3 Canadian Lawmakers Say Soviet Jews Seeking Emigration Are Being Used As ‘pawns in the Cold War’

Three members of Parliament, just back from a trip to the Soviet Union, charged today that Jews seeking emigration are being used as “pawns in the cold war,” that the Soviet authorities blatantly disregard international human rights agreements they have signed and faster and circulate virulent anti-Semitism in the government-controlled media.

Those conditions were reported by James Peterson, Liberal MP, Fred King, a Conservative, and Lynn Mc-Donald, of the New Democratic Party. They were accompanied on their tour by Barbara Stem, chair person of the Canadian Committee for Soviet Jewry and Alan Rose, executive vice president of the Canadian Jewish Congress. While in the USSR the group met with 70 refuseniks in Moscow and Leningrad.

Peterson, who heads the Parliamentary Group on Soviet Jewry, comprising more than half the members of the federal Parliament, said he felt that Soviet Jews who want to emigrate to Israel are “being used as pawns in the cold war,” King said, “We went to learn the truth and we found that the Soviets are denying Jews permission to leave in disregard of the human rights agreements the Soviet Union has signed.”

ANTI-SEMITIC ACTIVITY CITED

McDonald said she and her colleagues heard “first hand” of the discrimination faced by Soviet Jewry. “There are posters that are very anti-Semitic and available in book stores.” Peter Roberts, the Canadian Ambassador to Moscow, showed the visitors a recent article in the Communist Party newspaper Pravda charging that Zionism and fascism stem from the same roots.

Stern said he met people who have been applying for exit visas for a decade only to be repeatedly refused. Now their children are applying and constitute a second generation of refusniks. Rose said: “It’s difficult to estimate the number of refusniks, but 20,000 would not be a great exaggeration. When the cold war is at its fiercest, the doors are hardest to open.”