Fifty-two Congressmen urged Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger today to publicly denounce the new Soviet tax on parcels sent to Jews and others in the Soviet Union and to make formal protests against the levy to Communist Party Secretary General Leonid I. Brezhnev and to the Soviet Ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly F. Dobrynin.
Rep. Joshua Eilberg (D.Pa.) made public the contents of a letter to Kissinger initiated by him and signed by himself and 51 of his House colleagues. The letter points out that most Soviet citizens will no longer be able to receive packages from abroad because the Soviet authorities have increased the duty by 100-1000 percent depending on the items enclosed. The letter observed that while the tax “does not violate any international agreements, certainly it does do violence to the spirit of the Helsinki Final Act. which attempts to bring about freer international communication between people and nations as well as developing closer personal and economic ties.”
The letter states that “It is clear that this policy is aimed at the more than 1000 Jewish families in the Soviet Union who have applied for permission to emigrate and now need these parcels to support themselves. In most cases the adults in these families have been fired from their jobs because of their applications and now depend on packages from the West for basic necessities and goods which can be sold.” The letter added that “This new policy will also severely cripple the efforts of many other Soviet dissidents who depend on foreign support and all other citizens, including Ukrainians. Byelorussian and those persons in the Baltic states who have relatives in Western countries and who have been the recipients of parcels for decades.”
The Congressman said “We are disturbed that our government has done nothing to try to convince the Soviets to rescind this policy, or, at the very least, made a public protest to show that the people of the United States are totally opposed to such repressive tactics.”
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