02.06.1997. Analysis of the week from 26 May to 1st June 1997
in the Basque Country.

• THE MOTHERS OF THE MAY SQUARE DENOUNCE IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY THAT THE SPANISH POLICE AND THE CIVIL GUARD TORTURE BASQUE CITIZENS.

• FLASHES (LIGHTNING STORM RATHER) OF THE WEEK

THE MOTHERS OF THE MAY SQUARE DENOUNCE IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY THAT THE SPANISH POLICE AND THE CIVIL GUARD TORTURE BASQUE CITIZENS.

"There cannot be peace as long as impunity exists and the torturers and assasins get the support of the authorities of the moment".

They are the Mothers of the May Square. They are the living conscience of the Humanity who cry out against the cruelty and the crimes of the uniform wearing hanchmen in the service of the Capital, trained for torture by the US specialist of the sinister School of the Americas, following the handbooks written by the nazi torturers rescued at the end of the Second World War by the Army of the United States. They are the Mothers distressed by the absense of their sons and daughters, "given to birth" by their children as indomitable accusers, as tireless revolutionaries against the abuse of the powerful.

They came, their heads covered with the emblematic helmet of their worlwide known white scarves, from Rome. They came from taking to the Italian courts as accomplice of tortures a Cardinal of the Catholic Church, the semiofficial candidate for replacing as Pope John Paul II, named Pio Laghi, former Nuncio of the Holly See in Argentina. They came from repeating that report at the secretary´s office of John Paul II. They came from charging Pio Laghi with "active involvement in the crimes and human rights infridgements perpertrated by the last military dictatorship (1973-1976)" (1).

They also came to Madrid, the capital city of the Kingdom of Spain, to hand in the Court no. 5 of the National Court papers refering to the Spanish citizens disappeared during the Argentinian dictatorship. Papers where "there are not only the names of the missing, but also those of the people who did it and how they did it" (2).

They came from Rome to Madrid and arrived to the Basque Country. They were the President Hebe de Bonifaci and the also leader Marta Badillo, and arrived to Tafalla, Navarre, to receive a popular tribute paid by different associations, trade unions and groups of the city and to present their last book, written by them and whose subject are also themselves, and which tells the 20 years of their history, entitled Ni un paso atrás (No step backwards), published by Txalaparta. They went to the Biscayan Bilbao to receive in the Kafe Antzokia a concert-tribute from Basque musicians (Anje Duhalde, Gari, Amaia Zubiria, e.g.), Basque bertsolaris (Lujanbio e.g.), Basque actors (Rubén Ardiles e.g.). They also went to the historical capital of the Basque Country, Pamplona. And, in that historical Pamplona, they repeated their protests of every Thursday in front of the President´s Palace in Buenos Aires, walking to the concentration that took place in front of the Parliament of Navarre. They gathered with SENIDEAK, the association of relatives of the ETA prisoners and with GURASOAK, the collective of the parents of arrested youngs. Protests with the motto "the assesins and torturers cannot stay unpunished" leaded the moving protest that went through the streets of Pamplona up to the Office of the Government of Navarre.

And they handed over in the Register of that Office of the Govern Department and in the Parliament of Navarre two letters, signed by them and dated in Pamplona on 29 May, 1997, addressed to Miguel Sanz, President of the Government of Navarre and Francisco Javier Ansuategi, representataive of the Central Government in Navarre. There they state that: "The Mothers of the May Square apply to you in order to express our solidarity with the relatives of the youngs arrested, persecuted and tortured by the Police and the Civil Guard… we support the fight of the organizations GURASOAK and SENIDEAK in defense of the victims… we demand an immediate intervention of the governement in order to put a stop to all persecutions and tortures… The Association Mothers of the May Square will take this reports to all international organizations and especially to the Human Rights Committees of the European Parliament and of the United Nations. Our word is the voice of the misfits, the poor and the needy and the victims of State terrorism. There cannot be peace as long as impunity exists and the torturers and assasins get the support of the authorities of the moment. For that reason we count on an immediate answer for your part addresses to the Central Office of the Association Mothers of the May Square". (3)

I point up the report of the Mothers of the May Square because it is a worldwide recognized voice, but the fact is that during the whole week the Basque Country has been full up with reports and evidences of the repression that the Spanish and French states wield against the Basque Country. Relatives of ETA prisoners and members of SENIDEAK gathered on Monday 26 at the outside the Justice Palace in San Sebastian with a banner that said "Three thousand official complaints in vain. Is this Justice?", they sought in vain to have an interview with the President of that Province Court of San Sebastian to protest that they have reported official complaints every week (which already add up more than 3.000) about the illegal dispersal of the Basque prisoners with no "satisfactory answer". As their way was blocked by the Basque autonomous police, they threw three hundreds of copies of the official complaints to the floor of the hall. (4)

On Tuesday 26 Fréderic Haranburu -speaking in his name and in Jakes Esnal´s name- proclaimed before the Correctional Court of Paris that is carrying out the macrotrial against ETA that "we are Basque patriots" and denounced that "France denies the reality of the Northern Basque Country and oppreses it from all levels. The activists of the Northern Basque Country demand a territorial, juridical and administrative framework which lets us put into practice a real scheme to make our language official and to develop it and for socioeconomical planning". And he also informed that torture "keeps on being regularly used in Spain" and recalled the affairs of Unai Parot, Zabala and Elejalde. (5)

Just about the Elejalde affair, that very Tuesday 26 were known new evidences of the Minister of Interior having lied to the Parliament when, in his appearance last 17 March before the Commission of Justice and Interior of the House of Commons, refused that the arrested as alleged member of ETA Fernando Elejalde Tabia had been tortured. Already on 19 May the lawyer Iñaki Esnaola ratified before the examining magistrate that he and his son had seen from the balcony of their house that the arrest took place without the struggle that (together with the non-existent car-knocking over) the Minister falsely affirmed to be the cause of the injuries that took Elejalde to hospital. And some days later another witness that watched the arrest corroborated that there was no struggle and informed that a woman took pictures and that the police knew who she was. Just that Tuesday 27 testified the incidental photographer and informed that she had handed over 11 dias to two ertzainas (Basque autonomous policemen) who had claimed her for them. The Association against Torture, officially represented as prosecuters, asked the judge on that very Tuesday to include in the summary the radio-recording of the statements made to the COPE radio-station in the morning of the happenings by "a spokesman of the Police who stated that Fernando Elejalde gave up and handed his gun over with no struggle". (6)

But the decissive and hair-raising of that Tuesday 27 was that that day was handed in the National Court the report written by the doctor Justo Aristrain Gorosabel, clinical chief of Orthopedic Surgery at the Hospital of Gipuzkoa, which ruled out that the break of the cross lumbar apophisises of Elejalde could not have been caused by the knocking-down of a car or during the alleged struggle at the arrest. In short, that the injuries of Elejalde happened "during his stay at the police station".

Important as it is this medical report because it proves that the Minister lied, the hair-rising fact is that it reproduces literally the heartbreaking story that Elejalde tells about the hours spent at the police station of the Spanish police forces: "I got to the police station and walked into the corridor, where there are policemen in uniform at both sides who beat me as I go by… They took me into an office and brought me to my knees against a wall. They pressed both sides of my kneck with their fingers, which produced me the sensation of loss of conciousness. They pulled my hair and beat my face against the wall, and I began to bleed from the forehead and soiled the wall which was white. They began to hit me with their open hands on my head, face and neck. My hands were tied with the same rope of the arrest. They pulled my head grabbing my hair. I lost the notion of time and remember that I was lying on my back face upward, with the left knee of a policeman that was sitting on a chair. They beat me continually and I tried to stop their hits with my left arm, trying to sit up. I had blood on the face and sometimes they removed from my mouth blood with lots of hairs. I was also bleeding from the right ear and began to feel a buzzing. My left kidney hurt a lot. They took me to a toilet and told me to wash my face".

Elejalde tells next his short trip to the first-aid post, where he was taken at 10,20 hours, a bit more than two hours after he was arrested: "The doctor that checked me asked me to undress to the waist. I told him that my right ear and my left kidney hurt a lot, and that I felt a buzzing continually. He checked my ear with a device and told me my eardrum was broken. He touched my left kidney and gave me a pill and a glass of water". Elejalde goes on saying that back at the police station seven or eight policemen present all the time proceeded to new questionings: "They beat me on the left ear with the palm of their hands, they punched me on the stomach and kicked me in my feet. From time to time, they would take me to the cell where I would stay for about an hour, and, then, taken back to the office for new interrogations." Elejalde tells that, when he made the police statement before a court appointed counsel, "the counsel told the policemen that she had never seen an arrested in such onditions. She signed the statement and they didn’t hit me any more". (7)

On Wednesday, the Human Rights commission of the Basque Parliament (of the Basque Autonomous Region) decided to demand that the Spanish Minister of the Interior took administrative steps against dispersal in the penintetiaries, tending to the satisfactory solution of the kidnapping of José Antonio Ortega Lara (8). On Thursday, Gesto por la Paz and Elkarri informed they were going to write a letter to the Minister of the Interior to demand that the Basque prisoners are taken to prisons close to their usual residences. And even Ardanza, the President of the Basque Autonomous Community labeled in San Sebastian as "regrettable" the denial of the Ministery of the Interior to accept the plan to bring the prisoners, worked out by the Commission of the Basque Parliament" (9). On Friday, the pro-Spain and conservative diary from Bilbao EL CORREO ESPAÑOL published an editorial showing in favour of bringing the Basque prisoners to the Basque Country. (10)

On Friday as well, it was day no. 500 since the kidnapping by ETA of the prison officer Ortega Lara. Contrasting to the institutional acts commemmorating that record, Gestoras pro Amnistía made public that fifty Basque citizens have so far been 500 or much more days "kidnapped" in jails of the Spanish state. Gestoras took into account the time gone since they should have been released after observing the Spanish penitentiary legislation. Gestoras stated that it is "an outrageous fact, both because of the number of persons in such situation and because of the fact that it is a government that calls itself democratic and respectful to legality, who commits this serious offence". Gestoras refered Angel Erdozia Larraza as the most flagrant case, since he should have been released on 3 October 1990, so, he has been 2.431 days waiting to be freed. Three more Basques should have been released in 1992, seven in 1993, nine in 1994 and the rest, up to 50, in 1995, when Ortega was kidnapped. (11)

That very Friday was known that the Colective of Basque Political Prisoners had asked the Human Rights Commission of the Parliament of Navarre for an official meeting to inform them directly about the violation of rights they suffer (12). The Association of Doctors for the Assistance and Defense of the Health of the Basque Prisoners denounced on Saturday the set of symptoms of six prisoners, that don’t get adequate treatment, the "negligence" on the part of the jail and political services, the serious risk their health run and claimed that they are transfered to the Basque Country. (13)

What else can be said in view of a reality like the one set out up to here? The best thing is to repeat for the reader the last sentences of the letter signed in Pamplona by the Mohters of the May Square: There cannot be peace as long as impunity exists and the torturers and assasins get the support of the authorities of the moment.

Because the only lost struggle is the abandoned struggle,

NO STEP BACKWARDS!

Justo DE LA CUEVA

FLASHES (LIGHTNING STORM RATHER) OF THE WEEK

Every law has a loophole. That was the synthetical and master headline of the title page of EGIN on Friday 30 May 1997, dedicated to the rough, coarse but extraordinarily enlightening trick of the Spanish Congress of Deputies: to declare of "general interest" the illegal project to build a dam in Itoitz. Enlightening because it shows that the Spanish State fakes to be a State of Law, while they trample on that Law and mock at Justice. On Monday 26 was known that GREENPEACE had asked all parliamentary groups at the Congress of the Deputies to vote against the bill put forward by the Government to declare the dam of Itoitz and the channel of Navarre of general interest. The reason invoked for such claim was obvious: the bill "has the only aim to have an influence on the decission of the Supreme Court". Because a previous declaration of general interest, made in 1992 by the PSOE Government at the time by means of a law decree called ‘of the draught’, was revoked by the National Court in a sentence pronounced in September 1995 that declared the dam project void and illegal. The Ministry of Works appealed against the sentence at the Supreme Court and continued with the works. According to GREENPEACE "The Parliament should show some respect to the Supreme Court and wait for the legal ruling of the case, before discussing such a bill". (14)

On Tuesday 27 the COORDINATING COMMITTEE OF ITOITZ announced that on 2 June next, the High Court will pronounce on the legality of the dam project. And denounced that the Governments of Madrid and Pamplona have hidden that information, while they accelerated the proceedings of their new declaration of general interest. The COORDINATING COMMITTEE was very happy about the fact that, this way, the Supreme had speeded up their decission (at present they are solving appeals from 1991) and that they had decided to do it 5 days after the beginning of the parliamentary proceedings for that new declaration of general interest had been made public (15).

On Thursday 29 the Spanish Congress of the Deputies passed by 324 votes for, none against and 22 abstentions the bill that declares of "general interest for the State" the works of the dam of Itoitz and the Channel of Navarre. This bill has been proceeded directly and with a single reading, that is, in a completely exeptional way, in order to avoid that the usual procedure at the Commission went on enough to let the Supreme Court time to pronounce sentence (16). Every law has a loophole. But it isn’t at all clear whether this manouver will succeed. Because it is possible that on 2 July the High Court ratifies the sentence from 1995 of the National Court, which expressely abounded in different reasons "to avoid an eventual legal validation of the act, which limits to accept the contents of the challenged project" (17). We´ll keep watching out. Admiring, of course, how the Spanish Government has the nerve to call itself State of Law after mocking like this at it.

Incinarator by hook or by cook. On Monday 26, with the opposition of HB, IU, EA and ICV, and the protest of the group Erandio Bizirik (Erandio Alive) (that was cleared out of the court by the Ertzaintza), the votes of PNV, PSE-PSOE and PP passed the Integral Plan of Solid Waste Management in a plenary session devoted to that issue held at the General Assembly of Biskay. So, they passed the garbage incinarator. This affair will have grave consequences (18).

Open way to the Quota and the Concert. On Tuesday 27, under the joint presidency of the vice-presidents of the Spanish and the Basque governments, gathered in Vitoria the Joint Committee of the Quota and ratified its updating and the reform of the Economic Concert. On Friday 30 the Government of Spain passed to send to the Parliament the bill to regulate the renovation of the Economical Concert and the Basque Quota. (19)

New University in the Basque Country: in Mondragon. The general meeting of the Parliament of Vitoria passed on 30 May the law that recognizes the University of Mondragon, promoted by Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, and which next course will impart 13 official degrees (20).

GIPUZKOA SUFFERS THE WORST FLOOD OF THE LAST YEARS. The extremely heavy rains at midnight and early morning of Sunday 1 June flooded a big part of the province of Gipuzkoa and isolated San Sebastian for hours.