Basque Info from Belfast

-ETA supports the Pro-Independence Left’s proposals.
In a statement published last Sunday in the newspaper Gara ETA said:
“The Pro-Independence Left, the Basque People’s engine of struggle, has spoken and ETA supports its position (ETA is referring to the historical declaration by 100 high profile Pro-Independence Left activists last November in Altsasu and the grassroots debate that followed). We can’t keep waiting for the enemy, it’s time to take the lead and to act. At this time, when the enemy is striking hardest we can’t just keep resisting. We must respond showing the same leadership they try to strangle. It’s true, that rather than in resisting against repression, our strength lies in the political struggle. The enemy’s arguments are proved next to nothing when confronted with the Pro-Independence Left in the political debate”.
ETA highlights in its statement that the Pro-Independence Left is the only force that proposes a political framework that allows for all political options to be promoted and developed freely.
Most of the statement is focused on the democratic process. ETA says that the democratic process will become the axe of the struggle to be developed from now on by the Pro-Independence Left. According to ETA it would bring a democratisation of the political and legal situation of oppression, the overcoming in democratic terms of the political conflict, the implementation of the Basque Country’s national rights and the citizens’ civil and political rights and it would carry the Basque Country to a scenario of self-determination in a step-by-step, regulated and agreed way.
ETA is convinced that such a process will be confronted by the current political and legal framework and efforts to reform it, renew it and perpetuate it with the aim of destroying the path to sovereignty.
ETA states that the Democratic Process is not the best option but the only one and that it must be understood that the main guarantor of it is the Basque People. According to ETA only with the strength and support of the Basque People will it be possible to open, build and bring that process to its successful conclusion.
In that sense ETA believes that the past experiences show two key lessons. If there is no People’s activation the Process won’t advance and also that it won’t be possible without the participation of the Spanish state. ETA continues: “If the Democratic Process is to be developed through democratic means and without interferences, as we also believe it should, the state interference and violence must stop.”
ETA ends the statement by recalling the historical words of one of the organization’s main leaders recorded just hours before he was assassinated by the Spanish death squads in 1978: “It won’t be ETA or any political party, it will be the Basque People who will bring freedom to the Basque Country. That’s what we want to stress today. Victory is in the struggle and we want to encourage our People and every citizen to organise and fight, to be protagonists in the liberation of our People.”
ETA’s last statement was widely covered in the media and sparked many reactions from the political parties. Many of the pro-Spanish newspapers manipulated the statement and even published wrong translations of it (ETA’s statements are always only written in Basque). Despite the usual critics there was a broad interest in the contents.
The pro-independence social democratic party Eusko Alkartasuna/Basque Solidarity welcomed the statement as positive and expressed its willingness to take steps towards a unified nationalist strategy based on a civil and political process.
Two days before the ETA’s statement the pro-independence trade union LAB organised a delegates’ rally with 1,200 in attendance. Addressing the audience the general secretary Ainhoa Etxaide encouraged political parties, trade unions and social organisations to reach political agreements to boost the democratic process. She said steps are being made and that they will be consolidated in the coming months. The LAB’s leader said this will be a decisive year.
During the rally they remembered the union’s former general secretary who was imprisoned in October along with Otegi and other leaders of the Pro-Independence Left. They also remembered the rest of the Basque political prisoners and the 89 workers who were killed last year in their workplace.

-Solidarity with the Basque political prisoners.
400 people rallied in Donostia/San Sebastian to demand the immediate release of the local political prisoner Juan Jose Rego. As we previously reported the 70-year-old prisoner has spent 15 years in jail and suffers numerous very serious illnesses. He recently suffered a heart attack. He can barely see and move and as he told his wife last week he won’t be able to survive another five years in jail. According to Spanish law seriously ill prisoners must be released.
Basque political prisoner Jon Bilbao entered his 29th year in jail last week. He was arrested in January 1982 and was brutally tortured during nine days of incommunicado detention. He should have been released in 2002 according to Spanish law. The oldest prisoner in Europe is Basque political prisoner Jose Mari Sagardui who was arrested in 1980.
450 people took part in the annual Solidarity Day in the northern Basque Country last weekend to protest against repression, to show support to the Basque political prisoners and refugees and their relatives and to remember those who died. They especially remembered former Basque political prisoner and refugee and ETA member Jon Anza, nine months after he went missing.
Many protests took place on Monday across the Basque Country to demand answers about his disappearance. Nine months on and there is still no outcome from the French police investigation despite the strong suspicion of the involvement of Spanish undercover police units.
Few months before Jon Anza’s disappearance another Basque political refugee was kidnapped for several hours by undercover Spanish policemen in the northern Basque Country (under French administration). This week the French court dealing with this case was told by the Spanish authorities they couldn’t identify the owners of four Spanish mobile phone signals detected that day where the Basque refugee was abducted.