Basque national party outlawed
By John Catalinotto
On Aug. 26, Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon charged the
pro-socialist and pro-independence Basque party Herri Batasuna
with responsibilities for the armed attacks of the group known
as ETA--the armed, underground wing of the Basque
national-liberation movement.
After a recent ETA assassination attempt that resulted in
the deaths of civilians, the right-wing Peoples Party (PP)
government of Jose Maria Aznar, the social democrats (PSOE) and
the big-business media jumped on the opportunity to open up a
full attack on the Basque movement in general.
Washington has thrown its full support behind Madrid's
repressive steps. They parallel the restriction of freedoms and
aggressive war moves pushed through by Bush and Ashcroft after
Sept. 11.
The Spanish state had demanded that Batasuna denounce the
ETA armed action. When its leadership refused, Judge Garzon
suspended Batasuna's political activities for the next three
years.
It was a decision even many bourgeois legal analysts in
Spain consider unconstitutional as well as repressive. On the
same day, the Spanish Parliament voted 295 to 10 for a bill
asking the Supreme Court to outlaw Herri Batasuna
permanently.
Batasuna had received 10 percent of the vote in the Basque
area in the last election and has about 1,000 local elected
officials. It has hundreds of thousands of active
supporters.
The Basques are a people of distinct language and culture
who live mainly in what is now northeastern Spain and
southeastern France. Their struggle for self-determination and
sovereignty has had strong support, both when it combated the
fascist rule of Gen. Francisco Franco and now against the
republican rulers in Madrid.
In the spring of 2001, some 450,000 people in the Basque
country took part in a general strike in support of sovereignty
and against a wave of attacks launched by the Spanish and
French governments against Basque nationalist forces. A
coalition of Basque groups, including Herri Batasuna, called
that strike. A major issue then, as now, was the demand for
amnesty for the hundreds of Basque political prisoners in Spain
and France.
Even before Garzon's decision, thousands of people
demonstrated Aug. 23 in Bilbao, a major city in the Basque
region, protesting the anticipated action against Batasuna. The
word Batasuna means "unity" in the Basque language.
Under Judge Garzon's order, the 24-year-old party is barred
from calling public demonstrations or political rallies and
from running in municipal elections scheduled for May of next
year. Batasuna members already in office will be allowed to
serve out their terms.
Writing Aug. 20 and 29 in the Spanish daily El Pais,
professor of jurisprudence Javier Pérez Royo wrote that
Garzon's order violated the constitution because an
organization could only be outlawed if its recognized leaders
took part systematically in illegal acts. This would have to be
proven in court, where the defendants would have full rights to
defense. In no way could they be convicted for refusing to say
something.
'Trying to destroy
Basque identity'
Arnaldo Otegi, a representative of the outlawed group,
charged the Aznar regime of having the goal not just to smash a
party, but "to destroy the identity of the Basque people, just
as Franco tried to do. They are trying to hold back what is
irresistible, namely, that the Basques themselves decide
democratically their future.
"Aznar is wrong when he says that Batasuna doesn't fit in a
Spanish democracy. It is the Basques who don't fit in this
democracy--as these gentlemen understand the word." (German
daily Junge Welt of Aug. 29)
Otegi added, "They have tried to ban us before and they only
managed to strengthen our project of liberation, justice, peace
and democracy." The Basque movement had this experience under
Franco, he said, and "while we don't like that painful and
harsh situation, we have no fear of it."
The Aznar government has tried to depict Batasuna and ETA as
one isolated armed group and compares it to Al Qaeda. It's
interesting that many in the British press, however, describe
Batasuna's relation to ETA as something like Sinn Fein and the
Irish Republican Army, and warn that it is a mistake to try to
outlaw such a party.
Reprinted from the Sept. 12, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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