Support the Basque prisoners

[Indyjoe]

A protest will take place at seven o'clock, Wednesday 15th outside the Spanish embassy in support of the Basque prisoners currently incarcerated in French and Spanish goals, and in particular to highlight the recent deaths of two Basque prisoners, Igor Angulo and Roberto Sainz.

The Spanish embassy is located on the Merlyn park road, just off the Merrion road, Ballsbridge.

Organised by Ógra Shinn Féin Átha Cliath.

We are organising this protest to highlight the inhumane treatment of Basque prisoners, who are dispersed to some eighty French or Spanish goals, many miles from their home. At the moment there are over seven hundred Basque prisoners.

A number of Basque prisoners have been killed by the prison authorities over the years. Many more people have been murdered by armed police on the street. Two prisoners, Igor Angulo and Roberto Sainz, both recently died under suspicious circumstances while in prison.

Ógra Shinn Féin supports the Basque's people's right to national self-determination, and their right to resist foreign rule.

We call on all people to support this campaign.
If you cannot attend the protest please write to the Spanish ambassador to inform him that the Irish people are aware of the human rights abuses in the Basque country, and that we oppose his government's illegal occupation of a foreign nation.
His address is 17A Merlyn Park, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.

[badinage]

Can anyone give me a definitive answer on whether a majority of the population of the Basque region want independence?

Ógra Shinn Féin supports the Basque's people's right to national self-determination, and their right to resist foreign rule.

If a majority of Basques don't want independence, do you still believe that minority nationalists have a right to resist Madrid-rule using violence? Does this extend to killing fellow Basques?

we oppose his government's illegal occupation of a foreign nation.

I didn't know it was illegal. Is it actually illegal, or are you lying? Under which law is it illegal? (and quoting vague sentences from the UN charter isn't an answer)

Or by "illegal" do you mean "immoral and unjustifiable"?

[georgedillon]

I think one of the problems is that a large percentage of people who live in the Basque provinces are actually from other areas of Spain. I can't put a figure on this--maybe one third?
Not surprising that these people have no interest in a Basque Republic.
GD

[Bogwarrior]

And why only the Spanish Embassy? Basques are languishing in French prisons also. And part of the Basque region is run by Paris.

[PaulHarte]

Hope that there is a good turn-out for this.

[badinage]

A selection of ETA's actions:


September 13, 1974: A bomb is placed inside the "Rolando" cafeteria in Madrid, killing 12 civilians.

June 19, 1987: A car bomb explodes in the underground car park of an Hipercor supermarket in Barcelona, killing 21 civilians and injuring 45, amongst them several small children.

May 29, 1991: A car bomb loaded with 70 kg of explosives is detonated inside the Civil Guard's Casa Cuartel in Vic (Barcelona), which was located next to a school. 10 people are killed (4 of them children) and 28 are injured.

May 24, 2001: Santiago Oleaga Elejabarrieta, 54, the chief financial officer of El Diario Vasco (The Basque Daily), the most widely circulated newspaper in Guipúzcoa, dies instantly after being shot in the head. The attack was likely motivated by the anti-ETA editorials of El Diario.

August 04, 2002 : Car bomb explodes outside the Civil Guard's casa cuartel in Santa Pola and kills 2 people, a 6 year old girl and a 54 year old man, and injuring 40 people.

They sound like lovely people, killing children, placing bombs in supermarket car-parks.

What have they been up to recently?

December 21, 2005: ETA detonated a bomb inside a van in the back alley of a nightclub in Santesteban - Navarre. No injuries were reported. The nightclub suffered extensive structural damages and some buildings around it suffered damages too.

Bombing nightclubs? Superb. What brave and noble fellows they must be.

I see this particular killing (of a Basque, as far as I can see) led to six million people marching in protest against ETA:

On 10 July 1997, Miguel Ángel Blanco Garrido, a local Partido Popular politician in the Basque autonomous community, was kidnapped by ETA which threatened to assassinate him unless the Spanish Government transferred all ETA prisoners to prisons in the Basque Country within 48 hours. As soon as the ultimatum expired on 12 July he was shot in the back of the head. His kidnapping and brutal murder caused a huge outpouring of grief in Spain and beyond, after his body was found with his hands tied behind his back and two bullets in his head.

Yes, lets one and all take to the streets to show our support for these heroes and their brave campaign against the Basque and Spanish peoples.

[Nils]

And why only the Spanish Embassy? Basques are languishing in French prisons also. And part of the Basque region is run by Paris.

I'm not pretending that I know much about this one but from what I've heard most of the Basque separatists' campaign has been against Spain even though some of the Basque country is in France. Does anyone know why this is? A Spanish friend told me that it's because the French authorities clamp down on them harder if they try anything. But then again the same source told me that Basque is "a made-up language." So he might be biased.

[badinage]

"A Euskobarómetro poll (conducted by the Universidad del País Vasco) in the Basque Country in May 2004, found that a significant number of Basques supported some or all of ETA's goals. (33% favored Basque independence, 31% federalism, 32% autonomy, 2% centralism.) However, few supported their violent methods (87% agreed that "today in Euskadi it is possible to defend all political aspirations and objectives without the necessity of resorting to violence".)

The poll did not cover Navarre or the Basque areas of France, where Basque nationalism is weaker."

[JCSkinner]

I go to the Basque region all the time, by which I mean betwen two and three times a year.
I have stayed in Santander, Bilbao, Pamplona and Vitoria each on numerous occasions. I have also stayed in a large number of smaller towns in and close to the Basque regions.
But in all my time spent there, talking to the locals about Ireland and Spain, I have generally found that the majority are perfectly happy with the current extremely high level of autonomy and respect for their culture, and do not endorse either independence or the actions of ETA.

[Bogwarrior]

And why only the Spanish Embassy? Basques are languishing in French prisons also. And part of the Basque region is run by Paris.

I'm not pretending that I know much about this one but from what I've heard most of the Basque separatists' campaign has been against Spain even though some of the Basque country is in France. Does anyone know why this is? A Spanish friend told me that it's because the French authorities clamp down on them harder if they try anything. But then again the same source told me that Basque is "a made-up language." So he might be biased.

My own view is the conflict is more to do with the "Left-Right" divide, going back to pre Civil War. ETA and it's supporters and most Basque Nationalists are very militant leftists, whilst Madrid was seen as the bastion of Franco and his descendants in the P.P
Even after the Civil War, the Franco regime conducted a major clampdown on Basque and Catalan separatists, who they branded Reds. Tens of thousands fled to France. The birth of ETA, was most likely a reaction to the States post-War clampdown.