§ Mr. Marlowasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will list the names of the Soviet dissidents whose cases his Department has raised with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics' authorities in the past 12 months; and how many of them are Jewish.
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§ Mr. RentonThe following human rights cases were raised with the Soviet authorities at both official and ministerial level in the course of 1985:
- Dr. Andrei Sakharov (and Mrs. Bonner Sakharov)
- Anatoly Shcharansky
- Yuri Orlov
- Iosif Begun
- Nikolai Baturin
- Vladimir Gershuni
- Father Gleb Yakunin
- Dr. Anatoly Koryagin
- Raoul Wallenberg
- Oksana Meshko
- Mart Niklus
- Ida Nudel
- Irina Ratushinskaya
- Roald Zelichenok
A number of these cases were raised in the margins of the CSCE Ottawa experts' meeting on human rights. Five of the individuals are Soviet Jews.
§ Mr. Marlowasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what criteria he uses in deciding to make representations to the Soviet Government with regard to individual Soviet dissidents.
§ Mr. RentonIt is not possible in contacts with the Soviet leadership to raise more than a few of the many hundreds of individual cases brought to out attention. Those we do raise are chosen both because they are compelling in themselves, and to indicate our concern about various categories of human rights abuse and in some cases, persecution of particular national and religious groups. In making any selection we also give weight to representations from hon. Members and from the general public.