Resolution in Congress Calls on USSR to Grant Emigration Visa to a Refusenik and His Critically Ill

Members of the House and Senate introduced a sense-of-the-Congress resolution Tuesday calling on the Soviet Union to grant emigration visas to a 10-year refusenik and his critically ill wife.

At the same time, Sen. Paul Simon (D. Ill.) vowed he would continue a month-old Senate “vigil” until the couple — Naum and Inna Meiman — is permitted to leave the country. Beginning March 6, Simon has spoken on the Meiman case every day since the Senate has been in session. He follows in the footsteps of Sen. William Proxmire (D. Wisc.), who held a similar vigil for nearly 20 years in support of Senate ratification of the Genocide Convention. The convention was finally approved last February.

The introduction of the resolution was announced at a press conference at the Capitol Tuesday, coordinated by the National Conference on Soviet Jewry together with Simon and other members of Congress, in order to call attention to the Meiman case. Sen. Gary Hart (D. Colo.) and Rep. Timothy Wirth (D. Colo) said they were submitting the resolution Tuesday and called on their colleagues to join in sponsoring it.

Naum Meiman, a 74-year old physicist, first applied for a visa in 1975, and was turned down on the pretext that he knew state secrets, although his classified work actually ended in 1955. Soon after his first application, Meiman was fired from his job at the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics.

Inna Meiman, a refusenik since 1979 who has been married to Naum for four years, received her second refusal of an emigration visa on the grounds that she was privy to the classified information that her husband possessed.

For the past two years Inna Meiman, 54, has been battling cancer and has already undergone four operations for the removal of tumors from her neck. Doctors in Moscow have told her there is little more they can do for her, in spite of the appearance of a fifth tumor on her neck. She has already received invitations to undergo cancer treatment in Israel, the U.S. and Sweden.

‘TIME IS RUNNING SHORT’

“Time is running short for Inna and Naum Meiman. Inna Meiman is dying of cancer. The climate is ripe for a humanitarian gesture from the Soviet Union,” Hart declared. Hart, who like Wirth and Simon, has visited the Meimans in Moscow, said that he and his colleagues have pursued the couple’s case with numerous Soviet officials here and in Moscow, but have received no indication that the Soviets are bending.