Reporters Without Backbones

It took 31 months for the so called Reporters Without Borders to mention the Egunkaria case at their website.

31 months.

During that time, this organization that claims to uphold the most elemental rights for journalists, reporters and photojournalists that find themselves in the crossfire while in exercise of their duty, that very same organization has said absolutely nothing about the decision by Madrid to shut down Egunkaria, then the only newspaper published entirely in Euskera, the Basque language.

Nor did they mention the torture suffered by its director, Martxelo Otamendi and a number of other staff members while in custody of the Spanish authorities.

Here is what they have to say today:

Reporters Without Borders today called on Spanish justice minister Juan Fernando López Aguilar to speed up the judicial proceedings that have kept the Basque-language daily newspaper Egunkaria closed since 20 February 2003, so that it can resume publishing as soon as possible.

The press freedom organisation issued its call on the eve of hearings in which the national court in Madrid will consider the appeals of seven Egunkaria journalists against their indictment on charges of being linked with the Basque armed separatist group ETA.

This press freedom organization kept mute about these series of violations against the human rights and the civil liberties of all those arrested during the night raids against the newspaper.

This is what the lawyer in charge of the Egunkaria case said:

"Despite examining thousands of documents, questioning more than 20 people, searching their homes and workplaces and ordering telephone taps, the judge has found no evidence of a link between Egunkaria and ETA," one of the newspaper's lawyers told Reporters Without Borders. "The charges are based solely on the judge's assumption, which comes down to 'suspicion plus suspicion equals proof'," the lawyer added.

Before today, all you could read at their web site was that Spain was considered a problematic country due to the constant threat of ETA against some Spanish journalists, and even in this article they insist on the same:

Reporters Without Borders added : "We point out that Basque journalists are the most frequent victims of ETA's campaign of terror against the media, which forces them to work with bodyguards or to leave the Basque country altogether."

So, for RWB, there is victims of ETA, but there is no victims of state sponsored violence by Madrid.

Does this remind you of some other fake human rights organizations?

Because that is exactly what RWB is, nothing but an instrument by repressive governments to mislead people and keep the focus away from several instances in which their repressive measures violate all those principles that democratic societies hold sacred.

Several Basque organizations contacted RWB regarding the Egunkaria issue, until today they never got back to anyone, who knows why did they finally acknowledge the situation.

Too little, too late.

* You can read the entire article at Artxiboak.

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