Speech #980166553

Jews experience additional discrimination in education. employment and social life. Although Soviet officials claim that all Jews wishing to leave the U.S.S.R. have already done so. it is clear that there are many Jews who still desire to leave. The lives of these estimated 500.000 Jews desiring to emigrate have been made very difficult by Soviet authorities. An already arduous migration process has been made even more cumbersome by rendering visa applications invalid after only 6 months. scarcely enough time for the Soviet bureaucracy to respond to emigration requests. Jews who are refused exit visas are then subject to being fired from their jobs and of being refused employment elsewhere. leaving themselves vulnerable to prosecution and possible imprisonment for being socalled "parasites." Moreover. the recent creation of the "AntiZionist Committee of the Soviet Public" indicates an escalation of officially sanctioned harassment. forced cultural and linguistic assimilation and a broadened antiSemitic propaganda campaign. The story of Irina Ratushinskaya is but one tragic example. Irina. a 30yearold physicist. poet and human rights activist. was sentenced in March 1982 to 7 years of hard labor and 5 additional years of internal exile.