July 2009

- Strasbourg’s judgement supports political apartheid.
- Basque activists still at risk of extradition.
- More arrests in France.
- European election votes still missing

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NEWS :


-Strasbourg’s judgement supports political apartheid.

The European Court of Human Rights, based in Strasbourg, has made a judgement related to the Spanish "Law on Political Parties". In the judgement the Court supported the bannings of pro-independence political parties in the Basque Country.

In a press conference pro-independence spokesperson Arnaldo Otegi said that the judgement does not contribute in any way to the political settlement of the Basque conflict, but just the opposite. Otegi continued: “We believe that it is a clear step backwards for fundamental rights and freedoms in the European framework which can affect other progressive organisations in the future if they raise questions about the legal framework of the states in which they act.”

According to Otegi the Court has accepted the reasoning and arguments initiated by the former government of Mr. Aznar's Popular Party, with the consent of the PSOE, aimed at preventing solutions in the Basque Country and to put in place a situation of permanent confrontation.

Otegi recalled that the "Law on Political Parties" - which was created ad hoc in order to ban Batasuna (and later on other political organisations supported by or related to the Basque pro-independence left) - came into being under the cover of the antiterrorist offensive initiated by the Bush Government. That war against “terrorism” permitted clear violations and restrictions of fundamental rights.

It is surprising that the Spanish conservative PP, which still has not condemned the dictatorship of Franco, and the Spanish Labour Party, which organised acts of State terrorism while in government in the past, are the ones who are pleased about the judgement.

The pro-independence left reasserts before the European community that there is no other way of settling the Basque conflict apart from inclusive dialogue and political negotiation, in a situation of non-violence and goodwill, leading to an agreement that recognises the democratic right of Basque citizens to decide on their own future, just as the European citizens of Ireland, Scotland, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Flanders or other countries.



-Basque activists still at risk of extradition.

Last week a hearing on the case of Basque political refugee Inaki Etxeberria was held in Caracas, Venezuela. The prosecution was in favour of dropping the case. The solidarity campaign denounced pressures from the Spanish authorities to get Inaki extradited. He’s still in jail awaiting the court’s decision.

The judge in the case of Belfast-based Basque activist Arturo “Benat” Villanueva decided last Friday to set the 25th of September as the date for the hearing on the extradition case. The hearing of Belfast-based Basque activist Inaki de Juana will also be held in September.


-More arrests in France.

Three alleged ETA members were arrested in the southern French region of Bearn last Saturday. According to the French police they seized guns, money, false ID’s and material to build weapons dumps in their car.

The other two alleged ETA members arrested last week after a road accident they had are still in hospital. Their injuries are not life threatening. Despite their condition, one of them, 20-year-old woman Oihana Mardaras, was taken in for questioning. She told her solicitors afterwards that she had been ill-treated by the French police.

-European election votes still missing

As we previously reported, the left wing pro-self-determination right platform Internationalist Iniciative (II) was subjected to a brutal criminalization campaign by the Spanish media and authorities during the last European elections. The attacks didn’t stop there. During the day of the elections there were numerous abnormalities such as lack of II ballots in the poll stations. Many more irregularities arose in the following days.

For the past ten days II members and solicitors have been denouncing these abnormalities and a campaign has been launched to expose the truth about the results. In the three western Basque provinces 1,800 votes have been recovered in favour of the platform after new vote counts. These new results have raised more suspicion about what really happened in the entire Spanish state. In Barcelona for example, the II representatives weren’t allowed to be present at the new vote count and the same happened in many other places. The counts, by law, are supposed to be public and accountable.

Surprisingly, the blank and no valid votes increased by 300% when there were 1 million less voters than at previous European elections. If we add to that the lack of transparency and explanations from the Spanish authorities, the extrangely poor results in traditionally strong pro-independence places, the systematic destruction of the invalid votes...we can understand why the II candidate Doris Benegas said that this situation shows the lack of democratic protections and standards in the Spanish state.

Iniciativa Internacionalista and the Cynisism of Spanish Judges

We have been experiencing the proscription of all pro-independence political parties and many years of repressive policies agaisnt social movements in the Basque Country for a long time. After all these years, a new initiative, Internationalist Initiatiative, has been allowed to take part in this European Elections by the Constitutional Tribunal. Basque newspaper Gara provides some interesting views about the cynicism of the behaviour of the Spanish Judiciary.



2009/05/23

Cynicism as a legal doctrine

The positive consequences from a democratic point of view that comes from the new ruling by the Spanish Constitutional Tribunal - the possibility that Internationalist Initiative (II-SP) can be presented to the European Parliament elections and those who support their ideology and/or programme can legally vote for that option - can not disguise the cynicism that characterised this decision. The defence of "political pluralism" and the discourse of legitimacy of an abstract pro-independentist left coming from a the very same judges that have endorsed the banning of hundreds of candidates with “laughable” evidence and based on fascist concepts such as the “contamination of candidates”, are either an act of deep judicial revocation or a little trick to save the credibility of the Spanish legal system in front of international bodies.

Despite guaranteeing rhetoric of this ruling, there is no indication that a structural change of this dimension has taken place. Also, the threatening tone that the Spanish Executive maintained yesterday, which should first explain its position and then accept the political consequences of the political pressure that it has enforce on the courts, does not show any signs of remorse, far from it.

The Political Parties Act violates from the onset one of the pillars of law, that is, not to produce ad hoc legislation or to create laws that apply solely to a particular group or a single manifestation of a phenomenon and by definition not applicable to others. The verdict, paradoxically, shows how this law is aimed only at outlawing the Basque pro-independence left movement as a tradition and political expression. And there can be found a political miscalculation, even anthropological one could say, of their promoters. It was designed with the perspective that the outlawing of Batasuna would be the final push into hiding for the Basque pro-independence left . But this idea just shows a profound ignorance of the Basque situation. From this ignorance, the Spanish courts have had to enforce their own doctrine. A doctrine based on political cynicism, not the law.