IRSP: Defend Basque Youth Activists

international | rights, freedoms and repression | press release

Thursday March 10, 2005 22:19

by IRSP - Irish Republican Socialist Party

The Basque people are able to make a virtually unequalled claim to native sovereignty in their homeland. They are most likely the oldest ethnicity in Europe, tracing their roots to Neolithic times, and their language is without a doubt the oldest in Europe.

Irish Republican Socialist Party

Press Statement

Irish Republican Socialist Party International Department

10 March 2005

IRSP: Defend Basque Youth Activists

The Basque people are able to make a virtually unequalled claim to native sovereignty in their homeland. They are most likely the oldest ethnicity in Europe, tracing their roots to Neolithic times, and their language is without a doubt the oldest in Europe.

Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) has never fully recovered from the cease-fire the announced unilaterally on 15 September 1998 on the advice of the Provisional Irish Republican Movement. The Spanish government responded to this unprecedented peace overture by arresting and jailing the entire leadership of Herri Batasuna for promoting the ETA’s peace proposal. The Spanish state used the period of their cease-fire to destroy their legal, political organisation, jail leading members, and otherwise launch an assault on the revolutionary movement for Basque national liberation. As a result, the ETA was finally forced to give up its cease-fire strategy and resumed the armed struggle in December of 1999.

The less well known Basque struggle against the French occupation of their homeland also suffered from this tactic. Within France the armed organisation in struggle is called Iparretarrak, (“those of the north”, or IK). IK also undertook a cease-fire strategy, roughly contemporary with that of the ETA, but ended it after 18 months. IK blamed end of their truce on the French government for not having responded to the peaceful demands of the Basque people for a Basque department, a far less radical proposal than the ETA’s call for an independent national parliament.

In short, the general picture for Basque activists against Spain or France remains one of unyielding oppression. Suspense of normal civil liberties, lengthy jail sentences handed down in non-jury trials, torture of political prisoners, ‘disappearances’ of activists are all too common on both sides of the border.

In the nearly seven years since the cease-fire declaration, the Spanish state has arrested close to 200 Basque activists, declared a great many Basque political organisations illegal, carried out torture of Basque prisoners, and is now preparing to initiate another series of show trials, this time directed at the youth organisations Jarrai, Haika and Segi, all three of which have been declared illegal.

The Irish Republican Socialist Party well recognises the oppression and exploitation suffered by the Basque people, having experienced much the same in Ireland. We condemn the governments of both France and Spain for cynically using the Basque cease-fire declarations to further entrench their continued occupation of the Basque nation and especially condemn the Spanish government at this time for the mockery of justice they are in the process of launching. Ultimately, the forces of occupation must learn that there can be no peace without justice and that the denial of a people’s legitimate sovereignty will always be met with opposition. Right now, the Spanish state must be told that we are not fooled as to the reality of the pending prosecutions and that we will not tolerate such a miscarriage of justice.

The Spanish state is now attempting to obtain sentences totalling 654 years combined for 42 young Basque activists. These extraordinary sentences are being pursued for nothing more that efforts by Basque youth to organise themselves in pursuit of their nation's emancipation and social justice, in an open, political manner. This cannot be allowed to happen.

In solidarity with Basque working people engaged in struggle for national liberation and social justice, the IRSP fully endorses the demonstrations planned for 3 PM on Saturday, the 12th of March at the Dublin GPO, Belfast City Hall, Waterloo Place in Derry and called by the Irish Basque Committees/Coistí na mBascach-Éireannach.

ENDS