CONCURRENT RESOLUTIONS—MAY 22, 1978
92 STAT. 3873
Lithuania, Georgia, and Armenia, to call the attention of public opinion, their own government, and other Final Act signatories to documented violations of human rights by compiling and issuing open, thorough reports on official practices toward religious believers, persons seeking to rejoin or visit relatives abroad, persons confined in mental hospitals because of their political beliefs, persons confined in prisons, prison camps, or internal exile because of their efforts to express such beliefs or disseminate their views and information, and minority groups seeking cultural and political rights in the Soviet Union; Whereas twenty-two members of the Helsinki Groups and their affiliates have been punished merely for their activities and participation in those Groups: two, Pyotr Grigorenko and Tomas Venclova, were stripped of citizenship while abroad and thus banished from their homeland; one, Malva Landa, has been sent into internal exile; and nineteen others, Eduard Arutyunyan, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Aleksandr Ginzburg, Grigory Goldshtein, Ambartsum Khlgatyan, Merab Kostava, I^vko Lukyanenko, Myroslav Marynovych, Mykola Matusevych, Robert Nazaryan, Yuri Orlov, Viktoras Petkus, Aleksandr Podrabinek, Viktor Rtskhiladze, Mykola Rudenko, Feliks Serebrov, Anatoly Shcharansky, Oleksiy Tykhy, and Pyotr Vins, are presently imprisoned; "Whereas Soviet authorities have already tried and convicted several members of the Helsinki Groups and their associates for their activities in promoting the standards of the Helsinki Final Act; Whereas Yuri Orlov, the leader and founding member of the Moscow Group, was convicted this week in the Soviet Capital for such activities and sentenced to seven years in prison camp and five years in internal exile, and Zviad Gamsakhurdia and Merab Kostava, two founding members of the Georgian Group, were brought to trial in Tbilisi this week as well to face similar charges; Whereas the activities of the Helsinki Groups and their members should be protected, not punished, in accordance with the Helsinki Final Act, the Universal Declaration, and the International Covenant; and Whereas the arrests and trials of the members of these Groups call into question the intention of the Soviet Union to adhere in good faith to the international treaties and agreements to which it is a party: Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the House of Representatives {the Senate concurring), That it is the sense of the Congress that, in conformity with the Helsinki Final Act, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and basic standards of justice, the unjustly imprisoned members and affiliates of the Soviet Helsinki Groups should be granted their freedom and allowed to pursue their lawful activities on behalf of basic human rights without further harassment. SEC. 2. The Congress urges the President, the Secretary of State, and other appropriate executive branch officials to continue to express at every suitable opportunity and in the strongest terms the opposition of the United States to the imprisonment of members of the Helsinki Groups. SEC. 3. The Clerk of the House of Representatives shall transmit copies of this resolution to the Soviet Ambassador to the United States and to the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Passed May 22, 1978.
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