Brussels, 7 February 2004. Die Tageszeitung today published an open letter from the Radical MEP Olivier Dupuis to Joschka Fischer, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany. In the letter Dupuis, who has reached the 20th day of a hunger strike that he hopes will finally bring the European Union to address the Chechen issue with determination, draws the Foreign Minister's attention to the risk of considering only the acts of genocide of the past and not seeing those of the present. According to Dupuis, in fact, "other reconnaissance planes, or - more in keeping with our times - satellites, could take or, to be more precise, have already taken innumerable photos just as appalling and horrific; photos of Grozny, for example, of the boundless ruins of the Chechen capital."

 

After recalling the courageous views expressed by the German Foreign Minister during the Kosovo crisis, like when he "affirmed the right of intervention to halt the extermination in progress", Dupuis invites him to study the "anti-terrorist peace plan", as the philosopher André Glucksmann has defined it, presented by the government of the Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov.

 

The full text of the open letter can be found in German, English, French and Italian on the TRP website (www.radicalparty.org).