ABSTRACT: Dupuis defends the initiative whereby Pannella (2) and other non-violent militants and himself symbolically wore a Croatian uniform and spent Christmas and New Year's Eve of 1991 in the Croatian trenches of Osijek. To him, as a radical non-violent, the refusal to wear a uniform is not motivated by ideological reasons, but by the belief in the uselessness of defending a national army. Consistently with his choices as an objector, he would instead wear the uniform of a United Nations peace army. Therefore, there is no ideal contradiction with the "exemplary" initiative of "sympathizing with the aggressed part" carried out in the former Yugoslavia.

(1994 - IL QUOTIDIANO RADICALE, 9 November 1993)

In December 1991, between Christmas and New Year's Eve, I spent a few days in the trenches around Osijek, the city of Slavonia besieged by the Serbs, to sympathize with the aggressed Croatians. I was with Marco Pannella and other radical militants.

We were wearing the Croatian uniform. The decision caused negative reactions. We were asked whether this decision wasn't contradicting our antimilitarism and professed non-violence.

We had discussed the initiative at length in Rome, with Marco Pannella. I was initially undecided. I realized the importance of the questions it would have raised. In 1985 in my country (Belgium) I served an 11-month service in prison for refusing to reach the military unit I had been assigned to to carry out my compulsory military service. I had motivated the refusal with a number of precise beliefs: I thought, in that context, that both military defense and the so-called civil alternative were incapable of confronting the true threats to peace and security, i.e. the absence of democracy in Eastern Europe and under-development in the South of the world. I had been a member of the Radical Party since 1981. I had supported the campaign on world hunger and in 1982, to promote the so-called "Survival Law" passed by my country's Parliament, I had already carried out a five-week hunger strike. In 1982 I was arrested in Prague along with three other radicals for distributing flysheets in favour of democracy, the R

ight to Life and the Life of Rights. We were kept in prison three days and then expelled from Czechoslovakia. But precisely because I am a "non-violent" radical I am not a generic "pacifist". I oppose the idea of wearing a uniform not out of religious hate or contempt for uniforms or the people who wear them. Simply, I doubt that the armies can function today as means of peace; firstly because they are "national" armies. The recent events of Eastern Europe substantiate my arguments. The countries that have replaced the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia want to assert their identity by expelling those who speak other languages or profess other religions as "foreigners". This is the aberrant philosophy of Hitler, "Ein Volk, ein Recht", which has lead to World War II: a return to barbarity.

But if tomorrow the U.N. could be endowed with its own autonomous intervention force, a transnational one, thus free from the blackmails of the various countries, aiming to "peace-keeping" or "peace-enforcing" objectives, I would not object to wearing a uniform. On the contrary, I would consider it a precise duty as a non-violent militant. I would suggest all other objectors to do the same. There is a historical and theoretical coherence between yesterday's and today's choices. For these reasons, which had already emerged in the party and within, there was no contradiction in the fact of wearing a Croatian uniform in 1991 in Osijek to sympathize with the aggressed part.

Translator's notes

(1) DUPUIS OLIVIER. (1958). Belgian conscientious objector, surrendered himself to the Belgian justice system and served an 11-month sentence in the prison of Saint Gilles. Worked at the French-speaking edition of "Radical News". Organized and participated in nonviolent and antitotalitarian demonstrations in the countries of Eastern Europe, and was for this reason expelled from Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Currently coordinates the party's activities in Rumania and Hungary. Works at the project on the "New Party".

(2) PANNELLA MARCO. Pannella Giacinto, known as Marco. (Teramo 1930). Currently President of the Radical Party's Federal Council, which he is one of the founders of. At twenty national university representative of the Liberal Party, at twenty-two President of the UGI, the union of lay university students, at twenty-three President of the UNURI, national union of Italian university students. At twenty-four he advocates, in the context of the students' movement and of the Liberal party, the foundation of the new radical party, which arises in 1954 following the confluence of prestigious intellectuals and minor democratic political groups. He is active in the party, except for a period (1960-1963) in which he is correspondent for "Il Giorno" in Paris, where he established contacts with the Algerian resistance. Back in Italy, he commits himself to the reconstruction of the radical Party, dissolved by its leadership following the advent of the centre-left. Under his indisputable leadership, the party succeeds in

promoting (and winning) relevant civil rights battles, working for the introduction of divorce, conscientious objection, important reforms of family law, etc, in Italy. He struggles for the abrogation of the Concordat between Church and State. Arrested in Sofia in 1968 as he is demonstrating in defence of Czechoslovakia, which has been invaded by Stalin. He opens the party to the newly-born homosexual organizations (FUORI), promotes the formation of the first environmentalist groups. The new radical party organizes difficult campaigns, proposing several referendums (about twenty throughout the years) for the moralization of the country and of politics, against public funds to the parties, against nuclear plants, etc., but in particular for a deep renewal of the administration of justice. Because of these battles, all carried out with strictly nonviolent methods according to the Gandhian model - but Pannella's Gandhi is neither a mystic nor an ideologue; rather, an intransigent and yet flexible politician - h

e has been through trials which he has for the most part won. As of 1976, year in which he first runs for Parliament, he is always elected at the Chamber of Deputies, twice at the Senate, twice at the European Parliament. Several times candidates and local councillor in Rome, Naples, Trieste, Catania, where he carried out exemplary and demonstrative campaigns and initiatives. Whenever necessary, he has resorted to the weapon of the hunger strike, not only in Italy but also in Europe, in particular during the major campaign against world hunger, for which he mobilized one hundred Nobel laureates and preeminent personalities in the fields of science and culture in order to obtain a radical change in the management of the funds allotted to developing countries. On 30 September 1981 he obtains at the European parliament the passage of a resolution in this sense, and after it several other similar laws in the Italian and Belgian Parliament. In January 1987 he runs for President of the European Parliament, obtaini

ng 61 votes. Currently, as the radical party has pledged to no longer compete with its own lists in national elections, he is striving for the creation of a "transnational" cross-party, in view of a federal development of the United States of Europe and with the objective of promoting civil rights throughout the world.