Speech #1000090959

Mr. Speaker. I thank my colleagues in the Congressional Coalition for Soviet Jews for their leadership in the issue of human rights in the Soviet Union. and for providing the Members of Congress with the opportunity to talk about human rights and Jewish emigration in the Soviet Union during the meetings between Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. Recently brought to my attention was the plight of a Soviet refusenik. Abram Kagan who has been denied permission to emigrate from the Soviet Union. Abram is an internationally known statistician who has received several invitations to scientific meetings outside the U.S.S.R.. he has never been able to attend these seminars or to emigrate to Israel. although he and his family have been in refusal for more than 10 years. He has consistently been denied permission to emigrate because of secrecy. despite the fact that his employers at the Steklov Institute of Mathematics have led him to believe that there was no reason for him to be denied permission to emigrate. In actuality. Abram never had any contact with State secrets. having worked only as a theoritical mathematician whose papers have all appeared in the open scientific press. Just recently. the Soviet authorities granted permission to emigrate to everyone in his family. with the exception of Abram. To separate this loving father from his wife and two children is the ultimate cruelty of the Soviet Government. Sometimes the story of a single person or family can tell more about a system of government than all the statistics in the world. Abram Kagan is only one of thousands of people who have been victims of antiSemitism in the Soviet Union. Until the end of June 1987 it seemed to be better for Soviet Jewry than the recent past. However. it should be noted that while Jewish emigration increased significantly in the first 6 months of 1987. the following situation remained: If Jewish emigration this year would continue at the current rate. the years total would reach only 7.000less than oneseventh of the peak year of 1979 when 51.320 Jews arrived in Vienna. almost all of those granted permission are drawn from a list of 11.000 documented refuseniks. with little evident breakthrough concerning the thousands of others who are known to seek to emigrate. very few applicants are being approved. or even processed. and virtually no one who lacks first degree relatives abroad. whether parents or siblings. can get new applications accepted. General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev has been seeking to project an image of openness and flexibility on human rights issues. He has taken some dramatic steps to demonstrate that the Soviet regimes policies on these matters are changing.