Olivier Dupuis on hunger strike against the "European silence".

Brussels, 22 February 2002.

Olivier Dupuis, Secretary General of the Transnational Radical Party and Member of the European Parliament, has addressed an open letter to the President of the European Parliament, Mr Pat Cox, and to his colleagues Members of the European Parliament announcing the beginning - on Thursday February 21st at midnight -of a hunger strike on Chechnya.

In his open letter Olivier Dupuis states among other things, that:"in the face of the indifference and the cynicism that surround the genocide in progress in Chechnya, in the face above all of the failure to take action of the Council and the Commission, our protests, denouncements and requests risk becoming nothing more than alibis for our inability to convince the Council and the Commission". He highlights how "admitting that Mr. Putin is in good faith, that he really wants to enter into negotiations with the government of Mr. Maskhadov – which remains to be fully demonstrated - our policy of silence, omission, forgetfulness and cynicism would not help him to implement this policy in the face of a military lobby which is prospering as never before from the tragedy of the Chechen people".

The aims of the hunger strike is to find in some of the steps that the "Parliament should undertake without delay. Unless it prefers to disavow the ideals and principles that it claims to defend”, and Olivier Dupuis points out the more crucial ones: “it is now its duty to support the process that Mr. Putin seemed to want to launch”; It “could make a significant contribution to the resumption of the negotiations between Russia and Chechnya by inviting Mr. Maskhadov to present his proposals to our Parliament” and “It should, without further delay, invite the Member States to work for the international recognition of Chechnya”.

He furthermore highlights that “our Parliament cannot accept for much longer, without going back on its word, that silence is the only response that the Commission is able to give to our pressing and repeated demands that Commissioner Poul Nielson should visit Chechnya. By now a sense of decency alone should require the President of the Commission to hand over the Portfolio for Humanitarian Aid to another commissioner”.

The text of the open letter to Pat Cox is available on www.radicalparty.org as well as the appeal "Chechnya enough!" which can be signed online.

From a press release of the Transnational Radical Party.