With some luck. the authors of this documentation will be instrumental in prompting the Soviet Union to relax the stifling campaign of personal repression that it has waged. With that in mind. I would like to draw attention to the plight of Naum and Lea PrestinaAkkerman. a refusenik couple that since 1978 has repeatedly been denied permission to emigrate from the U.S.S.R. to Israel. Their requests to leave have been denied on the basis of Naums alleged access to secret information during his years of employment as a physicist. but Naum and Lea have not given up hope of one day being allowed to leave the Soviet Union in order to openly and freely celebrate their Jewish faith and to enjoy the isurance of the basic human rights protection that the U.S.S.R. denies them. As Dr. William Korey. quoting from a U.N. study on the significance of emigration rights has observed. Deprivation of the right (of emigration) for racial. ethnic. or religious minor. Ities . . . can have cataclysmic psychiatric consequences.... It is my hope. particularly given the drop in Junes emigration level. that Soviet officials will both relax their emigration restrictions in general and their prohibition on the Akkermans exit in specific.e
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emigrate emigration