MAY 15 - EUROPEAN CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS' DAY: MANIFESTATION OF THE RADICAL PARTY AND ARA IN FRONT OF THE RUSSIAN STATE DUMA, WHERE THE CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION BILL IS BEING EXAMINED ALREADY FOR MORE THAN FOUR YEARS

Moscow, May 12, 1998 -- May 15 is being celebrated in many countries as European Conscientious Objectors' Day. Today in almost all the European countries - where of course the very conscription is not yet abolished - the rights of conscientious objectors are guaranteed and defended by law.

Perhaps the only tragic exception is Turkey, where conscientious objectors are founding themselves in prison, as it happened with Osman Murat Ulke, who has been sentenced on May 4 to a new 7-months-term (of totally 38 months of his imprisonment) for the same "crime" committed one time: refusing to serve in the army on reasons of conscience.

In Russia, despite the conscientious objection right guaranteed by the Constitution (art. 59 comma 3), the State Duma already for four years seems not to be able to pass federal law on alternative civilian service. Thousands of Russian conscientious objectors find themselves in a very ambiguous situation, dispite constitutional guarantees, military authorities try to draft them into the armed forces, referring to the absence of an alternative civilian service law. Thousands of conscientious objectors' complaints against anti-constitutional actions of military authoritirs are currently being examined by Russian courts.

Some of them face even criminal prosecution under accusation of "evading military service" (art. 328 comma 1 of the Criminal Code), although Constitutional Court in its resolution of May 22, 1996 has clearly stated, that a citizen's striving to the implementation of his constitutional right and therefore refusing the military draft on reasons of conscience cannot constitute a crime provided by the art. 328. One of such criminal cases will be examined on June 3, 1998 by Tushinsky court of Moscow city against Vasilij Bazhenov.

On Friday, May 15, at 11.00 in front of the State Duma building (Ohotnyj Rjad 1), the Transnational Radical Party, an NGO registered by the UN with Category 1 consultative status, and Antimilitarist Radical Association (ARA) will organize demonstration for conscientious objectors' rights in Russia and other countries, for the soonest adoption by the State Duma of a liberal law on alternative civilian service.

Radical Party, which achieved recognition of conscientious objection right in Italy in early '70s by means of a wide nonviolent campaign, including mass-scale conscientious objection, manifestations, petition campaigns and hungerstrikes, since 1989 conducts the struggle for conscientious objectors' right in Soviet Union (later in Russia). Since 1995, together with the Antimilitarist Radical Association founded in Moscow by Russian Radicals, Radical Party sets as its goal the soonest adoption of a liberal law on alternative civilian service in Russia.

Transnational Radical Party

tel. +7-095-923.9127

http://www.radicalparty.org