NEWS

OVERVIEW EVENTS BASQUE COUNTRY NR 3, period 8th of March until 24th of March 2004

At the 9th of March a new car accident of a family member on the way to a Basque political prisoner; this year there have been already 12 heavy accidents in which 20 people were wounded. Because of the long distances (an average of 1.200 km), the bad condition of the roads and the loss of concentration by the long journey and/or emotions playing up, accidents occur and up till now already 23 people died since the Spanish and French governments the politics of dispersion introduced as an extra punishment for (Basque) political prisoners. In Rouen in France the Basque political prisoner Julen Atxurra Egurola went on hunger strike for 45 days against his isolation. He lost 27 kilos and ended his strike in the prison hospital of Fresnes. His conditions have been improved a bit and he can get visitors without being separated by a glass wall.
The prisonhelporganisation Etxerat presented the balance of 2003 concerning the situation of the prisoners and their family-members: 23 accidents, 3 deaths, 2 still fighting for their lives in hospital: Every family of the 700 prisoners pays every month 1.350, 65 euro for travel costs; In 2003 there were 438 transfers, in 70% of the cases the prisoners ended up further from home; Isolation is a daily practice in as well French as Spanish prisons. A bizarre example is that of Txuma Puy from Naffaroa. He was taken to the Staatsburg prison, where he is the only Basque prisoner. His family has to drive 1.300 km only to visit him.
The amount of complaints from the representative of the Spanish government in the Basque Country Carlos Urkijo, against Batasuna-leader Arnaldo Otegi is mounting these days. At the commemoration of the murder on 5 workers in 1976 in Gasteiz by police officers, who were ordered by the founder of the Partido Popular, honourable member of the PP and president of Galicia, Manuel Fraga, Otegi says “parties who have a murderer as president, are complicit to murder”. Urkijo files a complaint. At the 9th of March Otegi says: “Spain is an invention bases on prisons, torture and murder”. According to Urkijo this is “an attack on the state” and he wants to investigate whether Otegi’s call to not vote is a violation of the poll’s rules. When Otegi’s parliamentarian immunity is lifted, he will probably be put in jail immediately.
The International Press Institute (IPI) publishes at the 10th of March its annual report in which the closing of the only Basque daily in Basque Egunkaria is condemned. IPI criticizes in strong words the closing and says there is no evidence whatsoever linking Egunkaria as part of ETA. The full statement of IPI you can read in English at our site.
At the same day Joseba Alvarez, Arantxa Arruti, Mertxe Gomez, Eugenio Irastorza and Emilie Laplacette, representatives of the Basque left independentist movement, deliver in Geneva 25000 signatures to the High Commissioner for the Human Rights of the UN. With this gesture they want to focus attention on the systematic human right violations in the Basque Country and the lack of civil and political rights of Basque citizens.
The special researcher of the human rights of the UN, Theo van Boven, presents at the 10th of March his findings about torture and maltreatment in Spain and the Basque Country, especially of those people who are suspect of ‘terrorist crimes’. His conclusion about torture is “that this is not systematic in Spain, but the rate of occurrence is not sporadic of incidental. There is also no evidence found that complaints about torture are false.” Van Boven makes some recommendations: “The highest authorities and especially those who are responsible for public safety and the practise of law, should officially and publicly declare that torture, cruel and inhumane treatment or punishment should be forbidden under all circumstances and that information and complaints about torture should be investigated promptly and thorough.” In this pfd-file you can read the whole report in English. It is necessary to spread this document further, because the Spanish media was silence about it and the Spanish government said “the document was almost entirely bogus” and it is according to them “full of irregularities and non-proven declarations of anonymous sources”.
The 11th of March, the bombs in Madrid. The government of Aznar tries for days to blame ETA for it and manipulates the Spanish press, some foreign correspondents of European newspapers and instructs the Spanish diplomatic representatives to keep saying that ETA is the guilty one. Even Kofi Annan and the chairman of the EU are being called by Aznar or his co-workers to keep up this story, but they refuse. Slowly the truth of the manipulations is seen and a broader audience sees how the Partido Popular managed to control and manipulate the Spanish media for 8 years. The PP establishes also a new fact in the history of the UN, when for the first time in history a declaration in which ETA is blamed, has to be withdrawn and changed. In the days after the bombings and the electoral defeat seems, according to the Spanish radio station SER, who was cooperative in spreading the lies of Aznar, that the PP, in style of her big example Franco, was planning a coup in the night from Saturday on Sunday (election day), that would have lead to postponing the elections. The PP would have said that they have a video with the declaration of Al-Kaida and call for the state of emergency in which they would have kept the power. King Juan Carlos however, although appointed by Franco, didn’t want to know about is, as commander in chief of the armed forces, and rejected this plan.
In various prisons in Spain Basque political prisoners are being attacked by other prisoners on the false accusations of the Aznar government, with the guards watching from a distance. In other prisons Basque political prisoners are put in isolation, a situation where they are still weeks later.
At the 13th of March Angel Berrueta, a baker in Iruñea, is shot in his shop by a Spanish policeman because he refused to put up a poster with the text ‘ETA, ez’. The 61-year-old Berrueta was a member of Gurasoak (Parents), an organisation of family members who defend the rights of Basque youngsters who are put in prison, being tortured and are being convicted for bizarre long sentences in prison.
In Hernani the 58-year-old Kontxi Sanchez dies at the 14th of March of a heart attack, that she suffered when trying to escape the firing of rubber bullets by the Basque regional police Ertzaintza. Sanchiz took part in a demonstration against the killing the day before.
If after the elections the votes of the ‘Bergare Initiative’ (who were put illegally) are counted by observers, is seemed that 120.000 people voted for them, despite every election propaganda was banned. Significant is also that the Catalan left Republican Party ERC, from whom their leader Carod-Rovira talked in January to ETA, won, going from 1 to 8 seats.
The leader of the PSOE in Extremadura, Juan Carlos Rodriguez Ibarra, pleas just after the victory in the elections for the release of ex-Guardia Civil general Enrique Rodriguez Galindo. Galindo was one of the masterminds behind the by socialists in the eighties established death squads GAL, who killed 26 Basques. Maybe the PSOE is afraid that the GAL-suspects are going to talk about the role of people in the highest ranks of the PSOE involved in these murders? Galindo was convicted in 2000 together with 4 others to 75 years for the kidnapping and murder on the Basque youngsters Joxean Lasa and Joxi Zabala in 1983. Now Galindo gets permission from the judge to ask for his release, something normally for people who are 5 years in jail. For Basque political prisoners these rules don’t count anyhow.
At the 16th of March the Basque political refugees Rakel Garcia and Luis Moreno, both having the Belgian nationality, are arrested in Brussels. It is for the 3rd time already since 1993, when they fled to Belgium, that the Spanish authorities demand their extradition. Both times the Belgian court rejected the accusation of the Spanish justice that the two were “collaborating with the armed organisation ETA”. This accusation is according to evidence based on declarations from people made under torture by the hands of the Guardia Civil. Now the Spanish government, never to shy to try a new law, tries it with the European Extradition Order. At the 17th of March the 2 are released and on the 23rd of March the court decides to make a decision on the 30th of March. Here you can find the website [LINK www.geenuitlevering.tk] with their files and background stories. In the procedure with the European Extradition Order the politics are kept off side and decides one special court (in The Netherlands that will be the Amsterdam Court) within 30 days about the extradition.
Gurasoak, the Basque organisation of parents of juvenile Basque political prisoners, calls for a demonstration for the 27th of March in Bilbo as a protest against the “life sentences” which are feared to be handed in trials out the coming months. Youngsters, suspected of street violence in the campaign of the ‘Kale Borokka’ have to appear in court and the public prosecutor already said he would ask for 54 years in prison for some of the youngsters. The judge usually follows the public prosecutor in these political cases.
At the 19th of March Arnaldo Otegi of Batasuna says in an interview that the PP was planning a coup in the Basque Country if they would have won the elections. According to Otegi’s ‘reliable sources’ the PP would have suspended Basque autonomy, put the Basque regional police Ertzaintza under the control of the Spanish Ministry of Internal Affairs and carried out mass arrests.
At the 20th of March ETA analyses the outcome of the elections and calls on the leader of the PSOE, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to make serious steps to solve the political conflict in the Basque Country. According to ETA this won’t be easy and they again state that the only way to solve it is with dialogue without exclusion of one party.
At the same day, like in many other parts of the world, thousands of people demonstrate in the Basque Country against the occupation of Iraq. In Bilbo, Baoina, Iruñea and Donostia people show solidarity with Iraqi’s, Palestinians, Afghans, Tsjetsjens, Columbians and especially with those Madrilènes who suffer from the bombings of the 11th of March.
At the 20th of March the Baskenland Informatie Centrum organises the premiere of the movie ‘La Pelota Vasca’ about the political conflict in the Basque Country followed by a lecture of the Basque lawyer Julen Arzuaga and the Batasuna parliamentarian Joseba Alvarez. The report of the evening (only in Dutch for this time), you’ll find here. We will show the movie on other places to, please keep checking our website for dates and places.
The evidence with which Aznar tries to defend himself that he didn’t lie about the bombings in Madrid are not convincing. Earlier it appeared that the PP ordered the isolation of an Al-Kaida suspect imprisoned in Madrid and now they try to blame the Spanish intelligence service CNI of the manipulation. CNI sent a letter to the government blaming ETA. But even when all evidence during the days was pointing towards Al-Kaida, Spanish government representatives kept up till Sunday morning that ETA was to blame, or cooperation between ETA and Al-Kaida.
The debate in the Basque parliament to change the political statue in the Basque Country, the ‘plan-Ibarretxe’ started at the 22nd of March. Motions of rejection of the Partido Popular, the Basque PSOE and the Sozialista Abertzaleak were dismissed after a 6-hour debate. The IU (United Left), who are also in the Basque government, changed her motion of rejection and declared to defend their proposal for federalism through amendments. Arnaldo Otegi of the Sozialista Abertzaleak suggested that first the rules of the debate had to be established before starting, but this was also dismissed. To be continued.

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OVERVIEW EVENTS BASQUE COUNTRY NR 3, period 8th of March until 24th of March 2004
At the 9th of March a new car accident of a family member on the way to a Basque political prisoner; this year there have been already 12 heavy accidents in which 20 people were wounded. Because of the long distances (an average of 1.200 km), the bad condition of the roads and the loss of concentration by the long journey and/or emotions playing up, accidents occur and up till now already 23 people died since the Spanish and French governments the politics of dispersion introduced as an extra punishment for (Basque) political prisoners. In Rouen in France the Basque political prisoner Julen Atxurra Egurola went on hunger strike for 45 days against his isolation. He lost 27 kilos and ended his strike in the prison hospital of Fresnes. His conditions have been improved a bit and he can get visitors without being separated by a glass wall. The prisonhelporganisation Etxerat presented the balance of 2003 concerning the situation of the prisoners and their family-members: 23 accidents, 3 deaths, 2 still fighting for their lives in hospital: Every family of the 700 prisoners pays every month 1.350, 65 euro for travel costs; In 2003 there were 438 transfers, in 70% of the cases the prisoners ended up further from home; Isolation is a daily practice in as well French as Spanish prisons. A bizarre example is that of Txuma Puy from Naffaroa. He was taken to the Staatsburg prison, where he is the only Basque prisoner. His family has to drive 1.300 km only to visit him. The amount of complaints from the representative of the Spanish government in the Basque Country Carlos Urkijo, against Batasuna-leader Arnaldo Otegi is mounting these days. At the commemoration of the murder on 5 workers in 1976 in Gasteiz by police officers, who were ordered by the founder of the Partido Popular, honourable member of the PP and president of Galicia, Manuel Fraga, Otegi says “parties who have a murderer as president, are complicit to murder”. Urkijo files a complaint. At the 9th of March Otegi says: “Spain is an invention bases on prisons, torture and murder”. According to Urkijo this is “an attack on the state” and he wants to investigate whether Otegi’s call to not vote is a violation of the poll’s rules. When Otegi’s parliamentarian immunity is lifted, he will probably be put in jail immediately. The International Press Institute (IPI) publishes at the 10th of March its annual report in which the closing of the only Basque daily in Basque Egunkaria is condemned. IPI criticizes in strong words the closing and says there is no evidence whatsoever linking Egunkaria as part of ETA. The full statement of IPI you can read in English at our site. At the same day Joseba Alvarez, Arantxa Arruti, Mertxe Gomez, Eugenio Irastorza and Emilie Laplacette, representatives of the Basque left independentist movement, deliver in Geneva 25000 signatures to the High Commissioner for the Human Rights of the UN. With this gesture they want to focus attention on the systematic human right violations in the Basque Country and the lack of civil and political rights of Basque citizens. The special researcher of the human rights of the UN, Theo van Boven, presents at the 10th of March his findings about torture and maltreatment in Spain and the Basque Country, especially of those people who are suspect of ‘terrorist crimes’. His conclusion about torture is “that this is not systematic in Spain, but the rate of occurrence is not sporadic of incidental. There is also no evidence found that complaints about torture are false.” Van Boven makes some recommendations: “The highest authorities and especially those who are responsible for public safety and the practise of law, should officially and publicly declare that torture, cruel and inhumane treatment or punishment should be forbidden under all circumstances and that information and complaints about torture should be investigated promptly and thorough.” In this pfd-file you can read the whole report in English. It is necessary to spread this document further, because the Spanish media was silence about it and the Spanish government said “the document was almost entirely bogus” and it is according to them “full of irregularities and non-proven declarations of anonymous sources”. The 11th of March, the bombs in Madrid. The government of Aznar tries for days to blame ETA for it and manipulates the Spanish press, some foreign correspondents of European newspapers and instructs the Spanish diplomatic representatives to keep saying that ETA is the guilty one. Even Kofi Annan and the chairman of the EU are being called by Aznar or his co-workers to keep up this story, but they refuse. Slowly the truth of the manipulations is seen and a broader audience sees how the Partido Popular managed to control and manipulate the Spanish media for 8 years. The PP establishes also a new fact in the history of the UN, when for the first time in history a declaration in which ETA is blamed, has to be withdrawn and changed. In the days after the bombings and the electoral defeat seems, according to the Spanish radio station SER, who was cooperative in spreading the lies of Aznar, that the PP, in style of her big example Franco, was planning a coup in the night from Saturday on Sunday (election day), that would have lead to postponing the elections. The PP would have said that they have a video with the declaration of Al-Kaida and call for the state of emergency in which they would have kept the power. King Juan Carlos however, although appointed by Franco, didn’t want to know about is, as commander in chief of the armed forces, and rejected this plan. In various prisons in Spain Basque political prisoners are being attacked by other prisoners on the false accusations of the Aznar government, with the guards watching from a distance. In other prisons Basque political prisoners are put in isolation, a situation where they are still weeks later. At the 13th of March Angel Berrueta, a baker in Iruñea, is shot in his shop by a Spanish policeman because he refused to put up a poster with the text ‘ETA, ez’. The 61-year-old Berrueta was a member of Gurasoak (Parents), an organisation of family members who defend the rights of Basque youngsters who are put in prison, being tortured and are being convicted for bizarre long sentences in prison. In Hernani the 58-year-old Kontxi Sanchez dies at the 14th of March of a heart attack, that she suffered when trying to escape the firing of rubber bullets by the Basque regional police Ertzaintza. Sanchiz took part in a demonstration against the killing the day before. If after the elections the votes of the ‘Bergare Initiative’ (who were put illegally) are counted by observers, is seemed that 120.000 people voted for them, despite every election propaganda was banned. Significant is also that the Catalan left Republican Party ERC, from whom their leader Carod-Rovira talked in January to ETA, won, going from 1 to 8 seats. The leader of the PSOE in Extremadura, Juan Carlos Rodriguez Ibarra, pleas just after the victory in the elections for the release of ex-Guardia Civil general Enrique Rodriguez Galindo. Galindo was one of the masterminds behind the by socialists in the eighties established death squads GAL, who killed 26 Basques. Maybe the PSOE is afraid that the GAL-suspects are going to talk about the role of people in the highest ranks of the PSOE involved in these murders? Galindo was convicted in 2000 together with 4 others to 75 years for the kidnapping and murder on the Basque youngsters Joxean Lasa and Joxi Zabala in 1983. Now Galindo gets permission from the judge to ask for his release, something normally for people who are 5 years in jail. For Basque political prisoners these rules don’t count anyhow. At the 16th of March the Basque political refugees Rakel Garcia and Luis Moreno, both having the Belgian nationality, are arrested in Brussels. It is for the 3rd time already since 1993, when they fled to Belgium, that the Spanish authorities demand their extradition. Both times the Belgian court rejected the accusation of the Spanish justice that the two were “collaborating with the armed organisation ETA”. This accusation is according to evidence based on declarations from people made under torture by the hands of the Guardia Civil. Now the Spanish government, never to shy to try a new law, tries it with the European Extradition Order. At the 17th of March the 2 are released and on the 23rd of March the court decides to make a decision on the 30th of March. Here you can find the website [LINK www.geenuitlevering.tk] with their files and background stories. In the procedure with the European Extradition Order the politics are kept off side and decides one special court (in The Netherlands that will be the Amsterdam Court) within 30 days about the extradition. Gurasoak, the Basque organisation of parents of juvenile Basque political prisoners, calls for a demonstration for the 27th of March in Bilbo as a protest against the “life sentences” which are feared to be handed in trials out the coming months. Youngsters, suspected of street violence in the campaign of the ‘Kale Borokka’ have to appear in court and the public prosecutor already said he would ask for 54 years in prison for some of the youngsters. The judge usually follows the public prosecutor in these political cases. At the 19th of March Arnaldo Otegi of Batasuna says in an interview that the PP was planning a coup in the Basque Country if they would have won the elections. According to Otegi’s ‘reliable sources’ the PP would have suspended Basque autonomy, put the Basque regional police Ertzaintza under the control of the Spanish Ministry of Internal Affairs and carried out mass arrests. At the 20th of March ETA analyses the outcome of the elections and calls on the leader of the PSOE, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to make serious steps to solve the political conflict in the Basque Country. According to ETA this won’t be easy and they again state that the only way to solve it is with dialogue without exclusion of one party. At the same day, like in many other parts of the world, thousands of people demonstrate in the Basque Country against the occupation of Iraq. In Bilbo, Baoina, Iruñea and Donostia people show solidarity with Iraqi’s, Palestinians, Afghans, Tsjetsjens, Columbians and especially with those Madrilènes who suffer from the bombings of the 11th of March. At the 20th of March the Baskenland Informatie Centrum organises the premiere of the movie ‘La Pelota Vasca’ about the political conflict in the Basque Country followed by a lecture of the Basque lawyer Julen Arzuaga and the Batasuna parliamentarian Joseba Alvarez. The report of the evening (only in Dutch for this time), you’ll find here. We will show the movie on other places to, please keep checking our website for dates and places. The evidence with which Aznar tries to defend himself that he didn’t lie about the bombings in Madrid are not convincing. Earlier it appeared that the PP ordered the isolation of an Al-Kaida suspect imprisoned in Madrid and now they try to blame the Spanish intelligence service CNI of the manipulation. CNI sent a letter to the government blaming ETA. But even when all evidence during the days was pointing towards Al-Kaida, Spanish government representatives kept up till Sunday morning that ETA was to blame, or cooperation between ETA and Al-Kaida. The debate in the Basque parliament to change the political statue in the Basque Country, the ‘plan-Ibarretxe’ started at the 22nd of March. Motions of rejection of the Partido Popular, the Basque PSOE and the Sozialista Abertzaleak were dismissed after a 6-hour debate. The IU (United Left), who are also in the Basque government, changed her motion of rejection and declared to defend their proposal for federalism through amendments. Arnaldo Otegi of the Sozialista Abertzaleak suggested that first the rules of the debate had to be established before starting, but this was also dismissed. To be continued.
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