Proclamation 5831 --
Baltic Freedom Day, 1988
June 14, 1988
By
the President of the United States of
America
A
Proclamation
In
June 1940, acting under the color of a secret protocol to the infamous Ribbentrop-Molotov Non-Aggression Pact signed the previous year, Soviet forces occupied the independent Baltic States
of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. These small,
democratic republics were crushed by the armies of their expansionist neighbor
and illegally incorporated into the Soviet empire. In the aftermath of the
Soviet takeover, tens of thousands of Balts were
imprisoned, deported, or killed. Their religious and cultural heritage was
denigrated and repressed. An alien political system, inimical to the ideals of
individual liberty and self-determination, was imposed upon them.
The
end of World War II saw the defeat of ambitious empire-builders in Germany and Japan, but foreign domination
of the Baltic
States
that resulted from the collusion of Hitler and Stalin remained in place. For
nearly five decades, the Soviet Union has tried in vain to
convince the Baltic peoples to accept its hegemony, but its efforts are doomed
to failure.
The
situation has improved for some Soviet human rights activists in recent months,
but Baltic men and women still suffer imprisonment, banishment, and persecution
for daring to protest the continuing suppression of their national independence
and cultures. Yet, despite the risks, they continue to speak out, to plead, and
to claim their rights to religious, cultural, and political freedom.
Our
government has never recognized the forcible incorporation of the Baltic States into the Soviet Union, and we never will. The
American people, citizens of a land conceived in liberty and dedicated to
equality under God for all, support the aspirations of
the Baltic people to regain the freedom that was theirs and to chart their own
course. To this goal we pledge anew our unswerving commitment.
By
Senate Joint Resolution 249, the Congress of the United States has authorized
and requested the President to designate June 14, 1988, as ``Baltic Freedom
Day.''
Now,
Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of
America, do hereby designate June
14, 1988,
as Baltic Freedom Day. I call upon the people of the United States to observe this day
with appropriate remembrances and ceremonies and to reaffirm their commitment
to principles of liberty and freedom for all oppressed people.
In
Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this fourteenth day of June, in
the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and of the Independence of the United States of
America the two hundred and
twelfth.
Ronald
Reagan
[Filed with the Office
of the Federal Register, 10:52 a.m., June 15, 1988]