Subject: (6) from TRANSNATIONAL
X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0 -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas
X-Comment: The Transnational Radical Party List
10 April 1995
THE ELECTED ORGANS
Olivier Dupuis
Secretary
Olivier Dupuis was born in 1958 in Ath (Belgium). He graduated in Political
and Social Science at the University of Louvain, and joined the Radical
Party in 1981. He took an active part in the campaign against famine,
undertaking nonviolent actions which led to his arrest and detention in
Brussels. For the application of the so-called "Survival Law", passed by
majority vote by the Belgian parliament, in 1982 he went on a hunger strike
lasting five weeks. In the same year, he was arrested in Prague for handing
out pamphlets in support of democracy. After being kept in prison for three
days, he was expelled from the country and banned from returning for five
years.
He upheld the claim that neither military defense nor the civilian
alternative are capable of facing the real threats to peace and security
represented by the lack of democracy in Eastern Europe and the non-respect
of the right to life in the South of the world. In October 1985 he was
imprisoned for desertion and sentenced to two years in prison. After
serving 11 months, the sentence was converted into two years' service with
Food and Disarmament.
He organized the RP Congress in Budapest and subsequently took part in the
establishment of the first Radical bases in Central Europe. In December
1991, as the European Community obstinately refused to recognize the
republics of the former Yugoslavia, he went with Marco Pannella and other
Radicals to the trenches of Osijek, the besieged Slavonian city, and wore
the Croatian uniform.
In Sofia, in July 1993, he was elected President of the General Council of
the Radical Party.
