WEEKLY UPDATE BASQUE INFORMATION CENTRE, WEEK 19, 25 May until 2 June
  • For the first time since 1977 there were elections (at the 25th of May) in the Basque Country were not every party was allowed to participate. Batasuna, AuB and several hundreds of local election platforms were excluded of participation. AuB and the local platforms participated however with self-made and self printed ballot-papers. The hunt by Spanish authorities for these papers was very intense in the days before the elections. Election meetings were closed down with violence and in some cases candidates were arrested. On the day of the election people protested in bigger and smaller demonstrations at the voting-stations against the exclusion of AuB and some people appeared with tape on their mouths.

    Because the Spanish authorities would declare the votes for AuB unvalid, it was expected that a lot of people, traditionally voting for the left independentists, would choose for another Basque nationalist party to prevent the Spanish parties Partido Popular and PSOE of becoming the biggest party. Despite all that, we can see that a big amount of the voters used the AuB ballot-papers and even became the biggest in some villages. In the whole of the Southern Basque Country AuB became the fourth biggest party. In the counting of the votes by the Spanish interior ministry the votes for AuB were declared non-valid. Therefore 3.500 independent observateurs (from a.o. South- Africa, Ireland, Scotland, Italy) counted the votes for AuB separately, what will be important for the European Court to challenge the outlawing of AuB.

    Results in the four Spanish-Basque provinces:

    Total votes: 1.583.483

    1.  PNV/EA:    514.145
    2.  PSOE:    313.373
    3.  PP:    312.325
    4.  AuB:    168.431
    5.  IU:    111.870
    6.  Aralar:    31.253

    We point out that the parties who are promoting the right on self- determination for the Basque people won again the majority of the votes. PNV/EA, AuB, IU and Aralar won together 825.699 votes, and the promoters of The Spanish Constitution, as it is, the PP and the PSOE, won 625.698 votes. PNV/EA has now 1.373 councillors, AuB 579, the PP/UPN 534 and the PP/PSOE 514. The IU has now 106 councillors.

    Despite the press-statements BIC spread at the day of the elections and the day after, the Dutch newspapers didn’t, as expected, pay much attention to the events in the Basque Country and focussed on the position of prime minister Aznar. These elections were widely seen as a test for his popularity, and the press ignored one of the most interesting and biggest civil disobedience actions from the last years in Europe. Attention for the events in the Basque Country was limited to sentences as “In the Basque Country, where ETA-linked parties were excluded from elections, elections went quietly” (Daily Trouw) and “In the Basque Country the aggressive attitude from Aznar provided a spectacular win of the moderate Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) who gained a lot of votes from the outlawed wing of ETA, Batasuna” (Telegraaf). By the free daily Metro, the Spanish elections were even totally ignored, while free daily Sp!ts only reported about the electoral battle between the PP and the PSOE. The daily AD explains the small losses of Aznar as: “…probably has to do with the widely agreeing by the Spanish population with the hard line Aznar follows with the Basque independent movement.” The daily Volkskrant gives attention to the invalid votes on AuB and gives word to a “an anonymous spokesman of the outlawed party” who explains that “more then 100.000 Basques voted blank showed that they would continue the support for the radicals.” In the daily NRC, where they have relatively much attention for the Basque Country, this time only an analyses of the PP/PSOE balance of power. Not a word about the remarkable elections in the Basque Country. But some days for the elections the editorial of the NRC declared that the outlawing of AuB was a blessing for democracy. So in the Basque Country everything is settled, why give that attention anymore?

    A very sad outcome, the reporting in the Dutch press. No analyses of the outlawing, no attention for the terror of the Guardia Civil and the Ertzaintza, no attention for the thousands of people who were spreading illegal ballot-papers, people being arrested for the possession of those papers… Daily Trouw reports two days after the elections about the winning of PNV and the, for the reporter, surprising high support for AuB, however Trouw reports the figure of 120.000. In the article furthermore some irrelevant information about a non-exploded Molotov-cocktail and the broken-winged terrormovement ETA.

    At 31 cities and villages there have to be new elections in November, while the only candidates there were excluded. In 13 councils the AuB became the biggest and in Hernani, Pasaia, Oyarzun and Usurbil the ‘winners’ (PNV/EA) won less votes then the AuB. The PNV won some major-seats in some cities, which looked a bit strange with percentages as high as between the 20 and 25 percent.

  • At the 23rd of May Juan Manuel Soares Gamboa, as ETA- leader convicted for more than 2.000 year in prison, because of renouncing ETA and his activities and collaborating with the Guardia Civil, the 3rd grade regime, which means he only has to spent the nights from Monday until Thursday behind prison-walls.

  • By José Inazio Giokoetxea, Basque political prisoner at Bonxe, cancer in the rectum is diagnosed. However he lost blood since December and suffered pain, only two weeks ago it was discovered that it was cancer. Giokoetxea will be operated within days. The prisonhulporganisation Etxerat has asked for his temporarily release.

  • At the 24th of May the scientific organisation Aranzadi, who traces down anonymous (mass) graves from the era of the Franco-dictatorship, reports that they identified 116 bodies of people who were executed after the 1936 coup. It is probably one of the biggest mass graves in the Basque Country.

  • In the quarter Errotxapea at Iruñea the Basque political prisoner Juan Mari Etxabarri is at the 27th of May allowed to come to the funeral of his father. On the street Etxabarri is cheered and welcomed with a round of applause, in the church he gets a standing ovation. After the service, when a friend wanted to greet him close by, the police shot a rubber bullet at him.

  • In different villages in the Basque province of Lapurdi, in France, 5 youths, Haritza Galarraga, Yves Machiote, Sébastian Pinaqui, Frédéric Carricart and Johanko Eliciets, are rounded up at the 27th of May because they didn’t pay a fine after being convicted at the beginning of 2002. Then they were at a manifestation in Baiona and erected a street-barricade as a protest against the outlawing by Judge Garzón of the Basque youth-organisation Segi. Now three of them have to spent 45 days in jail (the fine was in between 720 and 1.080 Euro) and the other two 30 days. In Baiona was immediately a protest against the arrests and the French minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who comes to visit the Basque Country soon, was held responsible.

  • In an interview with Koldo Gorostiaga, representative of Batasuna in the European Parliament, it becomes clear how hypocritical the EP is dealing with the Spanish-Basque conflict: “The outlawing of parties and organisations are not debated in the EP, people only wake up as there has been an attack of ETA and people are condemning that without analysing the roots of the conflict. (…) “I’m a member of a party which is on the ‘terrorlist’ of the US and Spain, but I represent 307.000 people who voted me in the EP in 1999. (…) “As long as Spain is blocking all initiatives to debate the conflict with a veto, nothing will happen. 32 Euro parliamentarians wanted an urgent debate about the outlawing of AuB, but in two months nothing has happened,“ Gorostiaga is telling about the working at the EP.

  • At the 28th of May France extradites Fermintxo Sánchez to Spain. Sánchez was arrested in 1995 in Bretagne and found guilty for ‘forming an armed gang’, did his time in France and should have been released yesterday, but Sánchez knew what was coming and started a hunger-strike 41 days ago against his extradition (without a extradition-request of Spain). 23 kilos lighter Sánchez was flown to the prison-hospital in Madrid, where he first had to be patched up for his first interrogation. He was not allowed to see his lawyer and he got a new indictment, ‘cooperation with an armed gang’.

  • In the prison of Valdemoro in Madrid Jesus Mari Etxeberria and Iñaki Bilbao are at the first of June in hunger strike for 38 and 37 days, and since the 8th of April they refuse to leave their cells. Gotzon Aranburu is also since the 24th of April at hunger strike. They protest against their isolation detention, for their rights as a prisoner and against the beating up of Etxeberria. Other prisoners also protest, with various means; 18 of them refuse to leave their cells. Conversations by relatives with the prison- director, Amnesty International and the Spanish Ombudsman didn’t solve anything.

  • In Bilbao Amnesty International presented their annual report about the Spanish State and complains about the rise of amounts of complaints about torture, from especially youngsters (the examples of Unai Romano www.behatokia.info/modules.php?op=modload&name=Downlo ads&file=index&req=getit&lid=126) and Iratxe Sorzabal www.behatokia.info/modules.php?op=modload&name=Downloads&file=index&req=getit&lid=124http://web.amnesty.org/report2003/Esp-summary-eng

  • The chairman of the Basque parliament, Atutxa, refuses to carry out the order of the Spanish High Court to remove the parliamentarians of Sozialista Abertzaleak from the parliament. He is right, because the Spanish law has nothing to say about the Basque parliament. According to Atutxa is Sozialista Abertzaleak not a party but a group. “The nationalistic resistance against the order of the High Court will lead to the biggest crisis in the history of Basque self-government” and “The law foresees in a prosecution for disobedience of the members of the Basque parliament if they keep refusing to carry out the order, but it will lead to a bitter paradox when this will happen,” comment the newspapers El Diario Vasco and El Correro Español.

  • At the 30th of May two members of the Spanish police in the town of Sangüesa in Naffaroa die when a bomb under their car explodes, a third policeman loses both legs and a bystander is wounded. The bomb was put under the car at the moment the policeman when carrying out an identity-check. The Spanish police suspects that the bomb-attack was carried out by the same ETA-commando who killed a policeman in Leitza at the 24th of September last year. The attack could be a reaction of ETA at the new law approved by the Spanish parliament a day earlier, which foresees in heavier punishment from 30 to 40 years for convicted Basque political prisoners. The law gives the possibility to get a lighter sentence after 35 year if ETA is renounced and if the victims or relatives are compensated. Following a course on paper at the Basque University for Basque political prisoners is also forbidden in that law. For the rest the Spanish police suspect that ETA-members stole 370 guns from a Portuguese lorry.

  • And for your agenda:

    At the 7th of June at the anarchist land days in Appelscha, the Netherlands http://www.pinksterlanddagen.nl/programma2003.html#Anarchistisch%20Regionalisme there will be three workshops about the possibility for the leftwing movement to support the left movements for independence from an anarchist perspective. The workshop will be about Bretagne, the Basque Country and anarchist regionalism.

    At the 14th of June there is a solidarity concert in Brussels for Nunca Mais, an organisation founded in Galicia after the disaster with the oil tanker Prestige www.nuncamais-europa.org and a big musical European demonstration. At the concert Jarabanzo Negro, Uxia Senlle, Manu Chao and Fermin Muguruza will perform. More info in French at http://www.muziekpublique.be/html/Calendar/cf20030614.html.

    At the 15th of June at two ‘o’ clock there is a demonstration in Amsterdam against the extradition and for the release of Juanra. More info at www.freejuanra.org/nl/03-06-15.html
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