EXHIBIT NO. 18

STATEMENT OF

DR. ZDZISLAW M. RURARZ

BEFORE THE

U.S. SENATE PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS

HEARINGS ON

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S HANDLING OF

SOVIET AND COMMUNIST BLOC DEFECTORS

The term "defection," or "defectors," is not an adequate one and to a large extent confusing and harmful to people who decided to break with the system in which they live.

In my contribution to the hearings, I would like to confine my remarks to a few issues only.

The first issue is the very decision to defect, if the commonly used term for the event is to be used as a mater of

convenience.

Defection, unlike emigration, whether a voluntary or a forced one is, at least this was so in my case, a political and patriotic act.

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Moreover, a

defector,

especially

from a communist and

Soviet-dominated country, and the one who belonged to the party, the ruling elite and the secret services first of all, is a very distinct individual from all others who leave their countries.

Such defectors, as a rule, have no material motives. On the contrary, they are even sure that in a material sense their future lives can be less affluent and certain than the previous ones.

Even still more importantly, defectors are usually sure that they may never again see their native countries, relatives and friends. Not only that they are barred by law from doing this, because as a rule they are deprived of their former citizenship, but also because of the fact that their return could mean death to them, or life imprisonment at best.

To illustrate the above, I should like to add that I was both deprived of my Polish citizenship and death sentenced in absentia.

Last but not least, defectors cannot be sure whether the sentences passed on them are a mere formality only. After all, many of them died a violent death, or a mysterious one.

Because of the above,

defectors are exposed to many life

inconveniences much more than other emigrants, or even certain

categories of

political

asylees.

Their moral and spiritual