Representatives of the Canadian Committee for the Release of Anatoly Shcharansky met today with the 25 members of the Canadian Parliamentary Helsinki group representing all political factions in Canada. The meeting was convened as a result of the recent wave of repression against Soviet Jews and its implications for the fate of Shcharansky, a leading dissident facing trial on charges of treason.
McGill University law professor Irving Cotler, a civil rights lawyer and Canadian counsel for Shcharansky, submitted a detailed brief to the Parliamentary group, titled “The Helsinki Accord, Human Rights and Soviet Jewry–Anatoly Shcharansky, a Case Study.” It documents Soviet violations of the Helsinki human rights accords. Cotler said that “Since the end of the Belgrade meeting (on compliance with the accords) and in contempt of the Helsinki accords, there has been an escalation of terror in the Soviet Union.”
He suggested several approaches, including the creation of a Canadian monitoring group; sending an observer to Shcharansky’s trial; and a reassessment by the Canadian government of its programs of academic, scientific and cultural exchanges with the USSR. Cotler also proposed that the government call in the Soviet Ambassador to express its concern over the deteriorating situation for human rights and Jews in Russia and its implications for future Canadian-Soviet relations.
Martin O’Connell, a Liberal MP from Toronto and former parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, is chairman of the Canadian Parliamentary Helsinki group.
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