Today in Brussels, Olivier Dupuis, former Secretary of the Transnational Radical Party and Member of the European Parliament, passed away after a long illness.
He is widely known in Chechen society, where he is treated with the deepest gratitude and respect, and his magnanimous deed is not forgotten. For the Chechen people, his passing is a bitter loss.
During the Second Russo-Chechen War, Olivier Dupuis went on a 36-day hunger strike from January 15 to February 23, 2004. This was the price he paid to convince his colleagues to recognize the forced deportation of Chechens in 1944 as genocide. And this selfless act was not in vain.
"...the deportation of the entire Chechen people to Central Asia on 23 February 1944, ordered by Stalin, constitutes an act of genocide within the meaning of the Fourth Hague Convention and the Convention on the Prevention and Repression of Crimes adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948," read Point 15 of the European Parliament resolution of 26 February 2004.
Commenting on this document 10 years later in an interview with DOSH magazine, Dupuis said: "For the first time, an official European body has recognized Stalin's mass deportation of the Chechen population as an attempt at genuine genocide, taking into account the many monstrous consequences it provoked. But this decision is also important for all Europeans, as this attempted genocide forms an integral part of the tragic history of twentieth-century Europe."
Olivier Dupuis was 68 years old. Many Chechens have proposed immortalizing his name by naming a street in Grozny after him. The decision now rests with the local authorities.
