Invitation to the 38th Congress of the Transnational Radical Party 

  

 Globalise freedom and democracy

Oppressed people of the world unite! 

Brussels-Rome, 10 February 2002 

Dear friend, 


We are writing to invite you to join us on the occasion of the 38th Congress of the Transnational Radical Party, which will be held in Geneva from 4 to 7 April 2002, and to contribute to the creation of a party devoted to the globalisation of democracy and rights. 

The choice of the venue and the date of the Congress is not down to coincidence. In Geneva, many of you have joined us in the past to denounce serious violations of fundamental rights before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, whose annual session will be in progress at the same time as our Congress. 

Our aim is to make the Congress a starting point for the constitution of a transnational, cross-divisional, non-violent party that will bring together all those who are aware of the power and potential of the process of economic globalisation, and intend to further it by making it part of a process of globalisation of democracy and rights; a process that will lead to the creation of a full-fledged World Organisation of Democracies, that is to a system of binding rules that will establish the "right to democracy" as a universally recognised right of the individual. 

Our aim is to build a party capable of achieving this objective, of playing a leading role in the battles we have been fighting for many years now: for the establishment of the International Criminal Court, for the universal moratorium on executions, against all forms of prohibitionism and clericalism, for the affirmation of the freedom of scientific research, for the legalisation of drugs that are currently prohibited, and for the abolition of the practice of female genital mutilation; a party capable of organising battles that we can and must fight for a new policy based on two inter-related objectives: the survival of the planetary ecosystem and the control of the demographic explosion, the main threat to environmental, economic and political stability in vast areas of the world. 

Our aim is to build a party that can be an instrument for all the oppressed peoples of the world, by organising and promoting battles on many fronts in which we have already played a leading role together over the last few years: the war-torn Chechnya, Vietnam, where religious leaders are imprisoned and minorities oppressed, Laos, with its thieving, drug-trafficking regime and its many desaparecidos, Tibet, where the Chinese Communist regime is implementing its horrifying policy of ethnic cleansing "through dilution", the forgotten East Turkestan, the Arab world, condemned to dictatorship by our "democracies", the Falun Gong, decimated by the Chinese regime.

These fronts, old and new, apparently very different, already constitute the identity and the programme of the non-violent party of the globalisation of democracy and of the economy, of international exchange and inter-dependence, of justice and freedom. The identity of a party which is non-ideological, an instrument to organise our common battles, our hopes and our energies, to make them stronger and more effective. 

We must, in short, continue to fight against violations of the fundamental rights and liberties, where such violations take the form of dictatorship, totalitarianism and nationalism (from which much of the developed world now feels immune), or of a party system no longer accountable to the general public, which undermines and corrupts the institutions of democratic countries and societies. Together we must also manage to "trigger off" the process of construction of international organisations, institutions and jurisdictions that can guarantee the respect of the fundamental rights, and not only denounce the violation of such rights.

The Congress in Geneva is therefore also your Congress. We hope that you will honour us with your presence and your participation, perhaps also by deciding, if you believe in our objectives, to become a "share-holder" in the Transnational Radical Party. 

Yours sincerely, 

                  Olivier Dupuis                                         Danilo Quinto
                     Secretary                                                    Treasurer 
    Member of the European Parliament


PS The proceedings of the Congress are open to everybody. 

For further information contact: 

- Gianluca Eramo
Tel. +32-2-284.74.96 - Fax. +32-2-284.94.96 (geramo@europarl.eu.int) 

- Giulia Schiavoni
+32-2-284.13.80 (gschiavoni@europarl.eu.int)