ABSTRACT: Text of a flysheet distributed in Rome by some African radicals to invite their co-citizens to take part in the Easter March.

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Dear African friends,

after forty years in which the single-party regimes have reigned almost everywhere, a significant number, if not the majority, of African states has taken the path of democracy.

This process has already has enormous consequences. Several countries have held their first democratic elections since their independence, and a process of separation of the powers and of the free media are taking place everywhere.

Obviously there is still much work to be done. On the one hand because many of our countries have still not been touched by this process; on the other hand because in the states where the process of democratization is under way, it remains fragile and liable to be overthrown by the huge economic difficulties, the widespread corruption and the fragmentation of our continent, which has not yet managed to start federal processes of aggregation.

While this reality is far from satisfactory, it is in any case richer in hopes than we could ever imagine four or five years ago. It is, however, a reality all of us Africans can help strengthen, even from the European countries where we live, joining the initiatives of those who are working to being about a greater democracy in the United Nations and, above all, the birth of an international justice and law that can prosecute and punish crimes against humanity wherever they are committed.

In this context, the initiative promoted by the "No peace without justice" committee, the promoter of the Easter March for the establishment of a permanent international tribunal on the model of the ad hoc tribunal for crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia, and the enactment of a universal moratorium of capital executions strike us as two fundamental objectives for Africa.

A permanent international tribunal would, in effect, make it more difficult or risky to overthrow our democracies for adventures of all sorts for the simple fact that they should be responsible for any violation of the laws they commit before this tribunal.

The suspension of capital executions everywhere in the world and therefore also in the African continent through a universal moratorium would represent a particularly significant signal, also symbolic, of the possibility for the state to interfere in citizens' lives.

For these and many other reasons, the initiative of the Easter March seems to us of primary importance. That is why we invite you to take part in it, and to invite all your friends and acquaintances that might share these objectives.

Hoping to see you Sunday 3 April at 9 o'clock at the Capitol,

Fraternally,

Jean Ghislain Moutomb (Zaire), Montgomery Uzomba Nwaogu (Nigeria)

Translator's notes:

(*) 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. He is now working on the the project on the "New Party".