RESOLUTION on the situation of the Jews in the Soviet Union presented by Eric Brumenfeld, Marco Pannella and others (19.02.1987)

 

The European Parliament,

A. having regard to the undertakings given by the Soviet Government in the Helsinki Final Act on cooperation and security to guarantee fundamental human rights, in particular freedom of religion and freedom of movement for all citizens,

B. having regard to Mr Gorbachev's proposal to hold a World Conference on Human Rights in Moscow,

C. welcoming the release of Mr Sakharov and 140 dissidents,

D. having regard to its previous resolutions on the situation of Jews and human rights in the USSR,

E. having regard to the pronouncements made by Andrei Sakharov, among others, at the International Forum held in Moscow of 15-17 February 1987,

F. alerted once more - in particular, through the accounts given by the relatives of refusniks who met the European Parliament Delegation for relations with Israel in Jerusalem in December 1986 - to the disperate situation of a considerable number of Jews who wish to live in Israel and who for years have been refused exit visas, generally on specious ground,

1. Calls on the Soviet Government to persevere with its policy of openness and to take positive and genuine measures to ensure that human rights are respected in the Soviet Union by granting exit visas to all Jews who wish to leave the country;

2. Reiterates its appeal to the Soviet Government to authorize all those Jews who have applied to leave the USSR in order to rejoin their families to do so without hindrance, especially the following persons: Ida Nudel, Josef Begun, Vladimir Lifshitz, Grigory Lemberg, Alexei Magarik, Marat Osnis, Dona Konstantinovskaya, Grigory and Natalia Rosenstein, Cherna Goldort, Jossif Berenshtein, Leonid Volvovski, Roald Zelichenok, Ylian Edelshtein, Jakov Levin and Mark Nepomnyashchy:

3. Condemns the repeated refusal of the Soviet authorities to allow Professor Nahum Meimam to go with his wife, Mrs Ina Meiman, who subsequently died of cancer to seek medical treatment in the West and calls on the Soviet Government to allow Professor Meiman to emigrate immediately;

4. Urges the Soviet Government once more to end its campaign of harassment, persecution and imprisonment of Jews who have expressed the wish to settle in Israel;

5. Demands that no discrimination or repression should be exercised against any Jews who wish to settle in Israel;

6. Calls once more on the Soviet Government to ensure that the fundamental rights of all Soviet citizens are respected by taking account of the obligations assumed by the USSR in the Final Act of Helsinki;

7. Insists therefore that Soviet citizens who so wish should be allowed to practice their religion wilhout hindrance and that the right of Soviet Jews to teach Hebrew should be respected;

8. Profoundly regrets that, at a time when M. Gorbachev is seeking to convince the West that a new wind of respect for human rights and freedom is blowing through the Soviet system, small groups of Jews demonstrating peacefully and non-violently in Moscow should have been brutally beaten up, apparently by plain-clothes KGB agents;

9. Calls on the foreign Ministers meeting in political cooperation to make represantions to the Soviet Union with a view to ensuring that the above cases, and the problems of refusniks as a whole, are brought to a satisfactory conclusion;

10. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Foreign Ministers meeting in political cooperation and the Soviet Government.