FDCC B Rappaz....After his release

To everyone who has done so much to make this day happen,

Thank you! After 73 days of a STRICT and TOTAL hunger strike,
Bernard Rappaz has been released as of Friday, January 25, 2002.

The previous morning we were all in front of the judges at the
high court of the province to support Bernard's advocate in demanding an
immediate release. Bernard could not be present, but there were over fifty
of us to replace him facing the judge, as well as a large crowd of
journalists with spotlights, TV cameras, and flashing still-cameras. It
gave the event the sense of high political drama it so clearly deserved.

Within a day that high court decided that the local justice had no
right to keep Bernard under arrest and defy our federal government any
longer!

After his release Friday he was transferred from the prison
hospital in Geneva, where he had received a few vitamins from the doctors
for the last 3 of his 73 days hunger strike, to a civil hospital in
Bernard's town, Martigny.

I visited him in the hospital today, Sunday, and he is no longer
under police control or surveillance, just surrounded by family and
friends with no other visitors, and no interviews. When I embraced him,
with you all in my heart, I could feel all of his bones through his
muscles. After 73 days with no food whatsoever he is literally skin and
bones, but his eyes are clear and focused! His smile is strong but his
face is half of what it was before. He can speak, but like a very old man,
and he said that he needed one or two days to be back to "normal." He
still has difficulty organizing his thoughts and remembering things, but
he feels these normal brain functions are recovering quickly.

His fight has been exhausting but he is OK, and getting stronger.

His hospital room is large, like a hotel suite, and his wife
Sabine and son Dorian have been living there with him since his release
two days ago. It has been a small palace for their recovered happiness:
Mom, Dad, and baby Dorian. Sabine has refound her smile and is herself
again after the long ordeal.

Bernard has eaten some bread for the first time today, but is
not yet ready for other solid foods. Today was also a first for his son,
as Dorian had his first solid food today as well.

I gave to Bernard Rappaz the messages I received for him from you
all, and explained to him what Ben and Lionel were doing for him today in
Australia. This morning, when Ben and Lionel received word that Bernard
was free again and the hunger strike was over - they had shared the hunger
strike for 4 days in January in Nimbi - they decided not to take a plane
for their next destination, and with two aborigine friends went into the
desert to have a musical ceremony for celebrating that FREEDOM. Bernard
seemed to feel them "in spirit," and was looking like a "sun" while
thinking to their music in the Australian desert.

We talked a little about hemp politic: the Hemp International
Co-ordination H.I.C and the call for a cannabis moratorium, about
Bernard's next press conference together with the Swiss Hemp Co-ordination
and DROLEG Office (we still don't know in which town we'll be able to
organize it), and also about our next juridical and political acts.

I told Bernard that our solidarity chain of hunger strike day's by
volunteers in every country will go on and grow!

This will keep that flame that we have received from India and
Australia in the very first days of our solidarity campaign for Bernard
Rappaz: our national hemp and cannabis pioneer, arrested and accused of
being a gangster because he took a new pioneer "role" while selling
cannabis to patients with paper and medical control.

That chain for Freedom for Bernard Rappaz in Switzerland, and for
Cannabis all over the World, will offer the opportunity to inform, country
by country, about our CALL for an International and Immediate Cannabis
Moratorium, and the reasons of that call:

Taking Bernard's last judicial and-political adventure as an example, we
can show that when politicians begin to talk about drug regulation the
Court Authorities must "decrim" cannabis FIRST, otherwise honest people
like Bernard - compassion club operators in USA, growers in France,
physiotherapists in Germany, etc, - will, just like Bernard, have problems
with the last prohibitionists of their country, while discrete criminals
will prosper far from the eyes of these same prohibitionist judges!

That call for moratorium will be broadcast in a few days by
C.I.C. Co-ordination Internationale du Chanvre C.I.C in English: H.I.C
Hemp International co-ordination H.I.C.

Thanks to you all for your support or interest for Bernard's fight for free
cannabis on our Mother Earth.

Boris Ryser

www.multimania.com/fdcc