Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 103 Part 3.djvu/984

 103 STAT. 3052 PROCLAMATION 5990—JUNE 14, 1989 While we have ample opportunity and infinite reasons throiighout the year to express respect and gratitude for our dads, Father's Day en- ables us to recognize them in a special way. On this day, let us give thanks for and to our Nation's fathers. They have surely earned a place of honor in our hearts and prayers. NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE BUSH, President of the United States of America, in accordance with a joint resolution of the Congress ap- / proved April 24, 1972 (36 U.S.C. 142a), do hereby proclaim Sunday, June 18, 1989, as Father's Day. I invite the States and communities and people of the United States to observe that day with appropriate cere- monies as a mark of appreciation and abiding affection for their fa- thers. I direct government officials to display the flag of the United States on all Federal Government buildings, and I urge all Americans to display the flag at their homes and other suitable places on that day. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this ninth day of June, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirteenth. GEORGE BUSH Proclamation 5990 of June 14, 1989 Baltic Freedom Day, 1989 By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation Fifty years ago on August 23, 1939, the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. The secret protocols to this treaty condemned the independent Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to the foreign domination they still endure today. Less than 1 year after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the Soviet Union invaded the three Baltic Republics and imposed a regime antithetical to the ideas of national sovereignty and individual liberty. The suffering of the Baltic people was exacerbated when Nazi forces drove through these states during the beginning of the Nazi-Soviet War and established a brutal administration. When the Red Army recap- toied the Baltic States during World War II, it reinstituted a reign of terror under the Soviet secret police. Hundreds of thousands of irmo- cent men, women, and children were deported to Siberia; thousands of others perished in armed resistance to the attack upon their national independence and individual rights. By the end of World War II, the Baltic States had lost 20 percent of their population. Since their forcible annexation by the Soviet Union in 1940, the people of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have suffered political oppression, re- ligious persecution, and repression of their national consciousness, llieir cultural heritage has been denigrated and suppressed, and russifi- cation has threatened their survival as distinct ethnic groups. An ag- gressive program of industrialization has posed hazards to their healtii as well as the environment. Members of the clergy and lay religious

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