Speech #990020337

President. I am pleased to Join today with many of my colleagues who have come together in support of the 1985 congressional call to conscience for Soviet Jewry. The great philosopher George Santayana wrote that "injustice in this world is not something comparative: the wrong is deep. clear. and absolute in each private fate." No words more aptly describe the hellish "private fate" suffered daily by Soviet Jews seeking to emigrate from the U.S.S.R. As a matter of course. the Soviets consistently and consciously violate both the letter and the spirit of the Helsinki accords to which the U.S.S.R. was a signatory. To delay justice is to deny justice and the Soviet Union stands guilty before the court of world public opinion for its intransigent and inhumane actions against its Jewish citizens. In 1979. 51.320 Jews emigrated from the U.S.S.R. That number has steadily and dramatically declined over the last 5 years. In 1984. only 896 Jews were permitted to emigrate from that country. . In the Helsinki Final Act and other international agreements ratified by the Soviet Union. there was consensus that the right of any individual to leave any country. including ones own. is an internationally recognized right. The Soviet reality cruely mocks this basic right of freedom of movement which the Soviet Government approved. By delaying emigration applications from Jewish citizens for months and even years. the U.S.S.R. engages in the cruelest form "of psychological torture. at once holding out the possibility of emigration while malevolently delaying action on such applications. Unless an emigration application is first denied by the Government. an applicant cannot reapply for another. To avoid open public condemnation of their limited immigration policy in the West. the Soviets simply delay action on the majority of exit permits. Mr. President. we must not forget that as the two most powerful nations in the world join together in talks to reduce nuclear arsenals and to prevent the possibility of a nuclear holocaust. earlier treaties entered into by the U.S.S.R. to improve and to protect basic human rights and freedoms. including the freedom to emigrate. are being consciously disregarded. We in the Congress bear a direct responsibility to the people of the United States and the people of the free world to send a clear. strong signal to the Soviet Union that the United States will neither Ignore nor quietly accept its abuses of human rights and the human spirit.*