19/02/2001

Declaration of Nikolay Khramov, Russian coordinator of the Radical Party:

"For us the 23th of February is not the Day of Defender of Fatherland, it would be more apropriate to mark it on June 22 or May 9. The 23th of February is the Day of Soviet army. The same army that drowned in blood the Hungarian revolt of 1956, that crushed with tanks the freedom of Checoslovakia in August of 1968, the same army that on February 23, 1944 within one night evicted hundreds of thousands of Chechens and Ingushes from their houses and sent them to the Kazakhstan exile which made the Chechen people to remember this day as the Day of genocide. The same army that today, more than half a century after the genocide of 1944, is again doing the same things in Chechnya under the red flag that the colonel Putin rightly returned to it.

For these reasons we decided to carry out our antiwar, antimilitarist manifestation on February 23, the Day of Soviet army, the Day of genocide of the Chechens, together with the people of Chechnya, together with the French "Committee for the defence of Chechnya" and other European antiwar initiatives.

For these reasons we organize it on February 23, and not the day before, February 22, as, oddly enough, some human rights activists from the group "Common Action" decided.

On February 23, at 6 p.m. we will light our candles at Pushkin square to remember all those who were killed by the regime and who are being killed today.

Our demands are very simple:

* to stop the Chechen war

* to begin immmediate negotiations between the president Putin and the president Maskhadov

* no - to the militarism

* to abolish the conscription slavery

At six o'clock in the evening, in order to stop the war and crimes. In order not to be ashamed for silent complicity".