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Basque info 2011.03.09
Submitted by admin on Og, 2011/03/10 - 10:49
Basque Info bulletin. In this issue:
- Torture, Spanish State weapon against Basque citizens
- Arrests of Basque Youth
- State opposes legalisation of Sortu
- Pro-Independence Left calls for redoubling efforts to make the Spanish State change its policies.
Torture, Spanish State weapon against Basque citizens
“Guardia Civil violated her with a stick” – Basque female detainee’s lawyer
Those most recently arrested and accused of membership of ETA have charged that they were tortured both physically and psychologically. Once again the Spanish state and its repressive forces have tortured citizens during the five days they were held incommunicado in police stations, without being permitted to see a lawyer or anyone they can trust. Those five days therefore create a space of total impunity in which the repressive forces can act in whatever manner they wish.
The four arrested, who have been remanded to jail, have given accounts of enduring heavy sessions of physical and psychological torture; in the cases of both men they were also threatened with the jailing and torture of their female partners. The youth could hear throughout the screaming and crying of their respective partners, with which they were blackmailed. They were kept close to one another in the same police barracks so that they could at all times hear the crying, the screams and also the sound of their vomiting. Inigo Zapirain was threatened that his partner Beatriz Etxeberria, also arrested, would be “raped and tortured” should he not confirm in front of a judge the statement made in the police station.
Beatriz Etxeberria herself stated that she had suffered heavy psychological torture and sexual abuse. She stated to her lawyer that she had been raped with a stick by the the Guardia Civil in police stations. According to her statement to her lawyer she “had been placed naked on a stool, where vaseline had been spread on her anus and vagina and then the stick was inserted.”
The detainees complained of having been threatened with electric shocks; their bodies had water thrown over them and they could hear the sound of electric discharges. Etxeberria as well as Zapirain also complained of torture by plastic bag (asphyxiation).
The psychological mistreatment has also been very hard: the constant threats to use various methods of torture on their families from which they would not emerge alive. These complaints of torture are being made precisely at a time when wide sections of Basque society are demanding more than ever the end of this plague of torture. Various political parties and trade unions, social and youth movements last Friday publicly declared their opposition to torture.
At this time as Basque society travels towards a new scenario, the Abertzale Left denounces the use of torture as a political weapon. After ETA declared a permanent and unilateral ceasefire, the only violence remaining is that of the State which continues to employ repression and torture against Basque citizens. The Abertzale Left reiterated that this is not the way; all kinds of violence need to disappear if we want to reach a scenario of true peace and justice. The wishes of Basque society should be respected by all parties, without any kind of coercion or violence. The Abertzale Left movement has made it clear that is the way it intends to act and asked: “Is the Spanish Government ready to respect what the Basque people decide freely?”
Arrests of Basque youth
Seven of the eight pro-independence youth fighting extradition have been arrested by French police in collaboration with the Spanish.
These youth were offered the support and protection of public representatives who also had them stay in their homes. Indeed, the youths were in the company of those public figures when they were arrested, on some occasions in a violent manner, beating, injuring and holding a gun to the heads of some of the public representatives.
Irati Tobar, the only one of the youth still at liberty, has been offered numerous tokens of support after the arrests of her political activist comrades. Numerous local councillors of the Hendaia local authority, including the social democrats, in which area the young person lives, have shown their solidarity and offered her safe accommodation. In addition they signed a petition in which they ask the French Government not to apply the European warrant (issued by Spain) and state “no-one should be persecuted because of their political ideas”.
This situation, in which a number of Basque citizens run the risk of having European arrest warrants issued against them, has led to strong denunciation of this procedure and strong solidarity with the arrested people. A proof of this on Saturday was the human chain in Baiona/Bayonne to oppose the warrant, composed of more than a thousand people.
State opposes legalization of Sortu
The Spanish Government continues with its strategy of preventing the Pro-Independence Left from taking part in the next elections. Last week the Supreme Court agreed to take legal action against the legalization of Sortu at the request of the Spanish Government and ordered the cancelation of its registration in the Parties’ Register until the court makes a final decision.
The report produced by the State General Attorney on behalf of the Government to prevent the legalization of Sortu lacks any serious legal grounds, is contradictory and presents no consistent evidence to justify the banning of that political party.
The State’s Prosecutor has announced he will also challenge the legalization of Sortu and warned that they are getting ready to close all doors to the Abertzale Left’s participation in the elections.
Pro-Independence Left calls for a redoubling of efforts to make the Spanish authorities change their policies
The Abertzale Left denounced the political stubbornness of those who intend to perpetuate imposition and denial of the Basque people.
According to the Abertzale Left, the Parties’ Law is an instrument of the State to subvert Basque citizens’ democratic will and which uses the judicial system to serve its own political interests. The Parties’ Law is just another repressive tool that the state uses to interfere in the new political era recently opened in the Basque Country. Other repressive tools used by the Spanish state are the practice of torture, the cruel penitentiary policy against Basque political prisoners and the special viciousness of police to repress Basque pro-independence youth.
The Abertzale Left says it knows that the Spanish state won’t leave its political trench of its own accord and for that reason calls upon the Basque people and the different political, social and labour organizations to redouble their efforts and commitments to build a scenario without violations of rights which will permit progress on the political and democratic normalization of the Basque Country.
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