ABSTRACT: On 21 March, the first day of the meeting for the members of the United Nations Fifth Commission, Olivier Dupuis wrote a letter to the Diplomatic Mission in Rome to inform it of the initiative taken by the Radical Party: from the Satyagraha, which hundreds of citizens are participating in, to the Easter March to be held in Rome on April 3rd.

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Rome, 21 March 1994

Your Excellency,

For more than two years the Radical Party has been carrying out a campaign to urge the establishment of an international tribunal on war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia.

If, as we hope, the United Nations Fifth Commission during its upcoming 21-25 March session in New York passes the draft budget of the international tribunal presented by the Secretary-General, this first institution of international justice and law will finally become effectively operative.

It is an unprecedented breakthrough in the history of humanity, but also a unique opportunity to seize, so that the international community may give birth to a permanent international tribunal, an international justice institution capable of judging and punishing crimes against humanity, wherever they are committed.

It is in this context that the Radical Party has started a non-violent campaign, a Satyagraha, according to the definition of the Mahatma Gandhi. This will be organized in different initiatives, including hunger strikes, a march in the streets of Rome on Easter day and other actions of support and dialogue with the governments and the United Nations.

Regarding the first point, the decision relative to the budget of the ad hoc tribunal on the former Yugoslavia, I have personally started a hunger strike of dialogue with the president and the members of the United Nations Fifth Commission, charged with passing the budget. Several radicals will join this initiatives in the coming months, during the working session of this same Commission.

After that, we will continue the hunger strike to dialogue with the Pope, hoping that we may once again, during his Urbi et Orbi message on Easter day, support the campaign for the creation of the Permanent International Tribunal by his high moral authority and express himself on the question of a universal moratorium of capital executions.

In this same context, we would be glad to count on your adhesion or, even better, on your participation in the Easter march, that will take us from the Capitol to St.Peter's Square.

If such initiative should be of interest to you and to the country you represent, we are at your disposal to provide any other information you judge necessary.

Thanking you for your attention and apologizing for the length of the letter,

Yours sincerely,

Olivier Dupuis

(President of the Radical Party's Federal Council)

(*) 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".