Six UN Ngo Groups Appeal to Waldheim on Higher Exit Fees

Six nongovernmental organizations associated with the United Nations’ Social and Economic Council asked Secretary General Kurt Waldheim yesterday to use his good offices to “persuade” the Soviet Union to revoke the increased exit fees imposed on Soviet Jewish scientists.

In a letter to Waldheim, the six groups–The World Jewish Congress, the International Commission of Jurists, the Anti-Slavery Society for the Protection of Human Rights, the Women’s International Zionist Organization, the International Federation of Women Lawyers and the Coordinating Board of Jewish Organizations–charged that the new exit fees in effect “put an exit visa far beyond the reach of any of the applicants” in the category concerned. The CBJO is comprised of B’nai B’rith, the South African Board of Jewish Deputies and the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

Imposition of prohibitive fees, they stated, “is simply harassment” of educated applicants for exit visas “rather than a necessary move to retain their knowledge and skills as long as possible.”

This, they said, was “evidenced” by the fact that in many cases applicants were “immediately stripped of their academic rank, dismissed from their positions and forced to work in unskilled or semi-skilled occupations.”

The six groups, which have consultative status with the Social and Economic Council, said that to many thousands of Soviet Jews waiting to be reunited with their families in Israel or elsewhere, the new fees mean “that the exit doors have suddenly locked, that the right proclaimed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of everyone to leave any country, including his own, has become voided for them.”