Demonstrate Solidarity with the Basque Country

30/06/08

On May 6 this year, a Spanish court ordered the arrest of all members of the Basque pro-independence group Haika. This is but the latest in a long line of measures enacted by the Spanish State in order to crush all radical politics in the Basque Country.

Since the criminalisation of the Basque people under the fascist dictator Francisco Franco (during which time even the speaking of the Basque language was banned), the population has rallied around the position of independence.

This is borne out by the fact that elections in both the autonomous region of the Basque Country (Gipuskoa) and that of neighbouring Nafarroa (the two regions that comprise the Spanish-occupied portion of the Basque Country) regularly return a clear majority in favour of self-determination.

After the transition from Francoist rule in the 1970s, the government in Madrid has persisted in its attempts to criminalise the Basque movement for independence.

Since the 1980s, political prisoners have suffered as a result of the dispersal policy, which entails captured activists being held in jails hundreds of miles from their homes and families. This inhuman policy places a massive emotional and financial strain on the families of political prisoners, with some of them being held as far from their homeland as the Canary Islands and Paris.

At present, there are around 700 Basque political prisoners in the jails of the French and Spanish states.

In recent years, the criminalisation of the liberation movement in the Basque Country has intensified, leading to the arrest of prominent politicians and activists, the banning of political parties and youth groups and the persecution of human rights activists.

Not only have the Spanish authorities imprisoned those who have fought for an independent, socialist Basque Country, they are now criminalising those who tried to defend the rights of the prisoners themselves.

The routine use of torture by the Spanish state is well documented by Amnesty International and other human rights groups. Added to the dispersal of prisoners, the force feeding of hunger strikers and the relentless rights abuses of prisoners’ families, is the ever-increasing political repression being perpetrated against the Basque people. The main pro-independence party in the Basque Country, Herri Batasuna, was prevented from partaking in May’s elections and many of its members have been incarcerated.

That such behaviour is unacceptable, undemocratic and fascistic needs to be demonstrated around Europe. International pressure on the Spanish government can prove successful in alleviating some of the injustices, which the Basque people suffer under.

To this end, éirígí is calling on people to join the solidarity picket, organised by the Dublin Basque Solidarity Committee in conjunction with éirígí, at the GPO, O’Connell Street, Dublin at 1pm on Saturday (July 5).