Speech #990253282

My meeting with a group of cancer victims and their families was one of the most moving experiences of the entire visit and I wanted to share with my colleagues my impressions of this meeting with a group of very courageous individuals. Inna KitrosskayaMeiman. Tatjana KheifetzBogolmonaya. and Benjamin Charny are not unique in their longterm efforts to obtain visas from the Soviet Government in order to emigrate and join families and friends living in Israel and the United States. Their tragedy. shared by thousands of Soviet Jews in similar straits. is further compounded by the fact that all three have been stricken with serious forms of cancer while waiting for visas that never come. All three have some hope of further treatment in the West where there has been significant progress in successfully treating some forms of cancer. All three have. by necessity. undergone operations and painful treatments that have not worked and have exacerbated other ailments. All three have repeatedly applied to the OVIR for visas to emigrate but have been repeatedly denied. Yet all three are continuing their efforts to leave the Soviet Union and show their courage and humanitarianism by serving as models for other refuseniks. I returned firmly convinced that the only way to pressure the Soviet authorities to allow these individuals the right to emigrate to seek further treatment and the right to be reunited with their families at such a difficult time is to ensure that international attention be brought to this situation and that government leaders hold the Soviet authorities accountable for their lack of action. I would like to direct the attention of my colleagues to a news conference held last week on Capitol Hill to publicize the plight of these victims of a cruel regime. Several members of the other body were joined by the families of the refuseniks as well as by two National Cancer Institute physicians and the chief of the U.S. delegation to the International Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. They were able to receive a call from several of the patients calling from Moscow. I wanted to share with my colleagues a Washington Post article which details this conference. I call attention to this situation in order to underscore the tragedy of the system the refuseniks face dailya system that is so rigid that even a lifethreatening disease such as cancer and the prospect of better treatment is not enough to convince the Soviet authorities that the freedom of movement and emigration is essential. The article follows: [From the Washington Post. Sept. 12. 1986)