We are activists of the Radical Party, activists for democracy and freedom of thought and opinion, human and civil rights. We are, above all, non-violent activists who are daily proof of their commitment to the proposition that, here and now, in our society principles and valued shall be affirmed which will otherwise be condemned to remain a dead letter, too often hypocritically paid homage to in order to be better repudiated and oppressed. In the countries of "Real Socialism", of crisis and ruin, many of us continue to pay a heavy personal price for this commitment, surrounded and forced back into a wall of silence and repression. But we also know that margination, censorship, regimentation and the denial of the right to identity and image, are phenomena not exclusive to the Real Socialist countries. With these arms and through the mass media, political adversaries, troublesome individuals and minorities are repressed, also in the West--which declares itself to be free and democratic--sacrificing t

o vested interests the collective good, which is free and complete information, the possibility to communicate and be informed of ideas and opportunity, which is the very foundation of democracy. Today, some of our colleagues began a non-violent hunger strike protest in Italy and Spain against the suffocation of information, democracy, and equal rights for all, also in the context of elections being held in those countries. Included among them are those, like Marco Pannella, who have struggled exclusively with the weapons of non-violence and tolerance, for our freedom and our rights. But is not only in the name of solidarity or recognition of brotherhood that we have today decided to demonstrate in various capitals of Eastern Europe, utilizing the non-violent action of hunger strike, so much as to affirm the justice of and the willingness to fight a common struggle. In our world and our era of mass media, characterized by a "fourth estate" the strength of which appears at times disproportionately superio

r to that of the traditional powers themselves, the dividing line between free information in the democratic countries and authoritarian information in the totalitarian regimes becomes progressively less clear. In the West as well as in the East, the rigid control of information is practiced and recognized as a decisive concentration of power and conditioning. But in the world and era of mass media, there is no greater blow to democracy than the suppression of voices, ideas, minorities: "Real Socialism" and "Real Democracy" tend to profess the same logic of exclusion of violence, in the full knowledge that the control of mass communications has by now rendered superfluous the preceding, proven methods of liquidating the opposition. Thus, we have today decided to demonstrate. And the fact that after years of non-violent protest, silence and repression in the East, there is today in the West progressively more, encourages to share our convictions; and we also state that that non-violent struggle is a commo

n one and shared for a true political democracy, free information, laws and rights equal for all--in the East as well as in Italy and Spain--countries of "Real Democracies" and a regimented and repressive "fourth estate". Thus, did we decide to demonstrate before the Italian and Spanish embassies, to participate today emblematically in their non-violent action and their fasting.