husbands refusal to sit still and keep quiet about our plight and the plight of tens of thousands of other Soviet Jews who want to emigrate and cannot. Strongly buttressing that contention is the fact that Brailovskys latest detainment came hard on the heels of his leadership of a group of 237 other refusniks who. on the opening dayNovember 11. 1980of the Helsinki Review Conference in Madrid. signed an appeal to President Brezhnev demanding exit permits. The U.S.S.R.s actions against Brailovsky constitute a blatant flouting of both the letter and spirit of three human rights documents the Soviets are obliged to honor.
Keywords matched
emigrate emigration