President Reagan has issued his semiannual report on the Implementation of the Helsinki Final Act noting that the Soviet Union, Rumania and Poland continue to be in violation of the human rights sections of the agreement.
The 14th semiannual report was submitted by the State Department to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which monitors the Helsinki agreements, and made public last week.
The report noted that no substantive agreement has been reached at the Madrid followup conference which has been going on since Nov. 11, 1980. “From the outset at Madrid, two issues have proved particularly contentious; balanced progress between human rights and the mandate for a post-Madrid conference on the military aspects of security,” the report stressed. “Discussion and progress on these issues came to a halt after the imposition of martial law in Poland in December, 1981, when it became clear that there was no possibility of adopting a concluding agreement in the face of the massive violations of existing Final Act commitments in Poland and the Soviet Union.”
The report points out that “the West has raised matters of implementation — particularly the continuing repression in the Soviet Union and the suppression of civil liberties in Poland.” Max Kampelman, the U.S., representative “gave a hard-hitting speech on March 8 indicting the East in general and the Soviet Union, Poland and Rumania in particular for human rights violations. ” Among the items he mentioned were the halt in Jewish emigration from the USSR and the education tax on would be emigrants from Rumania.
RUMANIAN DECREE CRITICIZED
The report criticizes the Rumanian decree last November which requires all intending emigrants to repay the Rumanian government the cost of their education beyond the compulsory (tenth year) level in a convertible (“hard”) currency before they can receive exit documentation. It particularly affects Rumanian Jews departing for Israel.
“The Soviets continued drastically to limit emigration and family reunification during the review period,” according to the report. “The continued decline of emigration dovetails with other aspects of the current increase of repression of dissent. Most citizens have little or no chance to emigrate … Only 741 Jews were allowed to emigrate during the reporting period compared to 1,286 in the previous six months. If projected to the end of the year, this would possibly result in the emigration of about 1,100 Jews in 1983, compared to 51,300 in 1979, when emigration for the USSR reached its zenith,” the report revealed.
In addition, “there are reports from several areas in the USSR that local Office of Visas and Registration officials during the last six months have been telling a number of long-time refuseniks that they are ‘refused for life’ and, in some instances, warned that they will be punished should they attempt to apply again, ” the report states.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
