Cannons will never destroy tenderness among the peoples of the world

Address of the Basque Internationalist Walter Wendelin subsequent to being granted probation

Translation by C.L.

From the very moment the door of your house is beaten open, and other doors are banged shut one by one behind you, when their institutional regulations and the arbitrary decisions of prison guards oppress you in the corridors, when boredom stagnates in the night and time trudges on, it is then that your companion, also a political prisoner, offers to carry your burden with you, and opens a hidden window in the brick wall to remind you that the streets and squares of villages and cities in Euskal Herria are full of people treading robustly, going ever forward, making decisions, taking action, without stopping, forbidding, regulating or leading anyone to any sheepfold.

Sometimes it’s hard to lean on our companion’s shoulder or to receive the support from our weekend visitors and from those who keep guard at home. We have not learned this in time and sufficient measure.

We can and must carry out this task before and in case it is needed. We should not be afraid nor fear scaring people away because of it. We should learn in time and well because we owe it to the companions still inside and to all those people who travel every weekend across Spain and la République* and advance towards freedom in the streets of Euskal Herria.

The day will come when all those who have endured this ordeal (however short or long) will be able to organise the just and deserved homage for the people who have worked and suffered to preserve the health, courage and spirit of those inside.

But we must not forget that more important than learning how to confront the ordeal of being inside those detestable walls is to invest effort and work in not having to make that journey.

We should avoid this ordeal always, but without betraying our conscience and by continuing the work we are accused of.

Because we are not innocent, we are guilty with every day that passes, guilty of producing, accumulating and using weapons of massive development of humanity, solidarity, dignity, justice and peace, guilty of making decisions independently but totally dependent on any struggle against any injustice anywhere in the world.

Just over six months ago, the Kingdom [of Spain], prison of peoples and builder of more and more prisons “in its image and likeness”, released all its weakness, fear, indignity and fanaticism on the internationalist solidarity of our people. With the reason of their force and the force of their unreasonableness, their objective was nothing more and nothing less than to end tenderness among peoples. How conceited and what cowards they are!

Cannons will never destroy tenderness among the peoples of the world, nor will missiles from their F16 in Libya, just like the Balkans and Afghanistan before them.

Nor will Telefónica, Endesa, Iberdrola, Unión Fenosa or BBVA end solidarity by razing other lands or people with their euros, their 0.7%, their credits and their filthy businesses yielding cutthroat profit they call economic growth; because the peoples of Argentina, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Colombia... and so many others of America, Africa, Asia and Oceania have decided, like Venezuela, that they will be silent no longer.

And even less can they end the tenderness, solidarity and will of our people by means of the dirty wars of the GAL** of the Audiencia Nacional [High Court]*** or the jails built “in the image and likeness” of their royal democracy and their unreal freedom.

Neither they nor anyone else can destroy the international solidarity, the tenderness among peoples, our “deep feelings about any injustice anywhere in world”.

We will always show our solidarity, because we know that if there is just one exploited and oppressed people, it is because there is an exploiting oppressor, and whilst there is just one exploiting oppressor, no person or people will be sure of its freedom.

Solidarity is not a crime. But if they make it a crime, it will be the greatest, most dignified, most powerful, legitimate and moral crime here and anywhere in the world.

No prison can resist tenderness among the peoples of the world.

HAMAIKA HERRI BORROKA BAKARRA! MANY PEOPLES, ONE FIGHT!

* Owing to the policy of dispersion implemented by the Spanish government in the 80s and contrary to its own legislation, virtually no Basque prisoner carries out his or her sentence in a jail near home as they are scattered all over Spain and France; this obliges their visitors to travel an average of 600 kilometres each way for a weekly visit of 40 minutes.
** GAL: Antiterrorist Liberation Groups, paramilitary group commanded by the Socialist government which carried out a dirty war in the 80s against Basque militants, causing many victims.

***Audiencia Nacional: Special court, inheritor of Franco’s courts, whose almost exclusive occupation is to judge Basque militants.