Fasting For Justice

I know that there is more than one fascist wannabe that thinks that someone that was arrested, prosecuted and sentenced for his or her involvement in activities that are branded as terrorism should not have any rights.

But since we are civilized nations and we believe that the penitentiary system is there to reform and re-insert people serving jail sentences back into society, then sorry to break the news to you, but the Basques in Spanish jails do have rights.

That Spain does not honor those rights is a different story, that Spain applies a double standard policy when it comes to the Basque prisoners only demonstrates that Spain has long way to go to be considered a full democracy.

The dispersion is just one of the many exceptions in the law applied to Basque prisoners.

Spain denies that there is a political conflict in Euskal Herria, what they gain by doing that is to remove the rights given to political prisoners by the UN charter. But then they ban a political party and they even make deals to make sure they remove all influence by that political party from the political life of the Basque Country. I would say there is a political conflict , no matter what Madrid says.

It is called the rapist strategy: It is not my fault, she was wearing a mini skirt, a red mini skirt.

Well, some Basques won't just accept the status quo, and they demand the rights of the Basque political prisoners to recognized and upheld, and they spring into action.

This note appeared today at Berria:

Hunger strike to draw attention to “political status” of Basque prisoners

Over a hundred people are on hunger strike in Arantzazu, Mutriku and Zaldibia in support of Basque prisoners

Estitxu Ugarte

This week more than a hundred people are on hunger strike in Arantzazu, Mutriku and Zaldibia in support of Basque prisoners’ rights. The hunger strikers are also demanding that the prisoners’ “political status” be recognised and “that they be allowed to participate” in the resolution of the conflict.

40 people gathered at the Shrine of Arantzazu (Gipuzkoa) last Sunday and are set to remain there until tomorrow. One of the people involved in the hunger strike told BERRIA yesterday what the three main aims of their initiative were. “First and foremost we want to denounce the policy to disperse the prisoners. As the dispersion is the result of a political decision, its consequences also have to be put in the context of the political conflict.”

“We are also aiming,” by means of this hunger strike, “to draw attention to the important, direct participation that Basque Political Prisoners, refugees and fugitives should be allowed to have in the resolution of the Basque Country’s political conflict,” explained the hunger striker. So the view held by the people who have gathered in Arantzazu is that “we have to work from the Basque Country so that we can have our prisoners here in the Basque Country, and we have to press the demand that their political status be recognised”.

The hunger strikers in Arantzazu are working on a number of plans; for this purpose they have been holding meetings with political and social players and with trade unionists. Representatives of the Herria 2000 Eliza Christian movement, the Bilgune Feminista feminist group, the Segi Basque nationalist left youth movement, EHNE and LAB, among others, have been to Arantzazu. The hunger strikers also took the Basque prisoners’ demands to the football match at the Anoeta Stadium (in Donostia-San Sebastian) last night when the Euskadi national team played, and today they will be taking up their positions in front of the Parliament of the Basque Autonomous Community.

Since Tuesday 25 people have been participating in a three-day hunger strike in Zaldibia (Gipuzkoa), and another 30 people have been taking it in turns to participate in a fast in Mutriku (Gipuzkoa). An event marked the end of their initiative yesterday.

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