25.05.1997. Analysis of the week between 19 and 25 May 1997
in the Basque Country.

• AMAZING: THE CHEF OF THE BASQUE POLICE ADMITS HAVING LIED TO THE PRESS, THE SOCIETY AND THE JUDGES

• FLASHES OF THE WEEK

AMAZING: THE CHEF OF THE BASQUE POLICE ADMITS HAVING LIED TO THE PRESS, THE SOCIETY AND THE JUDGES.

He ordered his Press Office to commit the crime of falsely acusing people arrested due to urban struggle of supporting ETA.

It is said that Nature imitates Art. If Reverend and Matematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by the pen name he used in his superb books Alice´s Adventures in Wonderland (1) and Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there (2) —Lewis Carroll—, were still alive, he would be able to find out that his character called Humpty-Dumpty had reincarnated in a Basque politician of the PNV: Juan María ATUTXA.

Really. Some hundreds of thousands of Basques, those sharing the ideals and aspirations of the Basque National Liberation Movement (MLNV), think Juan María ATUTXA a docile and submissive instrument used by Spanish Government against the MLNV. Since Sunday 25 May, 1997 much more Basques and some millions of Spaniards have clear proofs of Juan María ATUTXA being either an idiot or an arrogant fascist.

Juan María ATUTXA is the Minister of Interior of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country ruled at present by a tripartite coalition (made up of PNV, EA, PSE-PSOE), and, as such, is the chief of the seven thousand autonomous policemen and policewomen, chief of what the Left Nationalist Movement calls "sepay" police, by analogy with the natives of India that served at the British colonial army.

Juan María ATUTXA caused amazement on Sunday 25, because in an interview anounced on the cover of EL MUNDO DEL DIARIO VASCO, with titles four columns wide and filling two whole pages, admited -who knows if in a naive, cinical or simply idiot way- that he has been lying to the press, the society and the judges for the last five months. Lying knowingly, besides, in order to charge the youngs arrested by his police with knowingly false accusations. False accusations that, in the event of prospering, could mean to MULTIPLICATE BY FIVE THE YEARS IN JAIL to be imposed on those arrested.

The interviewer was the Director of the diary himself, Melchor MIRALLES, and the title (a sentence of ATUTXA in brackets, three columns wide) that MIRALLES gave to the interview stressed his (faked) amazement: "To please the desire of the press, we decided to call "Y group" what we didn´t use to call "Y group" before". This is the transcription of the crucial questions and answers (the bold type is of myself):

MIRALLES.- "Mister Atutxa, why is it that, after EL MUNDO DEL PAÍS VASCO published that while the State Security Forces had arrested in Navarre lots of "Y groups" in a year, you had only captured one, why is it that you suddenly began to put them out of action, at top speed and at a pace of some groups every week?"

ATUTXA.- "We don´t arrest more "Y groups" now than before. But there is a difference. And this difference is that we took the decision to call "Y group" what we didn´t use to call "Y group" before."

MIRALLES.- "But, what are you telling me?! To sell image?"

ATUTXA.- "No, no. Not to sell image, but to satisfy the desire of the mass media."

MIRALLES.- Without having got over my amazement, let´s get on next affair…

I will explain later why MIRALLES is faking when he shows his amazement. But now we have to agree with him that ATUTXA’s statements are amazing. Because they are the confession of a criminal behaviour, the confession of many offenses. Because in the Law of the Spanish state, as in that of many other states, false accusation and false report ARE OFFENSES. False accusation and false report of an action that in the event of being true would constituate an offense are offenses themselves. ATUTXA has stated to the director of EL MUNDO DEL PAÍS VASCO (and after 48 hours he hasn´t denied it) that he has ordered his subordinates to commit continually the offenses of false accusation and false report. And he is CONCEITED and BASTED about the fact that his subordinated have obbeyed him.

It must be explained that the accusation of being a member of a "Y group" means the accusation of collaboration with armed band. With very severe consequences for the accused. Because in the "democratical" Spanish Criminal Law such accusation implies A MULTIPLICATION BY FIVE of the prison punishment to be imposed. An accusation of "fire" or "criminal damage" brings with it in case of conviction a punishment of one to four years in jail. For the accusation of the same action (fire or damages) the punishment increases to be from fifteen to twenty years if it coincides with the circumstance of collaboration with armed gang.

All this terrible matter, because it is terrible that the police draws up knowngly false accusations against the citizens, is generated because of the impotence of the Spanish state and its various police forces, including the one commanded by ATUTXA, to crush the rebellion of the Basque youngs, that which so many jounalists call the Basque "intifada", urban struggle, kale borroka.

The Spanish state and its Basque accomplices (PNV and EA specially) refuse to recognize the reality, hide facts and make up another one. For instance, they multiplicate the pictures and videos of fires and havoc caused by Basque youngs in telephone boxes or buses and disguise or minimize the reference to the actions that prove to be the significantly and overwhelming most important targets of that "intifada": the favourite instruments of the Capital (Banks, Saving Banks, the brand new slave traders from the Temporary Work Companies and the repressive forces).

The Spanish state and its Basque accomplices don´t want to hear of the real, objective cause of that "intifada". Because the reality is that the ABSOLUTE EMPOVERISHMENT OF THE BASQUE YOUTH has become evident for its protagonists (the young boys and girls). And it could´t be otherwise, as it is them who daily suffer in their own fleh the fierce effects of that ABSOLUTE EMPOVERISHMENT OF THE BASQUE YOUTH: unemployment rates at 50% and those who find a job subjected to yield total precariouness (98% of the contracts are temporary, only one out of 200 indefinite contracts is for a young), garbage-salaries, garbage-employments where the absolute precariouness deters from claiming or exercising the labour laws that the law says you have, to live without being able to dream in purchasing or hiring a place of your own, renuntiation to independent life, to know that many of them not only live at their parent´s houses, but added to it, not just on their salary but even on the retirement pension of the parents and that when the parents die, they won´t even be able to pay the housekeeping costs, etc.

A significant part of that youth has drawn conclusions about their own reality. And have decided to fight against those which (rightly) consider the causes of their empoverishment: the dependency to Spain which the Basque Country endures and the Capitalist Production Mean which exploits and empoverishes.

The Spanish state and its Basque accomplices have tried to hide, falsify, disguise that reality and that causality of the Basque "intifada". During lots of months the mass media (television, press, magazines, radio broadcasters) tried to "manufacture" as real the following two lies:

1st: That the Basque "violent" youngs were very few- just one thousand (1,000) said, twice at least that I could hear in the media in the middle of 1996, the sociologist Javier ELZO, main consultant of the Basque autonomous Goverment for these matters, contradicting the facts PUBLISHED from his own polls and researches which let reckon on twenty-nine thousand (28,943) the number of young people in the CAV that in 1990 said to have ALREADY used personal violence for instance to fight against the police or other demonstrators (3). Even more bizarre was the minimization made at the report entitled "History of 400 vandals", published in the cover and two more pages of EL PAÍS DOMINGO of 7 January 1996.

2nd: That the Basque "intifada" was sheer vandalism of marginalized and misfits, as that of neonazi-groups in Madrid or Barcelona and that the only aim was to scare the good citizens and to cause unsafeness in the streets.

The 1st lie has been invalidated by the sheer strength of the facts. The 2nd by the definition of the facts that the Basque citizens themselves do. In last week´s analysis, under the section called FLASHES, there was a reference to a poll made last May by the Government of the Basque Autonomous Community. I add today the fact that 87% of the enquired answered NO to the question "Have you ever felt personally menaced by the violence of radical youngs in the street?". And 82% stated that they aren´t afraid of walking by night in their town or suburb, whereas only 17% feels unsafe. LESS THAN HALF of the Spaniards that feel unsafe (39%) and almost half of the Europeans (33%) (4). The Basque population has it very clear that the "intifada" is not against them but against the Capital and against the repressive forces of the Spanish state.

Once both lies proved unsuccessful, the Spanish state and its Basque accomplices turned to imitate Franco. That dictator used to ascribe all protest to a jewish-masonic-communist conspiration, these attribute the "intifada" to a phantasmagorical "organization of Y groups". And if they dont´t find them, they make them up. As AUTXA has said "if we (police) and you (journalists) understand each other, then fine!".

That´s why I said that Melchor MIRALLES was faking his amazement. Because he knew, as all the remaining responsibles and journalists of the media that work in the Basque Country did, that the so-called "Y groups" were what ATUTXA has now confessed: a frame-up. The same as they knew that those accusations knowngly false brought with them, together with the risk of an increase of the punishment in the medium term, a more terrifyingly immediate risk: torture.

And when talking about the Basque county where these lines are written, here in Navarre, so far this year the harassment to young people has been fearce. The police say they have put 10 "Y groups" out of action. The truth is that as Gestoras pro Amnistía points out, they have arrested 170 people, from which most of two thirds had to be released without charges, 27 were imprisoned and 26 are out on bail. Those arrested people have made various and frightening reports of tortures.

Well, let´s recall the haughty affirmation of the impunity and the arbitrariousness that the character created by Lewis Carroll makes in the sixth chapter of Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there. Let´s listen to Humpty-Dymty: "Cuando yo uso una palabra -insistió Humpty-Dumpty con un tono de voz más bien desdeñoso- quiere decir lo que yo quiero que diga..., ni más ni menos.

-La cuestión -insistió Alicia- es si se puede hacer que las palabras signifiquen tantas cosas diferentes

-La cuestión -zanjó Humpty-Dumpty- es saber quién es el que manda..., eso es todo"

If ATUTXA did read, this would for sure be his favourite literary passage.

Justo DE LA CUEVA

FLASHES OF THE WEEK

Another record for the ikastolas (Basque language school). 130,000 people at the XVIII IBILALDIA. They went to pay money for walking across a circuit of 7.8 km through the town of Leioa and the suburb of Getxo called Neguri. The collected founds will pay the works at the ikastola Betiko. 62,000 went by tube, 13.500 by coach, 26,000 in their own car, 6,000 came crossing hte stuary of Bilbao through the Hanging Bridge of Portugalete and 1,750 by boat. 18,000 euskaltzales (fond of Basque language) of the area went on foot. (5)

Attack of the French state against the ikastolas. The Education inspector Daniel Gauchon, controller of the principals of the state schools in the Northern Basque Country and Béarn has written to them that "bilingualism in the regional language is incompatible with the principles and the functioning of the State School". The association Ikas-Bi, who last Sunday 18 gathered in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port 4,000 people at the IX annual festival of the bilingual state schools of the Northern Basque Country, criticised Gauchon´s management as an "aggression" and "offence against the 2nd art. of the French Constitution" . (6)

The Basque Summer University (UEU) celebrated in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port its 25th anniversary. Pamplona and Bayonne will also this year hold the 45 interdisciplinary courses that the UEU will impart in Basque. In Bayonne from July the 7 to the 12 and in Pamplona from the 14 to the 26 of the same month. Many of these courses have been recognized as free subjects by the University of the Basque Country and by the University of Navarre. (7)

A young from Pamplona, Gorka Gómez, denounces to have been brutally tortured after being arrested on May 12 due to his alleged relation with the urban struggle. On the 16 he denounced before the judge that he had been beaten while he was taken by car to an open field where he was forced to undress and subjected to electrical discharges by four hooled policemen who told him that they were going to kill him and to bury him in quicklime "like Lasa and Zabala", and that nobody would find out "because nobody knew that he had been arrested". He told some other terrifying details to his family. On the 21st the Coordinating Committee Gesto por la Paz de Euskal Herria had stated in a communiqué that "we are convinced that nowadays ill-treatment and torture do still take place in detention-centres". (8)

Macrotrial against ETA in Paris. "The people here judged have stated it clearly that the conflict of the Basque Country with France and Spain is political, and therefore, its solution must be political". "Armed struggle will cease if self-determination right is recognized". This way summed up Pakito Mujika Garmendia and "Txelis" the positions of the Basques judged by the Correctional Court of Paris for the whole week.

Basque unsubmissive (man who refuses to do military service) of the Northern Basque Country judged. The prosecutor of Poitiers asked four months in jail for Zigor Arrieta for refusing to devote a year of his life to French Army.

Letter of the Collective of Basque Political Prisoners to journalists and media. They note the "responsibility in the repression" of the addressees, accusing them of "harbouring the torturers" with their "silence" and of "hiding the daily infridgement of our rights". "We ask you to reflect" says the letter. (9)

Basque nationalist vote increases in the Northern Basque Country in the 1st round of French elections. Abertzaleen Batasuna, Eusko Alkartasuna and Partido Nacionalista Vasco add up 10.537 votes, 2.358 more than in 1993. (10)