The 43 freshman members of the House of Representatives are making daily speeches on the House floor on behalf of Soviet Jewish refuseniks in a campaign that began last week and will continue through September. The campaign was announced by Reps. Christopher Smith (R. NJ) and William Coyne (D. Pa.), co-chairmen of the 97th Congressional Class for Soviet Jewry.
“Working in conjunction with the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, we have targeted those refuseniks who have been awaiting visas for more than six years,” Coyne explained. He said each member has adopted one or two refuseniks and will be writing to the proper authorities in the U.S. and the Soviet Union on their behalf.
Smith, who spent nine days in Moscow and Leningrad last January, said: “One can never actually imagine the extreme hardship the refusenik families face on a daily basis in their attempt to secure religious freedom.” He said he returned from his trip “with a deeper commitment to human rights in general and a deeper commitment for the human right to emigrate from the Soviet Union.”
The two Congressmen noted that Jewish emigration from the USSR dropped from more than 51,000 in 1979 to 9,448 in 1981. They said in recent months only 100-200 Jews have been allowed to emigrate.
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