Proclamation 4973

By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation

The spontaneous formation on November 9, 1976, in Kiev, Ukraine, of the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords affirmed once more that the human spirit cannot be crushed and that the desire for human freedom cannot be conquered.

The long prison terms meted out to members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Monitoring Group for their courageous activities to secure greater freedom in Ukraine are graphic testimony to the inability of Communism to compete with the principles of freedom in the marketplace of ideas. The flagrant persecution and imprisonment of Ukrainian citizens for their attempts to exercise basic human rights is an international embarrassment to the Soviet Union and proof that the Soviet Union has failed to live up to its pledges to honor the understandings embodied in the Helsinki Accords.

In commemorating this sixth anniversary of the founding of the Ukrainian Helsinki Monitoring Group, we renew our determination never to forget the valiant struggle of the peoples of Ukraine for their inalienable rights, and we pledge to do all we can to ameliorate the plight of those Ukrainians who have been persecuted by the Soviet authorities for attempting to assert their rights.

By a concurrent resolution agreed to on June 21, 1982 (H. Con. Res. 205), the Congress authorized and requested the President to proclaim November 9, 1982, the sixth anniversary of the establishment of the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, as a day honoring that Group.

On this day Americans are reminded of the preciousness of our own freedom, and we reaffirm our cherished hope that the aspiration for freedom will ultimately prevail over the morally bankrupt rule of force which denies human rights to so many in the world today.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate November 9, 1982, as a day honoring the sixth anniversary of the establishment of the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords.

In Witness Whereof I have hereunto set my hand this 21st day of Sept. in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eightytwo, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and seventh.

RONALD REAGAN

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 3:57 p.m., September 21, 1982]