A joint resolution designating "Baltic Freedom Day".
PL 99-329 (S.J.Res.271), enacted 05/28/1986

PUBLIC LAW 99-329—MAY 28, 1986 
100 STAT. 507 
Public Law 99-329 
99th Congress 
Joint Resolution 
Designating "Baltic Freedom Day". 
Whereas the people of the Baltic Republics of Lithuania, Latvia, and 
Estonia have cherished the principles of religious and political 
freedom and independence; 
Whereas the Baltic Republics have existed £is independent, sov-
ereign nations belonging to and fully recognized by the League of 
Nations; 
Whereas the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) in collu-
sion with Nazi-Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 
which allowed the U.S.S.R. in 1940 to illegally seize and occupy 
the Baltic States and by force incorporated them against their 
national will and contrary to their desire for independence and 
sovereignty into the U.S.S.R.; 
Whereas due to Soviet and Nazi tyranny, by the end of World 
War II, the Baltic nations had lost 20 per centum of their total 
population; 
Whereas the people of the Baltic Republics have individual and 
separate cultures, national traditions, and languages distinctively 
foreign to those of Russia; 
Whereas the U.S.S.R. since 1940 has systematically implemented its 
Baltic genocide by deporting native Baltic peoples from their 
homelands to forced labor and concentration camps in Siberia and 
elsewhere, and by relocating masses of Russians to the Baltic 
Republics, thus threatening the Baltic cultures with extinction 
through russification; 
Whereas the U.S.S.R. has imposed upon the captive people of the 
Baltic Republics an oppressive political system which has de-
stroyed every vestige of democracy, civil liberties, and religious 
freedom; 
Whereas the people of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia find them-
selves today subjugated by the U.S.S.R., locked into a union they 
deplore, denied basic human rights, and persecuted for daring to 
protest; 
Whereas the U.S.S.R. refuses to abide by the Helsinki accords which 
the U.S.S.R. voluntarily signed; 
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; 
Whereas the U.S.S.R. has steadfastly refused to return to the people 
of the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia 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; and 
May 28, 1986 
[S.J. Res. 271] 
100 STAT. 508 
PUBLIC LAW 99-329—MAY 28, 1986 
Whereas 1986 marks the forty-sixth anniversary of the United 
States continued policy of nonrecognition of the illegal forcible 
occupation of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia by the U.S.S.R.: 
Now, therefore, be it 
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United 
States of America in Congress assembled. That— 
(1) the Congress recognizes the continuing desire and the 
right of the people of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia for freedom 
and independence from the domination of the U.S.S.R.; 
(2) the Congress deplores the refusal of the U.S.S.R. to recog-
^ nize the sovereignty of the Baltic Republics and to yield to their 
rightful demands for independence from foreign domination 
and oppression; 
(3) the Congress reaffirms the indictment against the U.S.S.R. 
of the Copenhagen Manifesto signed by the Baltic Tribunal on 
July 26, 1985, by Doctor Theodor Veiter, Reverend Michael 
Bourdeaux, Sir James Fawcett, Per Ahlmark, and Jean Marie 
Daillet; 
(4) the fourteenth day of June 1986, the anniversary of the 
mass deportation of Baltic peoples from their homelands in 
1941, be designated "Baltic Freedom Day" as a symbol of the 
solidarity of the American people with the aspirations of the 
enslaved Baltic people; and 
(5) the President of the United States be authorized and 
requested to issue a proclamation for the observance of Baltic 
Freedom Day with appropriate ceremonies and activities and to 
submit the issue of the Baltic Republics to the United Nations 
so that the issue of Baltic self-determination will be brought to 
the attention of the United Nations General Assembly. 
Approved May 28, 1986. 
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY—S.J. Res. 271: 
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, Vol. 132 (1986): 
Feb. 27, considered and passed Senate. 
May 15, considered and passed House.