Speech #980260505

SILJANDERJ for their participation in it and for the ongoing efforts of all to assist persecuted Jews in the Soviet Union. As my colleagues are aware. Soviet authorities have effectively clamped down on Jewish immigration. While monthly levels of immigration in the late 1970s reached a level of 4.000 individuals. last month only 83 Jews left the U.S.S.R. There has been a corresponding increase in harassment and persecution of members of the Jewish faith. Documented cases of official antiSemitism are rising and the widespread campaign for socalled law and order has resulted in a disproportionate number of Jewish arrests. Members of the congressional human rights caucus. which I am privileged to cochair with my distinguished colleague from California and which each of the Members speaking today are members of. work each day for those anywhere in the world whose human rights are abused. Thousands of those whom we work to protect are Soviet Jews. Recently I have become personally involved with special advocacy efforts to assist four Soviet Jews who have been denied the right to emigrate. Their cases are all too typical of what is unfortunately happening to Jews in the Soviet Union today. After applying for exit visas. each of these men were arrested as a result of their practicing Judaism. despite the fact that Soviet law guarantees religious and cultural rights. Yakov Levin of Odessa has been subjected to KGB harassment several times in the past as a result of his application for an exit visa and for his participation in Jewish religious ceremonies. Last month he was arrested after a KGB search of his apartment revealed six questionable items. The worst of these items. in the eyes of the KGB. was a Jewish calendar.