2007/IV/11
EHNEWS periodic information on the Basque Country

4th to the 9th April 2007

·The Basque pro-independence left resorts to the Electoral groupings. (04-04-07)

·The Government requested to get in through a window and now closes it. (04-04-07)

·The collection of signatures is called as a great political mobilization. (05-04-07)

·The prisoners relate the "lived nightmare" at the hands of the Civil Guard. (05-04-07)

· Aberri eguna 2007
The aspirations of a joint celebration came together in the Bidasoa river. (09-04-07)

The Basque pro-independence left resorts to the Electoral groupings.
(04-04-07)
'As opposed to the new attacks, more political initiative'. Few hours after the Public Prosecutor Office and the State Advocate fulfilled their threat against ASB, Pernando Barrena announced that the electoral groupings were going to be organised, for which around 30,000 signatures will be needed. The decision is taken to obtain democratic elections and to impel a torpedoed process reason why Arnaldo Otegi denominated it the 'block of no'.

Conscious that new party ASB is fatally left by the banning demands presented yesterday, the Basque pro-independence left did not waste time and yesterday announced its decision 'to conform electoral groupings' to concur to the appointment with the ballot boxes. Pernando Barrena explained that the platforms will have as common denomination 'our two identity signs'. After the name of the locality they will include the concepts 'abertzale' and 'sozialista'.

The procedure is obviously more troublesome, as around 30,000 signatures must be gathered in city councils and notary's offices, although with it the 'firm determination' of the Basque pro-independence left to be in the elections is clearly ratified. Barrena explained that this decision has been taken in an 'absolute gravity' conjuncture created by the reaction of Zapatero's Government after the inscription of ASB in the registry.

The Government requested to get in through a window and now closes it.
(04-04-07)
The newspaper libraries are full of declarations in which PSOE leaders, although also of the PNV, urged the Basque pro-independence left to get in through the window of the Home Department to register a legal party. On the insistence of those calls, Arnaldo Otegi mentioned the past autumn that such manoeuvre had a risk: he wondered what would happen if the Basque pro-independence left fulfilled that requirement and Supreme Court banned the new formation, and concluded that such situation would be evidently worse. Never the less, the pro-independents have decided to take that step. And the window seems indeed closed... by the Government.

This attitude ruins what the Executive, the PSOE and the PNV promised. Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has insisted on demanding the fulfilment of the Law of Parties, and in at least two informal meetings with journalists (the last one in the recent European summit of Berlin) he has lucubrated on the possibility of a flexible treatment of the question, but then his government has sent to the Public Prosecutor and the Attorney General to the Supreme Court. In an interview in 'El Pais' in March 2006 Zapatero he even marked just the route that the Basque pro-independence left has gone through with ASB: 'The most logical way is the proposition of a new formation that will openly leave aside its justification to violence', five months later, in the BEC, the Spanish prime minister said that 'all the ideas, all political sensitivities, have the right to be expressed, to be defended, to be maintained. There is only a natural limit: that they are defended with words, with democratic respect. Having taken that commitment, all the political forces will be in equality of conditions in the Basque Country to defend their ideas'. Words that seem to be gone with the wind.

The PSOE officially met the Basque pro-independence left the 6th July 2006. On that occasion, Patxi Lopez insisted that that one had been indeed the objective of the appointment: to ask them to assume the Law of Parties. The secretary of Organization of the PSOE, Jose Blanco, commented that 'we have gone to say it face to face'. That day the number two of the party promised that if Batasuna were legal 'the self-determination could be dialogued around a table'. Will that be the reason why the PSOE now is trying to close the window?

The PNV and other parties such us IU (United Left) have, from a theoretical position against the Law of Parties, complemented these appeals. It is indeed in electoral eves when the right wing nationalists of the PNV usually strongly emphasize that ball is in the tile roof of the Basque pro-independence left. In 2005, on the eve of the Basque Autonomous community's autonomic elections, his spokesman, Iñigo Urkullu, off-hooked himself from some declarations where insisted Batasuna to legalize itself because 'their time is wearing'. Last week Josu Jon Imaz reiterated that Batasuna 'is in its power to go to elections with all the guarantees'. And resorted again to the cliché 'their time can end'.

The president of the PP, Mariano Rajoy, showed his 'unconditional support' to the proceedings against ASB and demanded the Government of Rodriguez Zapatero to 'avoid Batasuna's presence in the elections' under any form or appearance.

The collection of signatures is called as a great political mobilization
(05-04-07)
When PP and the PSOE begin to threat that the electoral groupings will also be banned, the Basque pro-independence left announces its desire to turn the collection of signatures to formalize these candidacies into an enormous political mobilization that will again demonstrate that most of the Basque citizenship is in favour of a democratic process. The collection of signatures has already began in many places.

In an interview given to Euskadi Irratia, Joseba Permach underlined that the initiative also pretends to demand the 'equality conditions' in the mentioned process and that 'all political formation' can go to elections 'with the same possibilities and rights'.

In his opinion, regardless the direct link these electoral groupings could have with Batasuna, 'what is at stake now is if the Basque pro-independence left has the right to be in equality conditions in the next elections'. Permach believes that this last year, 'and especially since ETA declared the cease-fire', the Spanish Government has demanded, 'time and time again, the Basque pro-independence left' to legalized a new formation. 'And this is what we did last week. The Basque pro-independence went to the Home Department with the commitment to fulfil the requirements noted by the Law of Parties'.

But taking into account the to illegalise ASB, Joseba Permach explained that the Basque pro-independence has started gathering signatures 'in last week's same parameters and approach for the creation of a new political formation'. 'Today we can say that that we are the ones starting up a new political formation, ASB, and that we are the ones who call to the creation of electoral groupings'.

The Basque pro-independence left has already reiterated that 'will go forward' in this question, because 'if we did the opposite, we would really be making a legal and political fraud', indicated Joseba Permach. According to the pro-independence leader, his party's exposition is, at the present time, 'simple and straightforward' when claming its 'right to make politics'. In this sense, he remembered that, in the statutes of ASB, the Basque pro-independence left showed its clear intention 'bid for the political and democratic routes'.

Both the PP and the PSOE are already on the alert and announce movements to try to restrain the presence of popular groupings in the next municipal and leasehold elections. The General Secretary of the PP, Angel Acebes, said yesterday that there are reasons so that the general prosecutor and the Attorney General insist on the banning of the electoral groupings that will present the Basque pro-independence left for the next elections of the 27th May.

A PSOE spokesman of the Congress, Julio Villarrubia, warned yesterday the Basque pro-independence left that the State of Right is 'working to top' and that the Law of Parties will be applied 'in all the cases' of groupings of voters that a banned formation will like to present to the May elections.


OPERATION OF THE CIVIL GUARD
The prisoners relate the 'lived nightmare' at the hands of the Civil Guard
(05-04-07)
Batasuna: 'Legal Violence'
The testimonies given separately by the seven Basque citizens arrested ten days ago (six of them when imprisoned and another one when was released) are not only coherent, but also resemble what denounced by the prisoners in previous arrests. They agree, for example, on the imposition of extreme physical exercise, like uninterrupted push-ups. Herrador underlines that they had him 19 hours standing up, and Joseba González Pavón speaks of a whole day.

Batasuna underlined the situation undergone by the 8-arrested Basque citizens but mainly by Sergio Garcia Lezkano, whose testimony 'makes the hair stand on end'. The pro-independence left formation sees 'these tortures as another manifestation of the legal violence used by the Government of Zapatero to respond to its lack of commitment to channel the process by democratic routes'.


To involve Batasuna
Lezkano explained the judge that he was tortured in order to admit 'he was working for Batasuna, EHAK and ASB under ETA'scommand'. The curt record gathers that propaganda of the demo in BEC was found in his car.

Sergio Garcia Lezkano
Stopped in Orereta 31st March
Its testimony is detailed. He affirms that from the moment of the arrest they beat him up with a tensile truncheon and the palm of the hand. They soon took him to Intxaurrondo, 'between death threats' they broke the handcuffs with a saw, which caused him wounds for which he was taken into hospital.

Already in Madrid, they covered his mouth and the nose and forced him to make push-ups during ten minutes, to cause asphyxia sensation. Later they put a bag on his head ('as they sang 'one balloon, two balloons, three balloons'), he was also beaten up in that situation, and they put whiffs of smoke in the bag while asking him' do you want to smoke? '. He says they tightened it very hard and 'He thought that was going to die'. The police put a shaft up his ass to be followed by a wider one.

Juan Karlos Herrador
Arrested in Donostia 28th March
Askatasuna has transmitted that he spent three days without sleeping and was forced to be standing up for 19 hours, 'reason why it could not even move. They had to give him a muscular sedative'. He has also denounced that he was forced suck his own vomits and that he had been very cold because they forced to him to be barefoot. They also they showed him the bag and electrodes.

Joseba Lerin
Arrested in Andoain 28th March
His lawyer explained that he underwent 'constant and very long interrogations, practically all along', between blows to the height of the shoulder 'that left it blocked' and also in testicles and face. He adds that they applied him the bag 'in all the possible ways'. They took it to the hospital, 'but it was a fleeting visit, did not even wait for the report'.

Joseba González Pavón
Arrested in Iruñea 31st March
He denounced blows in the head from the beginning, with the open hand, and that was forced to remain standing up during a whole day. He also heard many noises that 'felt as if somebody was being brutally tortured next door'. González Pavón ads that he threatened to be tortured along side his relatives.

Unai Lamariano
Arrested in Donostia 31st March
Although indicating to the judge that declaration was imposed, after being jailed he has denounced that in Intxaurrondo he was thrown against the wall and beaten up to with open hands, they have not aloud him to sleep at any moment for three whole days, he was threatened his wife and three children, and even got a collaboration offer.


Arkaitz Agote
Arrested in Donostia 28th March
He explained that was beaten up in the shoulder, that it had broken before his arrest and that underwent constant threats. He was also prevented from sleeping; according to Askatasuna, the light was on all the time except short while for three or four hours the last day, after which 'he underwent the most brutal interrogation'. He adds that they applied bag in eight or nine occasions.

Itziar Agirre
Arrested in Zizurkil 28th March
Askatasuna denounced that in her case different modalities of tortures also referred by other prisoners are gather: She tells that it underwent threats and blows, that they forced her to make push-ups and to be standing up and in forced positions during long time. She was also forced to undress above the waist and underwent sexual molestations.

Jone Goirizelaia denounced that, after the last Civil Guard raid in Araba, Gipuzkoa and Nafarroa, is 'to use declarations obtained under torture, with contravention of fundamental rights, within a strategy of the State in the framework of the illegalization' of any abbreviation and candidacy linked to the Basque pro-independence left.

The lawyer remembered that something similar happened in an operation directed from the Spanish National Hearing by the judge Balthasar Garzón. 'He conducted an operation, and based on that, the candidacies were banned', recalled the lawyer, who added, 'once again the National Hearing, torture and incommunicado regimes are used at the interest of the State'.

'It seems that body minds to do whatever it takes in order to obtain the objective', Goirizelaia denounced. For that reason, she asked herself why the 'antiterrorist law' is used, that makes possible the incommunicado regime and the absence of an effective judicial guardianship, 'so that these elections are once again undemocratic; if the interest there is really in favour of the process and that we will all be able to participate in equality conditions, all these issues are out of the questions and the Basque pro-independence left must have possibility to be in it ' in the elections of the 27thMay.

For that reason, she encouraged the Government of Rodriguez Zapatero not to use the repression in order to obtain under torture declarations that later will use 'as a peace of evidence in a judicial procedure' in the banning of a party.


Aberri eguna 2007
The aspirations of a joint celebration will come together in the Bidasoa river
(09-04-07)
Under the motto 'Nazioa gara, etorkizuna gure esku' (we are a nation, the future is in our hands), the group Zazpiak Bat, integrated by personalities of the cultural, the sport and the socio-political scope of the Basque Country, has summoned a demo in Irun to celebrate the Aberri Eguna (Basque National Day), this Sunday. From 11:30 Ficoba will welcome those who want to celebrate a joint national day, immediately afterwards, will march towards Hendaia over the Bidasoa river.

Although only in few occasions has the Basque Country celebrated a joint Aberri Eguna, most of them have been at historical moments of political change, last time that all the different nationalist sensibilities got together was in 1999 in the Lizarra-Garazi peace process context. This Sunday those who want to celebrate a joint Basque National day will gather in Ficoba the fair of Irun (South of the Basque Country) and will continue in Hendaia (North of the Basque Country). The Bidasoa river will not reflect, in this occasion, the territorial division, but the union between the Basques who live both sides on the Pyrenees.

Making theirs the feeling of majority of the Basque society, a group of well-known personalities of the of the cultureral, the sport, the socio- political scopes of the Basque Country has conformed the group Zazpiak Bat, promoters of the unitary Aberri Eguna demo of Irun. A format that has given positive results, considering that all the Nationalist political formations, unions and social agents has announced their presence in the mentioned demo.

Basque citizens outside the limits of Euskal Herria will also celebrate the Aberri Eguna. This Sunday the Basque National day celebrations will take over cities such as New York, Santiago of Chile, Buenos Aires, Madrid, Washington, Shanghai, Venezuela, Mexico DF, Zamora, Melbourne, Barcelona, Dublin... The Euskal Etxea (Basque House) of Argentina will spread the declaration of Udalbiltza. The youth group Jo Ta Ke of Rosario has called to a joint celebration. The Basque political prisoners of female section of Fresnes prison, near Paris, will celebrate this important day by sharing out cakes with the social prisoners and putting Basque music in the patio.