is No. 2, et cetera. In this manner if numbers, for example, 6 and 10 are received, we know that Nos. 7, 8, and 9, were posted but not received. If an enclosure; for example, a photograph or newspaper clipping, is placed in the envelope with a letter, the writer will write "one enclosure" under, for example, letter No. 2. Sometimes the enclosures are missing. In that way, we know that the letter has been tampered with by Soviet authorities prior to its hazardous journey out of or into the U.S.S.R. I was corresponding with Mikhail Agursky in Moscow for a couple of years prior to his receiving permission to emigrate. Dr. Agursky is now residing in Israel. One letter that I received from him mentioned the fact that he had reason to believe that the KGB was or would be trying to spread rumors about him abroad. He did not mention the nature of these rumors, but went on to state that he hoped that I or no one else would believe such falsehoods. All my letters, some sent unregistered airmail, had reached him until that date. I wrote him a registered letter in reply to his letter about the false rumors, hastening to tell him that I would not believe any rumors spread about him. I never received my return receipt, pink card, to that letter and about 1 month later received another letter from him in which he wondered if I believed the rumors since he had not heard from me. I wrote him another registered letter saying I would not believe any rumors about him. That letter was never received by him either, nor did I receive my pink card. He sent me a letter saying that he assumed that I now believed false rumors about him since so much time had elapsed without word from me. I sent him a telegram assuring him that I would not believe any rumors about him. He never received the telegram. Finally, my husband wrote to him using his name and office address in another city, assuring him that we would not believe any rumors spread about him. He received that registered letter and responded to it. This is another way, diabolical indeed, of official Soviet harassment, and how they attempt to successfully utilize American citizens and U.S. mail for their own political ends. For 2 years, up to March 1973, I had been corresponding with the Felix Goldberg family in Vilnius, the capital of the Lithuanian Republic. The Goldberg family, refused permission to emigrate for several years, finally received permission and is living in Israel. Most of our mail to each other was sent registered airmail, return receipt requested. Most of that mail was delivered for awhile. Then, suddenly, their mail to me stopped. I wrote several more letters to them, each time saying that their mail to me had stopped. For 3 months I had no word from them. I wrote to Mrs. Goldberg's brother in Israel and he replied that his sister and brother-in-law had stopped writing because. since they had not received letters from me in some time, they had assumed that I had stopped writing. This is only one of the many instances when a Soviet citizen who is a Jew who has applied for an exit visa is manipulated by Soviet authorities into a decision of no further contact with friends and acquaintances from abroad because they thought that that friend or acquaintance had stopped writing. Through the years, as more and more refuseniks have become knowledgeable about violations of international mail, the refusenik Jews continue to write to their friends abroad even when they don't receive mail. However, some of them only continue to answer the letters they have received, which, in many instances, are few and far between. Often, plain postcards get through when registered and unregistered letters aren't successful in reaching their destination into the U.S.S.R. I can not say whether the presence of an envelope or a pink return receipt more visibly flags its entry into the Soviet Union or into each Republic, therefore, whether a plain postcard simply "slips through." However, I can say that in a significant number of times when mail has been unsuccessful in reaching its destination, the use of a postcard achieves successful results. Thank you once again for this opportunity to testify. Mr. HANLEY. Thank you very much, Mrs. Gould. Mr. Joel Ackerman? STATEMENT OF JOEL ACKERMAN, JEWISH COMMUNITY RELATIONS COUNCIL OF SAN FRANCISCO Mr. ACKERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have given you a prepared statement and what I will do is summarize that and add a few comments. I am testifying on behalf of the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco, Marin County, and the peninsula. To complicate matters, I am also the vice chairman of the Lawyers' Committee, which Mr. Gould is chairman of, and I have made a few legal comments in the statement and in my oral statement. As you've been hearing today, the correspondence that we're talking about provides a two-way lifeline of communication between refuseniks in the U.S.S.R. and persons in the outside world. In one direction, information flows out of the U.S.S.R., information on the life, the health, the wellbeing, the problems, and in many cases even the very existence of these refuseniks. On the other hand, information flows into the U.S.S.R. which can be news about how the refusenik's situation is perceived in the West, what's being done in their support, letters expressing general support for the situation and concern, and letters and packages containing Jewish religious and cultural information. In the international treaties and declarations that I've specifically mentioned in the statement, it is said that this communication is guaranteed. These treaties guarantee the right to communicate ideas and information across international borders. As you've been hearing today, it's very important for Jews in the United States and other Western countries to be able to support and pass mail and letters, packages, into their fellow Jews in the U.S.S.R. It's important, but that's frustrated sometimes by two situations. The first is postal violations; mail is not delivered; mail is seized. The second is something which the post office does not term a violation. but which we see as a violation of principle of registered mail and that is an uncertainty as to whether mail was actually delivered. This occurs when receipts are signed by the Soviet postal officials and not by the recipient. In the statement there is described a writing project which the JCRC conducted last spring. It was involved in the Jewish Holiday of Passover or, in Hebrew, Pesach. Nearly 400 letters were sent to refuseniks in the U.S.S.R. All these refuseniks had indicated a desire to receive communication from the outside world. The senders were requested to send their pink slips or other information back to the JCRC and we were able to compile documentation about nearly 250 of those letters. The receipts were examined several times by myself, by a JCRC staff person and with the help of an English-speaking, recently arrived Soviet emigre. Giving all the benefit of the doubt in those cases where there was doubt as to who had signed the receipts, we still determined that in roughly one-half the cases that we had pink slips, it could not be determined that the letter had actually been delivered to the recipient. Those were pink slips signed by someone other than the recipients, in some cases clearly by the postal authorities, in other cases it was not certain by whom. All mail going to refusniks in one city, the city of Kishinev, was signed in that manner. We cannot be certain that any of the mail going to that city at that time was delivered. This uncertainty, as you heard, is frustrating for the senders. If one tries to follow it up, one simply receives a letter from the post office advising that the Soviet authorities have stated the letter was delivered and, according to their records, that's true. It was signed for the the Soviet post office. By the way, in Kishinev, one of the families to whom the letters may not have been delivered was the Balbarer family who then and now have been under harassment by the authorities on a regular basis. A second part of the statement deals with a project conducted by the Soviet Jewry Action Group of this city. It was called the Right to Identify project, RTI for short, and involved the mailing of Jewish cultural information to the Soviet Union. On the last page is a list of those items that were seized. They strangely include, beside maps of Israel, books on Judaism. They include a medical journal. They include a birthday card. They include two letters written by an American child to a Soviet child in a refusenik family and, rather interestingly, four letters written to Soviet public officials. In this connection, I'd like to point up a discrepancy between Soviet practice and the Universal Postal Convention. In Mr. Levinson's prepared statement on page 9 it refers to an article in Izvestia in which the author states that openly anti-Soviet subversive literature, vicious Zionist writings, and religious material are considered in the same class as pornographic magazines and indecent items. This is contrary to the Universal Postal Convention and I'm referring to article 33 of that Convention which classifies prohibited mail into six categories. That's article 33, sub 2. In article 33, sub 4, it's stated that articles in three categories, namely narcotics, dangerous substances, for example, explosives, and obscene or immoral articles need not be either delivered or returned to the sender. In the next part, subsection 6, it deals differently with articles in the last category, namely, articles of which the importation and circulation is prohibited in the country of destination. These articles, according to subsection 6 of article 33, are to be returned to the sender and are not to be seized. They do not belong in the same category as obscene materials, narcotics, or explosive substances. All of these seizures are contrary to the Universal Postal Convention. They have done very little except to provide the Soviet authorities with an excellent opportunity to become fully educated on Jewish matters. You have heard testimony and Representative Gilman spoke this morning about the problem of collecting indemnities. You can see from the letter of the Pastmaster General of July 14, 1978, that of some $20,000 which the post office was claimed to them, only one-quarter was collected by offsetting accounts. And we hear now that this amount may become less in the future. This morning Mr. Regan questioned whether the Universal Postal Union was a proper forum for bringing up this subject. I concur with Mr. Gould that the subject should be raised everywhere appropriate in an appropriate manner. There's no reason to leave out the Universal Postal Convention as a place in which it can be brought up, even though the post office might prefer not to bring it up there. Thank you. Mr. HANLEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Ackerman. PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOEL ACKERMAN My name is Joel Ackerman and I am here representing the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco, Marin County and the Peninsula. The JCRC is an organization composed of representatives of more than fifty organizations and synagogues in this geographic area. It is the forum in which the organized Jewish community comes together to find consensual policy on those public affairs which affect the Jews; and then to act as we are doing today-as the spokesman for the organized Jewish community on this matter with which you are concerned. Since 1976, the JCRC has been coordinating programs of correspondence between members of the Jewish community residing in this area and refuseniks, Soviet Jews who have been refused permission to emigrate to Israel. Such correspondence provides a "lifeline" between refuseniks in the USSR and the outside world and, together with other forms of communication, is an essential factor in their survival against the pressures brought to bear on them. On the one hand, the postal system provides the major, and in a large number of cases, the only means by which refuseniks can succeed in making their personal situation, and perhaps their very existence, known to the outside world. On the other hand, it provides the major, and in many cases, the only, means by which their friends and relatives, and others concerned about them, can keep in touch with them. The Helsinki Final Act, other international treaties and declarations, and the Constitution and criminal laws of the USSR, contain provisions guarding the rights of persons residing in the USSR to engage in postal and other communications with the outside world, and to practice and participate in, religious and cultural activities. in the USSR. The applicable provisions of these documents are: Article VII HELSINKI FINAL ACT "The Participating States will respect human rights and fundamental free doms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief, for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion. Will recognize and respect the freedom of the individual to profess and practice, alone or in community with others, religion or belief acting in accordance with the dictates of his own conscience. Specific provisions regarding cooperation in humanitarian and other fields related to freer movement and contact of persons and reunification of families. It is explicitly stated that applications to obtain the advantages of these provisions 'will not modify the rights and obligations of the applicant or of members of his family.'" Article 13 UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own . . ." Article 19 "Everyone has the right . . . to seek, receive and import information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Article 18/1 INTERNATIONAL COVENANT ON CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS "Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include . . . to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observ. ance, practice and teaching." Article 19/2 "Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and import information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print . . ." These international covenants were reaffirmed in the Helsinki Final Act. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE USSR (1977) Article 52 Citizens of the USSR are guaranteed freedom of conscience, that, is the right to profess or not to profess any religion, and to conduct religious worship.. Incitement of hostility or hatred on religious grounds is prohibited. Article 56 The privacy of citizens, and of their correspondence, telephone conversations and telegraphic communications is protected by law. Article 57 Respect for the individual and protection of the rights and freedoms of citizens are the duty of all state bodies, public organisations, and officials. Citizens of the USSR have the right to protection by the courts against encroachments on their honour and reputation, life and health, and personal freedom and property. Criminal Code of the RSFSR SOVIET LEGISLATION Article 135. Violation of Secrecy of Correspondence.-The violation of the secrecy of citizens' correspondence shall be punished by correctional tasks for a term not exeeding six months, or by a fine not exceeding 30 rubles, or by social censure. RSFSR CODE OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE Article 12. Inviolability of Dwelling Space and Secrecy of Correspondence.— The inviolability of citizens' dwelling space and the secrecy of correspondence shall be protected by law. A search where a citizen lives, the impounding of correspondence, and its seizure at postal and telegraph offices may be conducted only on the grounds and in accordance with the procedure established by law. |