11.03.2004

Free the prisoners

Iratxe Urizar works for Behatokia, the Basque Observatory of Human Rights which highlights the plight of the 700 or so political prisoners currently being held in France, Spain, Mexico, the UK and Argentina. The organisation also campaigns against Spanish legislation introduced last year aimed at banning the nationalist Batasuna (Basque for 'unity'). Comrade Urizar, in London for the ESF assembly, spoke to the Weekly Worker

Iratxe Urizar works for Behatokia, the Basque Observatory of Human Rights which highlights the plight of the 700 or so political prisoners currently being held in France, Spain, Mexico, the UK and Argentina. The organisation also campaigns against Spanish legislation introduced last year aimed at banning the nationalist Batasuna (Basque for ‘unity’). Comrade Urizar, in London for the ESF assembly, spoke to the Weekly Worker

It is rather ironic that Batasuna is illegal in Spain and when their representatives come to the ESF they again have to renounce their political affiliation.

On the one hand, I can understand why people in the ESF do not want political parties to participate: they have got their own political channels, like parliament or congress (Batasuna cannot do that, of course). On the other hand, though, it is quite obvious that most people in today’s meeting were members of this or that party. You could really see the different parties at work despite pretending to be from non-party organisations. In my opinion, people should be honest about where they are coming from. Although I am not a member of any party, I think people should say if they are - it makes the whole process transparent.

The Spanish state has always banned political organisations under extremely dubious circumstances. Often, groups are set up totally in compliance with the law - and then the state legislates to target this or that particular group. Also, the new law seems to be directed only at Batasuna, which has been completely legal up until now. In theory it could be used to ban every single existing party - but it has only been used once. There are some Basque organisations which have been banned by the Spanish state, but are allowed to operate freely in France. So how dangerous can they be?

Batasuna’s programme, for example, concentrates on the demand for self-determination. Surely, the people of a specific country should be able to decide their own destiny. They should be able to decide if they want independence or not.

Has the aftermath of 9/11 made things more difficult for political activists?

The Spanish government has certainly enjoyed more freedom in their campaign against political activists. Now they do not even have to pretend that what they are doing is lawful or just. As soon as you merely call for self-determination, you are suspected of being a member of or collaborator with ETA and can be arrested under anti-terror legislation.

The anti-terrorist laws, which existed before 2001, are very unspecific and broad. The police can arrest anybody and find something in the legislation to justify holding them for five days in a police station. They do not even have to tell your family where you are and you have no right to contact a lawyer, of course. It is during those five days that most of the torturing occurs. Then they can transfer you to a prison, where they can keep you for another week without informing anybody in the outside world.

Up until 1989, most Basque political prisoners had been kept together in prison - similar to Irish political prisoners. But after an agreement between the Spanish administration and Basque regional government (under the control of a very rightwing nationalist party), the prisoners are now held across Spain, France and Europe and almost always in solitary confinement.

What kind of powers does the Basque government have?

According to the 25-year-old constitution the Basque country is an autonomous region - but only on paper. We have very limited autonomy and the Spanish state can always overturn or sidestep the Basque government.

In 1999, a large number of towns and regions in the Basque country decided to set up their own representative body, the Udalbiltza. A lot of Basque people were very hopeful that this could provide some real self-governance from below. So the towns and regions elected representatives and went through all the democratic processes. But in April last year, the Spanish government closed the assembly down and arrested its eight leading members. They have been in prison ever since.

In the next few months, they will appear in one of the biggest court cases ever in Spain. They will stand trial with a large number of other people, some of whom have been held since 1998: political activists and members of human rights organisations, campaigning groups and so on. This is Spanish law: they can keep you in prison for over four years without every trying you. A lot of innocent people are locked up for years, but if it came to providing evidence before a court - they would of course turn out to be not guilty.

Batasuna has picked up around 10-20% of the Basque vote in national elections, even more in regional elections. Who will people vote for, now that they are banned?

I have heard that some people intend to download an ‘unofficial’ ballot paper from the internet site www.orain.info, which declares the person’s support for self-determination. Instead of the official ballot paper, they will attempt to slip this one into the supervised ballot box. This has happened very successfully in previous local elections. There are many towns where the mayor has been elected by a small minority - but the protest vote won an overall majority.