Beyond this. and still more significant. the accords have provided a rallying point for people struggling for freedom and peace in the signatory countries. They have done so by encouraging private citizens in all European countries to "know and act upon their rights" by monitoring their own governments behavior. True. many of the citizens who took up this challenge soon became victims themselves. More than 50 Helsinki monitors in the Soviet Union are in prison or internal exile. others have been intimidated into silence or forced to emigrate. In Czechoslovakia. the authorities continue to persecute the more than 1.000 people who signed Charter 77 upholding Helsinki principles. The Polish Helsinki Committee. which operated openly during the Solidarity period. has been forced underground.
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emigrate