Speech #980063337

Speaker. I rise this evening to point out to my colleagues that we face a very grave and dark hour in the ongoing struggle to help Soviet Jews secure basic protections and fundamental human rights they so desperately desire and so richly deserve. Not only have we witnessed an alarming decline in the number of Jews permitted to leave the Soviet Unionsome 51.000 were allowed to emigrate in 1979. that figure dropped to 2.688 in 1982. and today only about 100 Jews per month leave the Soviet Unionbut we have seen a notsonew cancer rapidly festering in the U.S.S.R.. the disease of antiSemitism. Daily. Mr. Speaker. we receive heartbreaking reports of new victims of KGB harassment and interrogation. Daily we witness new. more extreme expressions of antiSemitism in Soviet literature and articles in the statecontrolled press. There are increasing reports of letters of invitation from firstdegree relatives in Israel never being delivered to the addressee. thus denying a potential emigree the opportunity to fulfill the first requirement in the emigration process. So the Jews in the Soviet Union find themselves in the situation of being homeless. a people without a country. yet a people that the authorities refuse to let go. Mr. Speaker. within the last couple of months. a new propaganda effort has been initiated by the Soviets to make it appear that the season of Jewish family reunification has ended. Leaders of the newly formed AntiZionist Committee of the Soviet Public now make the totally unsupportable assertion that family reunification has essentially been completed. This kind of falsehood flies in the face of the truth. and the simple truth is that tens of thousands of Jews seek to exercise their right to emigrate. to be reunited with their loved ones. The truth is that documented case histories of thousands of Jews seeking to depart can be produced for an objective accounting. The truth is that such statements do much to undermine the very word and reliability of the Soviet Union itself.