Saving Itoiz

And this is why sometimes is hard to support international institutions that are supposed to be there to ensure that no country (civilized countries they called them) goes around violating human rights and civil liberties.

The construction of the Itoiz reservoir will devastate the enviroment of the area and swamp a series of towns deep in the heart of a mainly Basque area in Nafarroa (Navarre), those towns have been there for hundreds of years and many of then count with building and structures that are considered humankind's heritage, yet the Spanish government insists on building a damn that will bring little or no improvement to the area.

And then the Strasbourg's Court judges decide that no human rights are being violated admitting that they do not know what drives the Spanish government decisions, ahem, that is why the case went to court in the first place you morons.

Here you have the note at Berria English:

Itoiz Committee regards judgement as “scandalous”, and lodges appeal

The lawyer Beaumont has denounced the use of “false or erroneous arguments” by Strasbourg

Edurne Elizondo – IRUÑEA (Pamplona)

The Itoiz Coordinating Committee regards the verdict on the reservoir handed down on Tuesday by the European Court of Human Rights as “scandalous” and has announced its intention to lodge an appeal against it with the Grand Chamber of the Strasbourg Court.

In a press conference held yesterday Jose Luis Beaumont, the Coordinating Committee’s lawyer, stressed: “If the Spanish Government had good advisers, it would know that there are many possibilities of the latest verdict being quashed, because it has been based on false or at least erroneous arguments.”

“The judges of the Fourth Division of the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg have reached their verdict without taking the reality into consideration. These judges have in fact stressed that they do not know what the politicians responsible for Itoiz have said again and again, and what everyone knows,” explained Beaumont.

The Strasbourg judges say they do not know the aim of the new National Parks Law passed by the Navarrese Parliament in 1996. “Those responsible for the reservoir admitted dozens of times, and with pride, too, that the change was made to the law so as not to comply with the verdict handed down by the Spanish National Criminal Court in 1995; that verdict and also the one handed down by the Spanish Supreme Court in 1997 regarded the Itoiz reservoir project as illegal.” Beaumont added that the Spanish National Criminal Court itself had admitted that the aim of the new law was to seek a way of not complying with the verdict handed down against the project, and that is what it explained, when it presented the case on that law to the Spanish Constitutional Court.

.... ... .