730 Basque political prisoners. The number of Basque prisoners reaches one of the highest points in history.

730Thousands of Basques take part in the united Basque National day or Aberri Eguna.

Thousands of Basque youth take part in the Youth Encounter Gazte Topagunea.

Dozens of people took part in the annual mountain march organised by Eguzki, the Basque pro-independence environmental movement last Easter.

The Basque-Spanish police harassed and created great tension on Easter Saturday in the village of Ibarra where some events were organised to welcome home two local already former Basque political prisoners.

150 people attended the annual Irish Basque Good Friday Night at the Conway Mill in Belfast organised by the local branch of the Irish Basque Committees.

An ETA car bomb explosion destroys a police station.

The French police recovered a couple of home-made bombs near a golf resort in the northern Basque village of Ziburu

The pro-independence party Batasuna has urged Basque citizens to stop the fraud that the Basque Nationalist Party/PNV and the Spanish Labour Party/PSOE want to commit against Basque Country.

The Spanish Labour Party is getting ready to present a motion to censure pro independence mayors and council representatives.

Basque Spanish police attacks a rally in Eibar Gipuzkoa.

People in Zornotza demand the release of prisoner Legorburu and Etxezarreta.

"They want to give us death sentences. That is my fear, will I be able to face that." Said last week former political prisoners and currently on the run Fernando Etxegarai.

The anti repression group Askatasuna has denounced the case against Iban Apaolaza, imprisoned in Quebec.

Basque citizens don't feel that they live in a democracy.

One hundred people from the Basque town of Idiazabal have been touring Scotland in favour of self-determination during Easter.

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Faced with the "trial" in the Spanish National Court.

Dear Friends,

The repression against the Basque people conducted by the Spanish State and in less degree by the French has been constant in recent years. It is easy to trace a continuous line in the preceding decades that can show us the persistence of torture, massive and arbitrary detentions, penitentiary policy of brutal consequences, halted associations and organizations, closing of news media, illegalisation of political parties and total discrimination of a sector of the population from the participation in public life. To sum up, a situation of exception that has generated a dangerous scenario of suppression of the most basic political and civil rights, a scenario that nowadays it is shown with total harshness.

Four years have gone by since the International Solidarity with Political Prisoners Conference was held in Donostia. Over there, individuals and organizations committed to the solidarity with political prisoners who suffer retaliation and against the repression, assumed the task to initiate mechanisms to improve our communication and the starting-up of common initiatives of reporting and strategies. For that purpose, the designation of April 17 as International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners was one of the measures that were issued and that, to this day, maintain all its significance and importance.

Today we are confronting in various places of our planet a persistence of governments of repressive measures that limit more and more the rights and freedoms of the population, an extension and justification of practices such as torture, isolation, and even the physical elimination of the political dissident. It is very clear a serious deterioration of the living conditions of people who suffer retaliation in different detention and penitentiary arrangements. This has also caused the wealth of criminalization each time more acute of the organizations that work to report the repression and show solidarity with the ones who suffer retaliation.

  · www.kalera.org

**ETA kills a former Spanish Labour Party councillor on the eve of the elections in the South of the Basque Country.
**On election day, despite no political representation, the pro-independence movement manages to keep its strength and say stop to the state of exception imposed by the Spanish state.
**And in the North of the Basque Country, the pro independence movement has increased its vote in a spectacular way.
**Police attack marches organised for International Women's Day.
**The two young Basques arrested by the Basque Spanish police last week are released without charges.
**The Association of European lawyers denounce the situation of Basque political prisoners.

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