ABSTRACT: Marco Pannella is conducting a hunger and thirst strike in Spain for the release from prison of conscientious objectors and the legal recognition of the rights of conscientious objectors. Seventeen Spanish objectors are also participating in the hunger strike.

Numerous prominent democratic figures subscribe to an appeal to the King, the Government, and the Constituent Assembly to acquiesce to Marco Pannella's request for a "sign, an act of good will" in favour of the incarcerated conscientious objectors. On the same day Marco Pannella has a conversation with the highest government authority after the king, the President of the Cortes, Hernandez Gil, who commits himself to putting the question in the hands of the government.

(Marco Pannella will end his hunger and thirst strike on October 2, 1977, on the day the Spanish military authorities decide to release a Basque conscientious objector held in the Bilbao prison.)

(Notizie Radicali of September 24, 1977)

Appeal of Democrats to the King, the Government, the Constituent Assembly and the Spanish Authorities

At this moment an Italian deputy is risking his life with a hunger and thirst strike for the same universal principles of respect for the individual conscience and the affirmation of human rights for which he has already run the same risk in his native country.

As a pacifist he does not ask or demand for the violation of those laws for which military offenders are still deprived of the right to defence and conscientious objectors are condemned to long years of imprisonment, even if these laws are in conflict with the Convention on Human Rights and thus represent a serious contradictory factor with regard to the process of democratisation which has begun in the new Spain and which all democrats look to with joy, friendship and hope.

He only asks for a sign, an act of good will that can be taken as a sign for the future, that future in which Spain will finally become part of the European community of democratic peoples, that it should become part above all because of respect for the inviolable rights of conscience.

We turn to the authorities of democratic Spain, to its King, its government, its Constituent Assembly, to the military authorities themselves, in joining our request to Marco Pannella's too, so that a generous sign of collaboration and solidarity may not end in the tragic sacrifice of a human life.

Ignazio Silone, writer; Giovanni Franzoni, of the St. Paul Community; Ernesto Balducci, founder of "Testimonianze"; Mons. Luigi Bettazzi, Bishop of Ivrea and President of PAX CHRISTI, Arthur Villard, Swiss Socialist Deputy; Alberto Moravia and Carlo Cassola, writers; José Diez Alegria, Spanish theologian; Gilles Martinet, of the French Socialist party; Rafael Alberti, poet; Simone de Beaver, writer; Roland Barthes, philosopher; Felix Guattari, philosopher; Carlos Barral, Spanish publisher; Juan Antonio Bardem, Spanish director; Francisco Rabal, actor; Camilla Cederna, Italian journalist; Loris Fortuna, Italian Socialist deputy and president of the Industry Commission; Giacomo Mancini, Italian Socialist deputy; Agostino Viviani, Italian Socialist senator and president of the Justice Commission; Vincenzo Balsamo, Socialist whip in the Italian Chamber of Deputies; Aldo Bozzi, president of the Liberal group in the Italian Chamber of Deputies; Cesare Terranova, Italian deputy of the mixed group; Gianmatteo Matteo

tti, Italian Social Democratic deputy.