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Mr. Speaker, I rise to commemorate the memory of innocent victims of an abominable act perpetrated against the people of Ukraine in 1932-33. Seven million innocent men, women and children were murdered so that one man, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, could consolidate control over Ukraine. The Ukrainian people resisted the Soviet policy of forced collectivization. The innocent died a horrific death at the hands of a tyrannical dictatorship which had crushed their freedom. In an attempt to break the spirit of an independent-minded and nationally-conscious Ukrainian peasantry, and ultimately to secure collectivization, Stalin ordered the expropriation of all foodstuffs in the hands of the rural population. The grain was shipped to other areas of the Soviet Union or sold on the international market. Peasants who refused to turn over grain to the state were deported or executed. Without food or grain, mass starvation ensued. This manmade famine was the consequence of deliberate policies which aimed to destroy the political, cultural and human rights of the Ukrainian people. In short, food was used as a weapon in what can only be described as an organized act of terrorism designed to suppress a people's love of their land and the basic liberty to live as they choose. This month also marks an important milestone in more recent Ukrainian history. Twenty-five years ago, on November 9, 1976, 10 courageous men and women formed the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords. The work of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group focused on monitoring human rights violations and on the Ukrainian national question as an integral component of human rights issues. The Ukrainian Helsinki Group eventually became the largest of its kind among similar groups in the Soviet Union, but also the most repressed by the Soviet regime. Of the 37 Ukrainians who eventually joined the Group, virtually all were subjected to lengthy terms in labor camps and internal exile. Three--Oleksiy Tykhy, Yuri Lytvyn and Vasyl Stus--died in the mid-1980s while serving camp terms under extremely harsh conditions. Their courageous, active commitment to human rights and freedom for the people of Ukraine laid the foundation for the historic achievement of Ukrainian independence in 1991. As we honor the memory of the millions of innocent victims of the Ukrainian Famine, let us also not forget to honor the work and, in some instances, the martyrdom, of the valiant members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. While similar atrocities are highly unlikely, Ukraine has yet to realize its full democratic potential. Despite the real progress made in the decade since independence, the unsolved murders of Georgiy Gongadze and other journalists and political figures, the assaults on media freedoms, the pervasive corruption, and the lack of respect for the rule of law demonstrate a democratic deficit that must be overcome. An independent, sovereign, democratic Ukraine--in which respect for the dignity of human beings is the cornerstone--is the best guarantee that the horrors of the last century become truly inconceivable.

Mr. Speaker, this year, Romania holds the chairmanship of the 55-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Obviously, this is one of the most important positions in the OSCE and, as Romania is a little more than half way through its tenure, I would like to reflect for a moment on some of their achievements and challenges. First and foremost, I commend Romanian Foreign Minister Mircea Geoana for his leadership. In late January Minister Geoana met in the Capitol with members of the Helsinki Commission which I co-chair and again two weeks ago at the Parliamentary Assembly meeting in Paris, we had a helpful exchange of views. He has demonstrated, in word and deed, that he understands how important the role of chairman is to the work of the OSCE. His personal engagement in Belarus and Chechnya, for example, illustrates the constructive possibilities of the chairmanship. I appreciate Foreign Minister Geoana's willingness to speak out on human rights concerns throughout the region. As Chair-in-Office, we also hope that Romania will lead by example as it continues to implement economic and political reform and to further its integration into western institutions. In this regard, I would like to draw attention to a few of the areas the Helsinki Commission is following with special interest. First, many members of the Helsinki Commission have repeatedly voiced our concerns about manifestations of anti-Semitism in Romania, often expressed through efforts to rehabilitate or commemorate Romania's World War II leadership. I was therefore encouraged by the swift and unequivocal response by the Romanian Government to the inexcusable participation of General Mircea Chelaru in a ceremony unveiling a bust of Marshal Ion Antonescu, Romania's war-time dictator. I particularly welcome President Iliescu's statement that "Marshal Ion Antonescu was and is considered a war criminal for the political responsibility he assumed by making [an] alliance with Hitler.'' I encourage the Romanian Government to give even greater meaning to this statement and to its stated commitment to reject anti-Semitism. Clearly, the next step should be the removal of Antonescu statues from public lands, including those at the Jilava prison and in Slobozia, Piatra Neamt, and Letcani. Mr. Speaker, I also appreciate the recent statement by Prime Minister Nastase that journalists should not be sent to jail for their writings. But frankly, it is not enough for the Prime Minister merely to reject efforts to increase the criminal penalties that journalists are now vulnerable to in Romania. Non-governmental organizations have spoken to this issue with one voice. In fact, since the beginning of this year, NGOs have renewed their call for changes to the Romanian penal code that would bring it into line with OSCE standards. Amnesty International, Article l9, the Global Campaign for Free Expression, the International Helsinki Federation and the Romanian Helsinki Committee have all urged the repeal of articles 205, 206, 207, 236, 236(1), 238 and 239 from the criminal code and, as appropriate, their replacement by civil code provisions. I understand the Council of Europe made similar recommendations to Romania in 1997. Moreover, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media has said, clearly and repeatedly, that criminal defamation and insult laws are not consistent with OSCE commitments and should be repealed. There is no better time to take this step than now, while Romania holds the Chairmanship of the OSCE. Public authorities, of course, should be protected from slander and libel, just like everyone else. Clearly, civil codes are more than adequate to achieve this goal. Accordingly, in order to bring Romanian law into line with Romania's international obligations and commitments, penal sanctions for defamation or insult of public authorities in Romania should be altogether ended. It is time, and past time, for these simple steps to be taken. As Chairman-in-Office, Minister Geoana has repeatedly expressed his concern about the trafficking of human beings into forced prostitution and other forms of slavery in the OSCE region. The OSCE has proven to be an effective forum for addressing this particular human rights violation, and I commend Minister Geoana for maintaining the OSCE's focus on the issue. Domestically, Romania is also in a position to lead by example in combating trafficking. Notwithstanding that the State Department's first annual Trafficking in Persons report characterizes Romania as a “Tier 3” country in the fight against human trafficking, that is, a country which does not meet minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to bring itself into compliance with those standards--it is clear the Government of Romania is moving in a positive direction to address the trafficking of human beings from and through its territory. For example, the Ministry of Justice is actively working on a new anti-trafficking law. The government is also cooperating closely with the Regional Center for Combating Trans-Border Crime, created under the auspices of the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative and located in Bucharest, and in particular, with the Center's anti-human trafficking task force. I encourage the Government of Romania to continue with these efforts and to undertake additional initiatives. For example, law enforcement officers in Romania, as in many other OSCE States, are still in need of thorough training on how to investigate and prosecute cases of suspected human trafficking. Training which reinforces the principle that trafficked persons deserve a compassionate response from law enforcement--as they are victims of crime themselves, not criminals, is necessary. When such training leads to more arrests of traffickers and more compassion toward trafficking victims, Romania will be a regional leader in the fight against this modem slavery. Finally, Mr. Speaker, I would like to say a few words about the Romani minority in Romania. Romania may have as many as 2 million Roma, and certainly has the largest number of Roma of any OSCE country. Like elsewhere in the region, they face discrimination in labor, public places, education, and housing. I am especially concerned about persistent and credible reports that Roma are subjected to police abuse, such as the raids at the Zabrauti housing development, near Bucharest, on January 12, and in Brasov on February I and 9 of this year. I commend Romani CRISS and other groups that have worked to document these problems. I urge the Romanian Government to intensify its efforts to prevent abusive practices on the part of the police and to hold individual police officers accountable when they violate the law. In the coming months, the OSCE will conduct the Human Dimension Implementation Review meeting in Warsaw, a Conference on Roma and Sinti Affairs in Bucharest, and the Ministerial Council meeting also in Bucharest, among other meetings and seminars. The legacy of the Romanian Chairmanship will entail not only the leadership demonstrated in these venues but also progress made at home through further compliance with OSCE commitments.

Mr. Speaker, twenty-five years ago this month, on June 3, 1976, a law was enacted creating the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. We know it as “the Helsinki Commission.” One of the smallest and most unique bodies in the U.S. Government, it perhaps ranks among the most effective for its size. I have been proud to be a member of the Commission for the past 16 years. When President Gerald Ford signed, in Helsinki in 1975, the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, he said that “history will judge this Conference not by what we say here today, but by what we do tomorrow--not only by the promises we make, but by the promises we keep.” That piece of rhetoric has not only been repeated in various forms by every United States President since; it has continually served as a basis for U.S. policy toward Europe. Credit for this fact, and for the Commission's establishment, first goes to our late colleague here in the House, Millicent Fenwick, and the late-Senator Clifford Case, both of New Jersey. Observing the foundation of human rights groups in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to monitor and, it was hoped, to encourage their governments to keep the promises made in Helsinki, she and other Members of Congress felt it would be good to give them some signs of support.   Keep in mind, Mr. Speaker, that this was in the midst of detente with Moscow, a polite dance of otherwise antagonistic great powers. It was a time when the nuclear warhead was thought to be more powerful than the human spirit, and the pursuit of human rights in the communist world was not considered sufficiently realistic, except perhaps as a propaganda tool with which to woo a divided European continent and polarized world. The philosophy of the Commission was otherwise. Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms is, as the Helsinki Final Act indicates, a prerequisite for true peace and true security. As such, it is also a principle guiding relations between states, a legitimate matter for discussion among them. This philosophy, broadened today to include democratic norms such as free and fair elections and respect for the rule of law, remains the basis for the Commission's work.   Of course, the Commission was not meant to be a place for mere debate on approaches to foreign policy; it had actually to insert itself into the policy-making process. The Commission Chairman for the first decade, the late Dante Fascell of Florida, fought hard to do just that. It was, I would say, a bipartisan fight, with several different Congresses taking on several different Administrations. Moreover, it was not just a fight for influence in policy-making; it was a much tougher fight for better policies. The Commission staff, led during those early years by R. Spencer Oliver, was superb in this respect. It knew the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. It worked with non-governmental organizations to increase public diplomacy and, subsequently, public support for In 15 years at the East-West divide, the Commission also championed policies, like the Jackson-Vanik amendment, linking human rights to trade and other aspects of U.S. bilateral relationships. The concept of linkage has often been chastised by the foreign policy establishment, but it comes from the passion of our own country's democratic heritage and nature. With persistence and care, it ultimately proved successful for the United States and the countries concerned.   The Helsinki Commission also became the champion of engagement. Commission members did not simply speak out on human rights abuses; they also traveled to the Soviet Union and the communist countries of East-Central Europe, meeting dissidents and ``refuseniks'' and seeking to gain access to those in the prisons and prison camps. At first, the Commission was viewed as such a threat to the communist system that its existence would not be officially acknowledged, but Commissioners went anyway, in other congressional capacities until such time that barriers to the Commission were broken down. The Commission focus was on helping those who had first inspired the Commission's creation, namely the Helsinki and human rights monitors, who had soon been severely persecuted for assuming in the mid-1970s that they could act upon their rights. Ethnic rights, religious rights, movement, association and expression rights, all were under attack, and the Commission refused to give up its dedication to their defense. Eventually, the hard work paid off, and the beginning of my tenure with the Commission coincided with the first signs under Gorbachev that East-West divisions were finally coming to an end. Sharing the chairmanship with my Senate counterparts--first Alfonse D'Amato of New York and then Dennis DeConcini of Arizona--the Commission argued against easing the pressure at the time it was beginning to produce results.   We argued for the human rights counterpart of President Reagan's “zero option'' for arms control, in which not only the thousands of dissenters and prospective emigrants saw benefits. They were joined by millions of everyday people--workers, farmers, students--suddenly feeling more openness, real freedom, and an opportunity with democracy. Dissidents on whose behalf the Commission fought--while so many others were labeling them insignificant fringe elements in society--were now being released and becoming government leaders, people like Polish Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek and Czech President Vaclav Havel. The independence of the Baltic States, whose forced incorporation into the USSR was never officially recognized by the United States, was actually reestablished, followed by others wishing to act upon the Helsinki right to self-determination.   Of course, Mr. Speaker, those of us on the Commission knew that the fall of communism would give rise to new problems, namely the extreme nationalism which communism swept under the rug of repression rather than neutralized with democratic antiseptic. Still, none of us fully anticipated what was to come in the 1990s. It was a decade of democratic achievement, but it nevertheless witnessed the worst violations of Helsinki principles and provisions, including genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and brutal conflicts elsewhere in the Balkans as well as in Chechnya, the Caucuses and Central Asia, with hundreds of thousands innocent civilians killed and millions displaced. Again, it was the Commission which helped keep these tragedies on the U.S. foreign policy agenda, holding hearings, visiting war zones and advocating an appropriately active and decisive U.S. response. In the face of such serious matters, too many sought to blame history and even democracy, equated victim with aggressor and fecklessly abandoned the principles upon which Helsinki was based. Again the Commission, on a bipartisan basis in dialogue with different Administrations, took strong issue with such an approach. Moreover, with our distinguished colleague, Christopher Smith of New Jersey, taking his turn as Chairman during these tragic times, the Commission took on a new emphasis in seeking justice for victims, providing much needed humanitarian relief and supporting democratic movements in places like Serbia for the sake of long-term stability and the future of the people living there.   In this new decade, Mr. Speaker, the Commission has remained actively engaged on the issues of the time. Corruption and organized crime, trafficking of women and children into sexual slavery, new attacks on religious liberty and discrimination in society, particularly against Romani populations in Europe, present new challenges. Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, the latest Commission Chairman, has kept the Commission current and relevant. In addition, there continue to be serious problem areas or widespread or systemic violations of OSCE standards in countries of the Balkans, Central Asia and the Caucuses, or reversals of the democratization process as in Belarus. The Commission was born in the Cold War, but its true mission--the struggle for human rights, democratic government and the rule of law--remains as important now as it was then. It remains an essential element for true security and stability in the world, as well as, to paraphrase Helsinki, for the free and full development of the individual person, from whose inherent dignity human rights ultimately derive.   To conclude, Mr. Speaker, I wish to erase any illusion I have given in my praise for the Helsinki Commission on its first quarter of a century that it had single-handedly vanquished the Soviet empire or stopped the genocidal policies of Slobodan Milosevic. No, this did not occur, and our own efforts pale in comparison to the courage and risk-taking of human rights activists in the countries concerned. But I would assert, Mr. Speaker, that the wheels of progress turn through the interaction of numerous cogs, and the Commission has been one of those cogs, maybe with some extra grease. The Commission certainly was the vehicle through which the United States Government was able to bring the will of the American people for morality and human rights into European diplomacy. To those who were in the Soviet gulag, or in Ceausescu's Romania as a recent acquaintance there relayed to me with much emotion, the fact that some Americans and others were out there, speaking on their behalf, gave them the will to survive those dark days, and to continue the struggle for freedom. Many of those voices were emanating in the non-governmental community, groups like Amnesty International, Freedom House and Human Rights Watch. Through the Helsinki Commission, the voice of the United States Congress was heard as well, and I know that all of my colleagues who have been on the Commission or worked with it are enormously proud of that fact.

Mr. President, May 12th marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of one of the most significant human rights groups of the 20th century, the Moscow Group to Monitor Implementation of the Helsinki Final Act. On August 1, 1975, the United States, Canada, and thirty-three nations of Europe, including the Soviet Union, signed the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Helsinki Final Act. Among the agreement's provisions was a section devoted to respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. The Soviet government viewing the document as a great foreign policy victory published the text, in its entirety, in “Pravda,” the Communist Party's widely circulated newspaper. That move proved to be decisive for the cause of human rights in the Soviet Union. A small group of human rights activists in Moscow, led by Professor Yuri Orlov, read the Helsinki Accords carefully and decided to take their government at its word. On May 12, 1976, at a press conference initiated by Dr. Andrei Sakharov, the group announced the creation of the “Moscow Group for Assistance in Implementation of Helsinki Agreements,” soon to be known simply as the Moscow Helsinki Group.   Needless to say, the Soviet authorities were not pleased that a group of private citizens would publicize their government's deplorable human rights record. The KGB swept down on the Moscow Helsinki Group and made its work almost impossible. Members were imprisoned, sent to “internal exile,” expelled from the country, slandered as foreign agents, and harassed. Despite considerable hardship and risks, members of the group persisted and their work served to inspire others to speak out in defense of human rights. Soon similar groups sprang up elsewhere in the Soviet Union dedicated to seeking implementation of the Helsinki Final Act. By 1982, the three remaining members at liberty in Moscow were forced to suspend their public activities.   Eventually, domestic and international pressure began to bear fruit and helped usher in dramatic changes under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Political prisoners and prisoners of conscience began to be freed and longstanding human rights cases were resolved. In 1989, the Moscow Helsinki Group was reestablished by former political prisoners and human rights activists. In 1996, President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree formally recognizing the contribution of the Moscow Helsinki Group in the campaign to promote respect for human rights in Russia. Mr. President, ten years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Moscow Helsinki Group continues to promote human rights and fundamental freedoms in the Russian Federation. Working with a network of human rights centers throughout the country, the Moscow Group provides a wide range of assistance to Russian citizens and residents seeking information about human rights. As Chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation, I congratulate the Moscow Helsinki Group on its 25th anniversary and wish its members the best in their continued endeavors. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.