FROM THE WORLD TO THE BASQUE COUNTRY
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2007/IV/27
BASQUE GOVERNMENT DOES ALSO MANIPULATE THE VICTIMS.
Towards Independence and Socialism
EUSKAL HERRIA-BASQUE COUNTRY, STEP BY STEP
ASKAPENA's Informative Service N. 175
Long time ago, especially the right wing pro-centralism strategy used ETA's victims as one of its most effective weapons to condition the country's political affairs. The Spanish PSOE did also favour this kind of perverse policy, which after some years has back fired. The PP manipulates the so human feeling of losing the dearest ones between its members, in order to get electoral profits; following this strategy it has created ETA's victims' organizations, which are just the government's mere political puppets. The result of this strategy is the fact that most of the population has a contrary opinion of ETA's armed struggle; besides this, they have spread the opinion that anyone who does not pay tribute to ETA's victims is an accomplice of terrorism.
Basque Government's sectarian association
The Basque Government, as it always fulfils the orders coming from Madrid, does also take part on this strategy. The victims of this old conflict, in which the PNV has been at both sides, have been given a different treatment depending on the faction they did bet for. It has happened for many years that the victims were the Basque citizens themselves, being repressed by a harsh Spanish dictatorship in the use of our language, in the formation of political parties which were quickly illegalised... This policy based on illegalising anything and practising torture does continue, but the PNV is at the other side, it is no longer the party suffering its non-legalization, but the one promoting it.
The Basque Government has always favoured the citizens' mobilizations against ETA's attacks, but it has never favoured one single celebration for the victims caused by Spain; this government has never come to the events organised by the popular sectors of society in order to pay tribute to their own victims. And even worse, it has made use of its own police to repress the Basque patriotic left wing, when it was trying to bury its own victims. The most scandalous event took place in June 1995. Two Basque patriotic young men, who had taken refuge in Basque territory under French administration mysteriously disappeared. Both, the Spanish and French states insisted that they had no news about them both. The Basque patriotic left wing all considered them to be victims of state terrorism. A few years later their rests were found by chance, the rests showed signs of atrocious torture. After some investigations the Spanish guardia civil (some sort of army police) was accused of being responsible of both murders. When their familiars got their corpses, they tried to bury them, there were many Basque patriotic left wingers who went to the burial. The burial itself became a trap. The Basque Government, who on the 22nd of April has honoured the memory of ETA's victims, sent its police to wildly massacre both dead young men's, Lasa and Zabala's familiars and friends. It cannot be forgotten that they both were killed under torture and were buried in quicklime.
From the Spanish right wing point of view, this Basque Government's approach was not enough. The Basque Government had to promote memorials for the people killed by ETA. Political and press influence on the Basque Government was notorious: both the government of the South Western Basque Country itself and all the pro-peace or meditative organizations, which get economic subsidy from it, this is, "Gesto por la Paz" or "Elkarri", pointed once and again that ETA's victims deserved some sort of recognition. The Spanish right wing considered positive this attitude, but equally insufficient. The Basque Government in order to calm the Spanish government, continued with this strategy: it did go to the demonstrations organised by the Spanish government in favour of ETA's victims, it did create the ETA's Victims' Association, an organization not within the Human Rights Department, but within the Home Office, an institution which commits repression and torture. The widow of a person killed by ETA was appointed secretary general by the Basque Government. As it may be supposed, she will give a very personal approach to her work.
Popular victims do not deserve to be taken into account
In that spiral of subjection and submission the Basque Government organised the concentration of the 22nd of April. Since the conflict is still on and it has daily repercussions, that event could not mean any convergence between the different sensibilities, just the very opposite: it meant the marginalization of one of the sectors; and not at all a general recognition.
Nowadays there are 350 victims with no connection with ETA. The violence imposed by Spain has originated many victims as a consequence of police or parapolice operations, ETA's activists killed by police interventions or as the result of the explosion of bombs they had to set, citizens getting killed in popular demonstrations, in road checking points, as the result of shootings of police out of service or in public confrontations. Four citizens were killed in police stations while they were being applied the antiterrorist law, and another eight of them after getting out of the police stations, while the police were searching their homes or at the time of being arrested. There are more victims as the result of a persecutory politics of harsh imprisonment: 19 people have died in prison or on their way to visit their familiars dispersed within Spain and France; Basque political refugees who have died far away from their homeland. The Basque Parliament itself, in a report about victims which it made on the year 2000, it counted up to 6000 (nowadays many more), the people getting tortured by the different police forces; and about 25000 (a bigger amount nowadays too) the people who have directly suffered police repression. None of these citizens has been taken into account on the event organised by the Basque Government on the 22nd of April.
On the very contrary, the Basque Government, in the name of our nation has apologized to big enemies of our country: Melitón Manzanas, a cruel torturer who ETA killed in 1968, the admiral Carrero Blanco, Franco's governments president and a very likely successor of the dictator, also killed by ETA... within this miserable policy, the Basque Government has considered ETA's victims 77 deceased people who died in the fire of a hotel (1979), using as a proof theories which have not been judicially or officially corroborated.
Reactions
So much misery has not been enough for the PP who have considered these efforts from the Basque Government as insufficient and has rejected the demonstration. There is no need to mention that from the Basque Patriotic Left Wing all this has been considered a mean strategy only on the service of the oppressors. Many of the Basque citizens, who they themselves have suffered the violence by France and Spain, do not agree with the perspective and point of view of the event.
The Basque Government has had to use a huge amount of money (600.000 euros) in order to get the adhesion of sectors which resisted themselves to take part in the event.
Euskal Herria, 27th April 2007.
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Deialdiak
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