The Transnational Radical Party (TRP) has read with attention the copy of the Report of the Committee on Non-Governmental Organisations (Part II) sent by means of a fax dated 11 July and attached to a letter by Madame Anifa Mezoui, Chief of the NGO Section / DESA.

According to the Letter of Madame Mezoui, the paragraphs 104 to 200 were transmitted to the TRP as forming the written reasons for the Committee's recommendation to the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to suspend TRP consultative status for a period of three years.

While the TRP understands that the report contains a summary of the proceedings of the Committee during which it considered a complaint lodged by the distinguished delegation of the Russian Federation, as well as the written and oral responses provided by the TRP and the comments of some Committee members, the TRP does not consider this to constitute the written reasons for the Committee's recommendation to ECOSOC, for no agreed grounds are given for the Committee's decision to suspend the TRP from its consultative status for three years. In accordance with paragraph 56 of ECOSOC resolution 1996/31, the TRP is entitled to respond to written reasons for a Committee decision and we therefore await receipt of such agreed reasons before submitting our response to the Committee. In the interim period, the TRP would like to make the following preliminary remarks.

The TRP respectfully wishes to submit once again that that there is no evidence of abuse of its Consultative Status and should like to take this opportunity to reiterate that it did not knowingly engage in any pattern of conduct contrary to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, as stated in paragraph 57(a) of ECOSOC resolution 1996/31. Moreover, the TRP wishes to emphasise again that it does not act, and has never acted, under the influence of proceeds received from internationally recognised criminal organisations in the sense referred to in paragraph 57(b) of ECOSOC resolution 1996/31.

As well as emphasising that it has never engaged in conduct which violates the purposes and principles of the United Nations, the TRP would like to note that paragraphs 116-120 of the abovementioned report, containing the summary of the Committee's proceedings, reveal that several Committee members considered the suspension of its Consultative Status for three years to be too harsh a punishment for its past conduct. In this regard, the TRP notes that it apologised for any remarks made by Mr. Idigov at the 56th UN Commission on Human Rights which gave offence to any UN delegation and reiterates that, by inviting him to speak at the session, it did not and does not endorse violent secessionist movements or terrorist groups.

With regard to the issue of paedophilia raised by the distinguished delegate of the Russian Federation during the questioning of the representative of the TRP, and included in paragraph 108 of the Report of the Committee on Non-Governmental organisations, the TRP should like to emphasise that it has never violated the principles contained in the Convention on the Right of the Child, nor advocated violation of those principles. Rather, since Autumn 1998, the TRP has promoted initiatives aiming at unveiling the existence of "sex rings" in various parts of Europe in different ways with a view to combating the commission and spread of paedophilia.

As stated orally, in 1998, the TRP co-hosted and organised two conferences on the issue of paedophilia: one at the European Parliament entitled "TRADE IN PEOPLE, ABDUCTIONS AND ABUSE OF CHILDREN IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS" (see annex 1), and one at the Italian Senate entitled "PAEDOPHIILA AND THE INTERNET: OLD OBSESSIONS AND NEW CRUSADES" (see annex 2). Moreover, at the 56th UN Commission on Human Rights, the TRP delivered a statement under item 13 (Right of the Child) (see annex 3). At this session of the Commission, a delegation from the TRP, which included the Hon. Oliver Dupuis, MEP, Secretary General of TRP, Marco PerDuca, TRP UN Representative, Mrs. Regina Louf, a former victim of sexual abuse and child prostitution and Douglas Deconick a Flemish Journalist, met with Ms. Ofelia Calcetas-Santos, Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitutionand child pornography, to discuss matters pertaining to the "Report on the mission of the Special Rapporteur to Belgium and the Ne

therlands on the issue of commercial sexual exploitation of children (30 November-4 December 1998)". At the meeting the delegation presented a dossier to Ms. Calcetas Santos, (see annex 4).

The TRP remains at the Committee's full disposal and hopes to receive, at the Committee's earliest convenience, the written reasons for its recommendation to ECOSOC in order to be able to respond in writing, in accordance with paragraph 56 of ECOSOC resolution 1996/31.

Annex 1

15 & 16 October 1998

"TRADE IN PEOPLE, ABDUCTIONS AND ABUSE OF CHILDREN IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS"

Organisers: The association "Breaking the Silence" in collaboration with the European Radical Alliance group of the European Parliament

Place: European Parliament, Rue Wiertz, Salle Leo 7C050 1047 Bruxelles

Simultaneous translation: Dutch, French, English and German

Participation at the seminar is free of charge.

PROGRAMME

Thursday 15 October 1998

9.00-9.30 Welcome and registration of participants

9.30-9.45 Introductory remarks by Nelly Maes, member of the Flemish Parliament and Flor Van Noppen, spokesperson for the association "Breaking the Silence"

9.45-11.00 Round Table 1:

"Testimony of victims"

Debate with:

* Anne-Marie Davies, author of book: "Out of the Shadows. Fred West's daughter tells her harrowing story of survival"

* RModerator: Mrs. Von Mielobenstein

Question & Response session

11.00-11.20 Coffee

11.20-13.00 Round Table 2:

"True or false memories. How to differentiate?"

Participation of:

* Dr. Peter Van Koppen, Head Dutch Research Center "Criminality and Justice", Guest Professor at the Law Faculty of the University of Antwerp

* Dr. Marc Reisinger, Psychiatrist

* Prof. Dr. Karel Pyck, MD, Professor of Child Psychiatry, University of Leuven

Moderator: Prof Dr. Geert Vervaeke, Professor at the Law Faculty, University of Leuven

Question & Response session

15.00-16.35 Round Table 3:

"Can the Press break the silence?"

Debate with:

* Nick Davies, Journalist of the "The Guardian" and author of the series "The most secret crime".

* Douglas Deconinck et Annemie Bult* Anne FrModerator: Mike Demulder, Journalist, radio-information service VRT

16.35-16.55 Coffee

16.55-18.30 Round Table 4:

"Power and impotence of European cooperation in police and justice affairs"

Participation of

* Jaak Vandemeulebroucke, MEP

* Prof. Dr. Lode Van Outrive, Emeritus professor, Criminologist

Experiences of:

* Freddy Troch, ex "juge d'instruction", vice-president of the Court of First Instance of Dendermonde, President of the "P" association, on a thorough insight into the police services,

* Martin Schulz, MEP, author of the report "Fight against the sexual tourism involving children (to be confirmed)

Friday, 16 october 1998

9.00-10.10 Round Table 5:

"Testimonies on trade in people and abductions"

Participation of:

* Patsy Sorensen, founder of PAYOKE, deputy burgomaster of Antwerp

* Tiny Mast, the mother of Kim and Ken

* Nelly Maes, Member of the Flemish Parliament, expert study of the pornography dossiers of the children Temse et Zandvoort.

* Anita Pintjens, Father of Nathalie

* Rita Eggermont, Mother of Inge Breughelmans

* Julia Vandenbrande, Mother of Ines Van Muylder

* Dirk Vanden Branden, Father of Liarn

10.10-10.30 Coffee

10.30-11.30 Round Table 6:

"Problems faced by aid donors"

"The difference between clinical and legal proof" by Piet De Brauwere, Police Commissioner of Oudenaarde

"Keeping awareness of the unsaid: long term responses to the abuse of children" by Sue Richardson, independent psychotherapist, Middlesbrough

11.45-12.30 Press meeting (with simultaneous translation)

14.30-16.00 Closing session of seminar

"Summary and Conclusions"

Annex 2

"PAEDOPHIILA AND THE INTERNET: OLD OBSESSIONS AND NEW CRUSADES"

The aim of the conference is to analyse and denounce the dangerous consequences on personal freedoms, on the right to privacy and on the development of new data-communication technologies of legislative and judicial initiatives conducted under the impetus of the recent open campaign - with patent falsifications of truth - in regard to paedophilia in general and the bionomial "Internet - paedophilia" in particular.

Under the pretext of prosecuting in new and "definitive" forms the ancient phenomena of sexual abuses of minors, of child pornography and prostitution which had purportedly found on the Internet the congenial and conniving occasion and instrument to spread in Italy and in the world, a political and journalistic campaign based on false premises is under way, which has already produced extremely serious violations and restrictions to personal freedoms and the right to privacy, and risks jeopardising the development of new means of communication based on the Internet.

Against this new crusade, which distorts the data relative to exploitation and other forms of sexual abuse regarding minors and demonises the Internet as an instrument liable to encourage sexual perversions, not a single voice has been raised in the vast Italian political landscape, except by the radicals and a few others, who are obviously ignored by ignored by the entire press. On the contrary, ample "national associations" have joined forces in odious, denouncing and useless legislative motions, approved in recent months, and choruses of consensus have emerged indiscriminately in papers and TV of every orientation on the occasion of debatable judicial actions or clamorous international policy operations which would bring to justice dangerous organisations of "paedophiles."

The misinformation on the dramatic problem of child abuse, the "sexophobic" obsessions which still characterise the prevailing part of Italian political culture and the unshakeable aversion to all means of communication which, like the Internet, that inevitably goes together with forms of corporative or institutionalised control, are the constituent components of this political and journalistic crusade against the new daemon of "cyber paedophilia."

To expose the very foundations of this crusade, it would suffice to refer to the data on the identity of those responsible for sexual violence against minors: according to statistics of criminal proceedings relative to such offences, 90% of the cases of sexual abuse occur in the family; 8% are committed by persons outside the family but who know the minor (often by so-called figures "of reference"); and only 2% of the cases involve persons not known to the minors. Sexual violence against minors is a reality which takes place within - and not outside or against - more traditional societal institutions (the family, the school, the parish, places of congregation, etc.).

The political, journalistic and judicial crusade under way, is therefore directed against no more than 2% of those responsible for violence against minors (the stranger who stalks little boys in front of the school), while an embarrassed, if not accessory, silence covers the true identity of the perpetrators of the absolute majority of such abuses; a silence which moreover reveals the fear of tackling other thorny sexual taboos of our society, such as for example those of incest or the sexuality of priests.

It is worth bearing in mind what, on certain occasions, even presumed episodes of incest with infants and children - which have come into the open after tragic errors of justice - have not been spared the public lynching, exactly as is happening today to so-called "cyber paedophiles." It suffices to think of the case of the father accused of raping his daughter which turned out to be afflicted by a serious illness of the rectum. It is moreover the same official data which show that in Italy, the phenomenon of sexual abuse against minors (including abuse by "strangers") is not at all on the rise and thus does not justify the campaign of political and journalistic alarm waged these last months.

It is moreover quite difficult to explain the purported relation between these episodes of violence committed in the privileged place of education of minors and the Internet.

No less mysterious is the role purportedly played by the Internet in regard to child prostitution which in our country involves for the overwhelming majority immigrant children from Eastern and African countries and which is organised through altogether traditional instruments of exploitation.

But the front on which have occurred the most serious effects against civil liberties and common sense is that of child pornography. Both houses of parliament approved, by unanimous vote, a bill intended to put a stop to the phenomenon of exploitation of child prostitution and pornography by imposing stiffer punishments, which on the other hand impinges on personal freedoms and jeopardises the development of the Internet in Italy, by imposing new, pervasive controls on this means of communication. Attack or "police" the Internet, because pornographic images are also exchanged through it makes as much sense as prohibit the telephone because mercenary encounters are arranged through it, is tantamount to -- as one of the few critics of this act, Prof. Zeno-Zencovich , has pointed out -- "Taking offence with the pavement, and demanding that its use be restricted, only because certain people who walk on them are exercising the world's oldest profession."

The legislator - who apparently has not been sufficiently told that the crime of child pornography can be committed by "any and all means," but has deemed it necessary to specify "also via cyberspace," - has failed to take into account the consideration that the possible use of the Internet for this type of activity exposes, unlike other clandestine distribution channels, a certain individuated "drag-net," similar to wire-tapping. But, according to the new provisions, even the Internet provider, who offers access to the network and makes available the server on which messages - and thus possibly pornographic material too - are exchanged, runs the risk of being liable to the penalties of the law, notwithstanding that the Rome Civil Court has ruled that those who manage such services "have no power of control or supervision on the operations carried out thereon."

The act provides the confiscation, closing, revocation of licence of those who distribute child pornography material on cyberspace too. It is a well known scenario: when a new means of communication challenges the control mechanisms of mass communication, censorship and self-censorship become topical again. No less serious is the entire investigative activity that this act puts into motion: from a police record for those who access pornographic sites or newsgroups on the Internet to interception of e-mail to ascertain that no "paedophilic" material is being exchanged, and even the simulation of "paedophile" sites by the Ministry of Internal Affairs to catch perverts. In short, it is obvious that sexual taboos and obsessions are becoming a pretext and an instrument for limiting and indeed gagging one of the most extraordinary means of communication and of freedom that humanity has invented to date.

The legislator has moreover not limited himself to going after those who exploit minors to produce pornographic material but, with Article 4, also those who "have at their disposal pornographic material produced through the sexual exploitation of persons under seventeen years of ago." Whoever is found in possession of such material is punished by imprisonment of up to three years. This is a prohibitionist simplification which can cause more harm than the crime it is intended to punish. Aberrant indeed would be the consequences of treating as criminals those who simply have a look or perhaps display "prohibited" pornographic material casually while surfing the Internet; for this would open the gates to abuse and injustice, and a new black market would be created, obviously controlled by organised crime.

And who is to decide what is pornographic and what is artistic or simply a case of exhibitionism? Will it be a crime to have pictures by Balthus or reproductions thereof? Will magistrates and police officers be authorised to search homes for "paedophile" photographs, so that parents would be constrained to burn nude photographs of their own babies?

Finally, paedophilia without inverted commas. To contest the form of this crusade against paedophile does not mean to recognise the "right" of anyone to engage in sexual relations with toddlers; it means to defend the "right" of everyone not to be judged and found guilty only on the basis of moral reprobation stirred up by one's own sexual preferences. No one seems to realise the risks of legislation which authorises all sorts of suspicion and allows all sorts of prosecution or public criminalisation against individuals who are not responsible for concrete acts but "guilty" of feelings or desires deemed - rightly or wrongly - abnormal, deviant, perverted or pathological.

On the other hand, what do we mean when we speak of paedophilia, and above all, of sexual violence against minors? To be sure, there are cases in which minors are physically or psychologically coerced to engage in sexual activities, which they would otherwise not consciously consent to. But are we certain, as Gianni Vattimo observes, that adolescents, to whom in many countries throughout the world we attribute the capacity to answer for their own actions before the courts, do not have such awareness and responsibility for their actions when it comes to sex?

In any event, in a state of law, being a paedophile, proclaiming oneself as such or even advocating the legitimacy thereof, cannot be considered a crime; paedophilia, like any other sexual preference, becomes a crime at the moment when it harms other persons.

What is certain is that criminalising paedophiles as such - as a "category" - not on the basis of their behaviour but of their "condition," ultimately cannot be tolerated, and feeds forms of social psychosis and attacks of intolerance which do not constitute a barrier to violence against minors, but a stimulus to a hunt of "plague-spreaders" - with literally devastating civil and political consequences.

Rome 27 October 1998, Sala ex Hotel Bologna, Senate of the Italian Republic

via di S. Chiara, 5

Program of the Conference

Presentations and interventions (in alphabetical order):

Barbara ALBERTI (Writer)

Marco BARBUTI (President Italian Internet Providers Association)

Massimo BORDIN (Director, Radio Radicale)

Giorgio Maria BRESSA (Psychiatrist)

Ernesto CACCAVALE (MEP)

Manlio CAMMARATA (Director,Interlex)

Cinzia CAPORALE (Bioethicist, University of Rome)

Aldo CAROTENUTO (Professor of Psychology of Personality, University of Rome)

Roberto CICCIOMESSERE (Director, AgorElena COCCIA (Attorney)

Pasquale COSTANZO (Professor of Constitutional Right, University of Genoa)

Stefano CRISPINO (President, Psychologist Association of Lazio)

Luigi DE MARCHI (Psychiatrist)

Giuseppe DE RITA (President, CNEL)

Olivier DUPUIS (Secretary, Transnational Radical Party)

Ruggero GUARINI (Journalist and Writer)

Sebastiano MAFFETTONE (Professor, Political Philosophy, University of Palermo)

Claudio MANGANELLI (Member, Authority on Privacy)

Adelmo MANNA (Professor, Criminal Law, University of Bari)

Armando MASSARENTI (Journalist, of "scienza e filosofia" - science and philosophy - cultural supplement of the daily "Il Sole 24 Ore")

Mauro MELLINI (Attorney, Former Judge of the Constitutional Court)

Piero MILIO (Senator, Lista Pannella)

Paolo NUTI (Director, MC-Link)

Anna OLIVERIO FERRARIS (Psychologist)

Angelo Maria PETRONI (Professor, Philosophy of science, University of Bologna)

Antonio PILATI (Member, Authority of Telecommunications)

Iuri Maria PRADO (Attorney)

Piero ROCCHINI (Psychiatrist)

Stefano RODOTA (President, Authority on Privacy)

Rosario SAPIENZA (Researcher, CENSIS)

Luigi SARACENI (MP, DS)

Sergio SEMINARA (Professor of Commercial Criminal Law, University of Pavia)

Vittorio SGARBI (MP, Gruppo Misto)

Vincenzo SINISCALCHI (MP, DS)

Vera SLEPOJ (President, Italian Association of Psychologists)

Marco TARADASH (MP, FI)

Vittorio ZAMBARDINO (Editor, "Repubblica Internet")

Vincenzo ZENO-ZENCOVICH (Professor of Law, University of Sassari - written presentation).

Annex 3

56th UN Commission on Human Rights: Statement delivered on Wednesday under Item 13 (Rights of the Child) by Ms. Regina LOUF

My name is Regina Louf and I speak on behalf of the Transnational Radical Party We have the right to be not believed as we talk about sexual abuse, in group and organised in Europe.

We have the right to see how the press, politicians and our justice system laughs about our testimony. How they twist our words and make our testimony ridiculous.

We have the right to see how the lawyers of the abusers are assisted by incompetent judges, burned out police officers and psychiatrists who just like to prove that children are easily lying.

We have the right to be silent and to be happy because we - the children of Europe - have food and education. The abuse and terror, neglecting and sexual abuse is hidden well behind the walls of our homes and our country.

We have the right to realise, although we have testified, our abusers can live again in our home, our street or neighbourhood. They are not punished because they are intelligent, successful adults and we are treated as children with an overdose of imagination.

We have the right to see our pornographic photographs, taken by our abusers, are published on internet, all around the world, without a proper system to punish the ones who put it there - because the governments of Europe neglect the problem.

We have the right to laugh and look normal, because otherwise the abusers torture our sister, friends or animals. If we alarm somebody, so they say, we are responsible for their torture and punishment. So we believe them, because we experienced the reality of their threats.

We have the right to suffer invisibly and isolated in a war that only exists in the Philippines - where child prostitution is wide on the open. According to our politicians and justice system child prostitution is not visible - so not existing at all.

We have the right to have no rights at all, because we have to survive under the threat of our intelligent and well adapted abusers - and if we have the courage to speak, no one helps us to protect us from our abusers.

We have the right to be not heard by the judges in a courtroom. Children have no voice at all in our justice system.

We have the right to feel guilty, because we didn't have the power to help other victims. They - from generation to generation - have no voice in the western society. Only the normal children, supported by their normal family have the chance to speak out and are shown to the world.

We have the right to be confronted with little mistakes we made, like the colour of the car we were drove by night, when we get to a sex party. If we make one mistake, the police, judges and lawyers found our testimony worthless.

We have the right to see the abusers can start all over again, how they are re-honoured or get free therapy - while we have to suffer and pay our therapy without any chance for recognition.

We have the right to be treated with no respect for ourselves, our testimony and our trauma's, just like the way our judges and politicians treat child abuse, pornography and prostitution, as non existing, wild story's. Urban legends.

These are the rights that children of sex rings get in Belgium and Europe. Sometimes we see our abusers on television, just denying the fact that they abuse children in any way.

Sometimes we see and prove our police officers even falsify our testimony to show that sex rings don't exist and survivors only want attention.

Fact : one on eight girls is sexually abused - one on ten boys is sexually abused.

I am one of them.

And even when my pimp admitted to the police his crimes against me - during the age of twelve till sixteen - one justice officer told the press in my country that I was the one to blame:

Because I had at twelve years old, almost a full grown and female body - and I was in love with the man who prostituted me.

My testimony is now used in Belgium to repress all other victims of organised child abuse.