Friday, February 18, 2005

No Euskera for You!

On one more dramatic turn of events, the defendants in the case against the Basque youth organizations were told not to speak Euskera, since Spanish is the official language in Spain.

Berria tells us that this comes as a result of the inability of the interpretors to do their job correctly what the defendants are saying:

“Article 3 of the Spanish Constitution says that Spanish is the official language and only those who cannot speak it are entitled to an interpreter. All of you can speak Spanish here, so you will have to speak in Spanish! That is the language you have to use in this trial!” Judge Alfonso Guevara pointed out during his outburst provoked by a fit of bad temper that whoever decided to speak in Basque could find that it affected their right to defence, because of the “personal decision” taken by the judge himself.


These fellas are being accused of supporting terrorism just because they are Basque and they are active in politics, they are speaking Euskera because they are making a point, now a judge tells them that if they speak their own language, a language that can be considered an endangered language, then they should not expect justice to work for them 100%.

The accused already know that if you are Basque justice in Spain does not work 100% for you.

You can read the whole article here.

Also, for complete coverage by Berria follow this links:

Translation vs Right to Proper Defence

Indictees Say Jarrai and Haika Have no Links with ETA

Judge Dismisses Defence's Request and Gets On with Trial

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2 comments:

  1. That's is not true. Disidences can be killed there in Basque Country. That is the problem. there is no free spech. If you don't talk like the mainstream, you are an oppositor. You can not go and say all loud: "I like Spain", or "We belong to Spain" just if you fell like doing so, because you can be killed.
    That is the main problem of the Kale borroka, they are like the spies in the Franco regime.
    What are those radical vasques going to do if they have got to emigrate for a living abroad? Go work in the U.K.?

    Perhaps you might think that by posting in English you are a kind of BBC broadcasting and that you are broadcasting in that language to pass by the Spanish censorship, fascists as all they are. But very few cultivated foreigner are going to believe that history o'yours because you don't talk neutrally.

    P.S. Note bene that my IP might be catched and my family killed for thinking and posting this way.

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  2. You're entitled to your opinion.

    Radical Basques? Is that how you call any Basque that wants self determination?

    Talk about a bias there buddy.

    I speak as a Basque, at no moment did I say I was neutral, quite the opposite, as there is plenty of poison being thrown at the Basques in the international media, and since you can not call that neutrality, then I use this blog to dispells those lies.

    And hopefully your PS was not a "thinly" vailed accusation against me.

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