assessment, an appropriate university would be selected. Upon accepting a student, the University would be responsible for providing the appropriate academic program and monitoring the student's cultural as well as academic progress. The time of the transition period would vary from as little as six months to several years, depending on the academic needs of the student. The consortium office (in this case MASUA) would be responsible for compiling semi-annual progress reports and forwarding them to a Washington agency for review. At the end of the transition period the future student would be free to relocate anywhere in the United States. By this time professional, business, or scholarly connections would have been made and the student, like all other American citizens, would be free to select an appropriate location in any community.

EXHIBIT NO. 6

STATEMENT OF

ETIENNE M. HUYGENS

BEFORE THE

U.S. SENATE PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS

HEARINGS ON

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S HANDLING OF

SOVIET AND COMMUNIST BLOC DEFECTORS

First of all, I would like to commend you and your colleagues on this Subcommittee for holding these important hearings. Not only am I convinced that the defectors' handling in general can be improved in this country, I also strongly believe that this great country can only benefit from a well-conceived, diversified, and consistent policy with regard to the handling of

Soviet Bloc defectors.

Before proceeding with more specific thoughts on this topic, let me present myself. My name is Etienne Huygens. I am a Belgian citizen who arrived about five years ago in the U.S. and lives in Northern Virginia. Through a roll of the dice, I became involved and interested in the subject of Soviet Bloc defectors. While pursuing post-graduate studies in Geneva, Switzerland, I met a Polish girl whom I was to marry. However, I could not have foreseen at that time that this encounter would lead me, a few years later, to a new life in the U.S., since my then-future wife was the daughter of the Polish Ambassador to Japan, Zdzislaw

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Rurarz, who together with his wife and daughter requested and obtained political asylum in this country in December, 1981. In I became the son-in-law of a high-level Soviet Bloc

this way,

defector.

My subsequent work as research director at the Jamestown

Foundation from June, 1985, to January, 1987, was another opportunity to be confronted with the problems Soviet Bloc

defectors encounter once they arrive in this country.

Defectors' handling is a cluster of complex problems. In the first place, it is complex because it involves a wide variety of people. The phenomenon of Soviet Bloc defections not only relates to high-level defectors, who were members of the Communist Party and/or government or military and intelligence establishments, but also includes the sailor who jumps ship or the auto mechanic who successfully climbs over the Berlin Wall. The public at large is only aware of problems with the handling of Soviet Bloc defectors when one or more of them decide to return to their homeland, or the authorities of the host country return the unfortunate defector to representatives of the country he tried to escape from. To the first category belong people such as Vitaly Yurchenko, the K.G.B. officer; Oleg Bitov, an editor of the Soviet weekly, Literaturnaya Gazeta; or the lower level defectors such as the Soviet soldiers who defected in Afghanistan in 1983, Oleg Khlan and Igor Rykhov (returning from the U.K. to the U.S.S.R.), and Nikolai Ryzhkov (leaving the U.S. for the Soviet Union).

Το

the latter group belong the "unfortunate" cases of Simas Kudirka, the Lithuanian seaman who was returned by the U.S. Coast Guard to his Soviet ship in November, 1970, and the Miroslav Medvid incident of October, 1985. We could also add here the numerous Soviet citizens returned by Finland to the U.S.S.R., especially when air piracy was involved.

Such a large group of people automatically implies different personalities and characters, unequal professional and educational backgrounds, enormous differences in experiences, knowledge and expectations and a variety of age groups and widely fluctuating motivations. The ability to adapt to completely new surroundings, personal courage and endurance are other important factors that will influence the integration of the defector into his or her new country, and in our case the U.S., is for many reasons equally complex and unsettling for most of these Soviet

Bloc defectors.

Whatever the level at which Soviet Bloc defections occur to the U.S., they are essentially a tribute to the American way of life and to the values this country stands for. Some defectors are even willing to risk their life in order to breathe the free political, economic, and cultural air of this country. The West in general, the U.S. in particular, represents in their eyes an opportunity to break out of a failing system incapable of engendering a viable form of society.

of factors, the necessity for a diversified but consistent U.S. policy for handling Soviet Bloc defectors at all levels becomes

imperative.

As leader of the free world, the U.S. has always championed the cause of freedom and democracy, in the first place by being a haven for those who seek refuge from a system that restricts or annihilates the rights and liberties of the individual and, furthermore, threatens U.S. security on a global scale. As a country that has great respect for human rights and especially recognizes "everyone's right to leave any country

and seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution," the U.S. ought to accept all those who are bound to be persecuted in one way or another for the mere attempt to defect.

The global policy of defectors' handling encompasses for instance a better implementation and observance of the basic

asylum procedure. Some might have forgotten what happened to Simas Kudirka, but the Medvid case should be still fresh in

everyone's mind.

The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, an independent agency of Congress, concluded its May, 1987, report on the Medvid case stating that "White House, National Security Council, Department of State and Department of Justice officials