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 PUBLIC LAW 97-196—JUNE 18, 1982

96 STAT. 117

Public Law 97-196 97th Congress Joint Resolution Designating "Baltic Freedom Day".

June 18, 1982 [S.J. Res. 201]

Whereas the people of the Baltic Republics of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have cherished the principles of religious and political freedom and independence; and Whereas the Baltic Republics have existed as independent, sovereign nations, belonging to and fully recognized by the League of Nations; and Whereas the people of the Baltic Republics have individual and separate cultures, national traditions and languages, distinctly foreign to those of Russia; and Whereas the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) in 1940 did illegally seize and occupy the Baltic Republics and by force incorporate them against their national will and contrary to their desire for independence and sovereignty into the U.S.S.R.; and Whereas the U.S.S.R. since 1940 has systematically removed native Baltic peoples from their homelands by deporting them to Siberia and caused great masses of Russians to relocate in the Republics, thus threatening the Baltic cultures with extinction; and Whereas the U.S.S.R. has imposed upon the captive people of the Baltic Republics an oppressive poUtical system which has destroyed every vestige of democracy, civil liberties, and religious freedom; and Whereas the people of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia find themselves today subjugated by the U.S.S.R., locked into a union they deplore, denied basic human rights, and persecuted for daring to protest; and Whereas the United States stands as a champion of liberty, dedicated to the principles of democracy, human rights, and religious freedom, and opposed to oppression; and Whereas the United States, as a member of the United Nations, has repeatedly voted with a majority of that international body to uphold the right of other countries of the world to determine their fates and be free of foreign domination; and Whereas the U.S.S.R. has steadfastly refused to return to the people of the Baltic States the right to exist as independent republics separate and apart from the U.S.S.R. or permit a return of personal, political, and religious freedoms: Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Congress of the Baltic United States recognizes the continuing desire and the right of the Day. people of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia for freedom and independence from the domination of the U.S.S.R. and deplores the refusal of the U.S.S.R. to recognize the sovereignty of the Baltic Republics and to yield to their rightful demands for independence from foreign domination and oppression and that the fourteenth day of June 1982, the anniversary of the mass deportation of Baltic peoples from their homelands in 1941, be designated "Baltic Freedom Day" as a

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