Speech #990005409

And as the February 3 incident demonstrates. Jewish visitors or contacts with Jewish citizens by foreigners are harassed. For longtime "refuseniks." who have been denied permission to leave since the mid1970s. and have endured such hardships for years. the current drying up of emigration permits is a particularly cruel blow. And there is the distinct danger that it may also presage an effort to eliminate all dissent. During the 1970s political and intellectual dissent was effectively suppressed. The exile of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn and the jailing of the Helsinki Watch group accomplished that. Today. the only substantial remnant of dissent is represented by Soviet Jews seeking the right to emigrate. And because Jewish emigrants constitute the largest remaining discrete group of dissidents. repression falls most heavily on them. The inability to emigrate and subjection to officially sanctioned antisemitism make life for Soviet Jews oppressive and bleak. Basic notions of human rights that we take for granted in the United States are simply absent in the Soviet Union. The Soviet view of human rights diverges from ours. It is clear. for instance. that the Soviets regard Jewish emigrants as a bargaining chip in relations with the United States. a repugnant use of human lives and human fears. But if. by taking advantage of the Soviet view. we can shorten the ordeal of any human being. we should do so. In the long term. the Soviet Union must come to recognize that our concern about human rights springs. not from an antiSoviet political animus. but form the same foundations that underlie all our political and cultural traditions.