The Media and Udalbiltza

As I stated when I started this blog, the main drive is to counter what the media writes about Euskal Herria and the Basque people.

The article you are about to read contains every single element of the smear campaign set against the Basque people by Madrid. The reason why the news outlets are very willing to reproduce what Madrid wants you to believe about the Basque issue is simple, Aznar it's an important piece in George W. Bush's present crusade for oil and gas profits. So, Bush's friends are returning the favor by creating a web of lies and deception around Basque civil groups and institutions, like in the case of Udalbiltza.

Here you have what the Associated Press is distributing among the different news corporations:

Spanish Police Arrest Eight in Anti-ETA Clampdown

Tue Apr 29,12:38 PM ET Add World - Reuters to My Yahoo!

BILBAO, Spain (Reuters) - Eight alleged members of radical Basque parties, including six local councilors, were arrested in northern Spain on Tuesday as part of a crackdown on armed separatist group ETA, officials said.

Interior Minister Angel Acebes said the eight were leaders of Udalbiltza, an association of Basque Country town halls created by nationalist parties, including radical groups such as Batasuna -- banned in March for not condemning ETA violence.

"The eight arrested are top leaders of Udalbiltza; their homes and headquarters in the Basque Country and Navarre have been searched and we have confiscated documents," Acebes told a conference in Madrid. "Some... are Batasuna members."

The Basque region's moderate nationalist government criticized the arrests, which came less than a month before May 25 local elections across Spain. A spokesman said the Madrid government's approach would only serve to radicalize Basque society before the polls.

The Interior Ministry said about 150 police officers took part in Tuesday's pre-dawn operation, which was ordered by High Court Judge Baltasar Garzon. Garzon was at the forefront of the drive to outlaw Batasuna.

A ministry statement those arrested had contributed to ETA's plan to "maintain its political front" following the banning of Batasuna. Police also closed Udalbiltza offices in four towns.

Acebes said Udalbiltza had in recent weeks been in charge of preparing independent candidates for the polls in the Basque region, but could not confirm whether those arrested were themselves candidates.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar welcomed the arrests and said he hoped for firm court action so "those who defend terrorism can in no case take part in the coming elections."

"We want terrorists arrested by the security forces, judged by the judges and in the place where they should be for many years," he said, speaking in Valladolid.

Several Batasuna members plan to stand in the elections on the newly created platform AuB. AuB presented its electoral list last week, a step being challenged by the state attorney.

A police source said one of those arrested early on Tuesday was a councilor and spokesman for Socialista Abertzaleak, an alleged successor party to Batasuna, in the city of Bilbao.

The May 25 local elections will be the first electoral test for Aznar's center-right Popular Party since the Prestige oil spill along the northern Spanish coast late last year and the government's unpopular support for the war in Iraq.

The "one fits all" accusation that you saw against Batasuna and Egunkaria is now being used against Udalbiltza, and that is that it belongs to ETA. And the media is all too happy to repeat it despite the fact that Spain has not produced any hard evidence to support the accusation. One would think that after the pre-dawn raids were a lot of material and computers were confiscated Madrid would have something solid by now, but no, the truth is they have nothing. What Aznar is doing is to take full advantage of Bush's "war on terrorism" to apply the kind of violence and repression that the Basque people had not experienced since Felipe González and his beloved GAL.

Is strange how at a time when the human rights and civil liberties of an entire nation are being savegely ravaged by an authoritarian government heir to a genocidal and fascist dictatorship, the US media dares to apply the "T" label to anything and everything Basque, taking into consideration that the USA has been murdering innocent civilians by the tens of thousands in Afghanistan and Iraq. The only terrorists at this moment are José María Aznar and his junta (Garzón, Acebes, Rajoy) supported by the even biggest terrorists Bush and Blair.

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Common Struggle

A friend from Basque Diaspora found a page that contains a speech by Russell Means who refers to the Basques and the Irish to make his point that he is not against Caucasians but against the often stagnant European culture.

Russell Means (Lakota: Oyate Wacinyapin - Works for the People) is one of the best-known and prolific activists for the rights of American Indians. Means has also pursued careers in politics, acting, and music.

Here you have the excerpt from the speech called "For America to live, Europe must die" in which he refers to the Basques:

In Marxist terms I suppose I'm a "cultural nationalist." I work first with my people, the traditional Lakota people, because we hold a common worldview and share an immediate struggle. Beyond this, I work with other traditional American Indian peoples, again because of a certain commonality in worldview and form of struggle. Beyond that, I work with anyone who has experience the colonial oppression of Europe and who resists its cultural and industrial totality. Obviously, this includes genetic Caucasians who struggle to resist the dominant norms of European culture. The Irish and the Basques come immediately to mind, but there are many others.

I work primarily with my own people, with my own community. Other people who hold non-European perspectives should do the same. I believe in the slogan, "Trust your brother's vision," although I'd like to add sisters in the bargain. I trust the community and the culturally based vision of all the races that naturally resist industrialization and human extinction. Clearly, individual whites can share in this, given only that they have reached the awareness that continuation of the industrial imperatives of Europe is not a vision, but species suicide. White is one of the sacred colors of the Lakota people - red, yellow, white and black. The four directions. The four seasons. The four period of life and aging. The four races of humanity. Mix red, yellow, white and black together and you get brown, the color of the fifth race. This is the natural order of things. It therefore seems natural to me to work with all races, each with it's own special meaning, identity and message.

But there is a peculiar behavior among most Caucasians. As soon as I become critical of Europe and its impact on other cultures, they become defensive. They begin to defend themselves. But I am not attacking them personally; I'm attacking Europe. In personalizing my observations on Europe they are personalizing European culture, identifying themselves with it.By defending themselves in this context, they are ultimately defending the death culture. This is a confusion which must be overcome, and it must be overcome in a hurry. None of us has energy to waste in such false struggles.

Caucasians have a more positive vision to offer humanity than European culture. I believe this. But in order to attain this vision it is necessary for Caucasians to step outside European culture - alongside the rest of humanity - to see Europe for what it is and what it does.

To cling to capitalism and Marxism and all the other "isms" is simply to remain within European culture. There is no avoiding this basic fact. As a fact, this constitutes a choice. Understand that the choice is based on culture, not race. Understand that to choose European culture and industrialism is to choose to be my enemy. And understand that the choice is yours, not mine. This leads me back to address those American Indians who are drifting through the universities, the city slums, and other European institutions. If you are there to learn to resist the oppressor in accordance with your traditional ways, so be it. I don't know how you manage to combine the two, but perhaps you will succeed. But retain your sense of reality. Beware of coming to believe the white world now offers solutions to the problems it confronts us with. Beware, too, of allowing the words of native people to be twisted to the advantage of our enemies. Europe invented the practice of turning words around on themselves. You need only look to the treaties between American Indian peoples and various European governments to know that this is true. Draw your strength from who you are.

A culture which regularly confuses revolution with continuation, which confuses science and religion, which confuses revolt with resistance, has nothing helpful to teach you and nothing to offer you as a way of life. Europeans have long since lost all touch with reality, if they ever were in touch with it. Feel sorry for them if you need to, but be comfortable with who you are as American Indians.

So, I suppose to conclude this, I would state clearly that leading anyone toward Marxism is the last thing on my mind. Marxism is as alien to my culture as capitalism and Christianity are. In fact, I can say I don't think I'm trying to lead anyone toward anything. To some extent I tried to be a "leader," in the sense that white media like to use that term, when the American Indian Movement was a young organization. This was a result of a confusion that I no longer have. You cannot be everything to everyone. I do not propose to be used in such a fashion by my enemies. I am not a leader. I am an Oglala Lakota patriot. This is all I want and all I need to be. And I am very comfortable with who I am.

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The Empite Strikes...Again

You are not going to read it on the news, most of you won't care but heck, this is my Blog so you will read it here.

Last night Spain's Guardia Civil raided Udalbiltza and arrested eight of its employees. Udalbiltza is a pro independence organization that unites the elected representatives of every town in Euskal Herria, and that includes the seven provinces, it is the only organization that groups together Basques from the Autonomous Basque Community (Euskadi) and the Foral Community of Nafarroa in Spain and Iparralde in France.

This comes one month before the elections in the Basque provinces, let me make you understand, the Spanish government just imprisioned Basque candidates for the elections in May, and Spain is supposed to be a democracy.

Spain just in case you forgot is an ally of the US and Britain in the present war on Iraq, a war that had to be waged to take a dictator down and bring peace and democracy to the Iraqi people, so I ask, where is the democratic spirit in Spain?

Aznar's party is facing a hard time, Basques, Catalonians, Galizans and Spaniards are against the war and blame Aznar for his stupid decision about the oil tanker Prestige, so now in order to secure some votes he is incarcerating the opposition candidates because he knows the common people was going to take him down the democratic way, with votes.

And people has the nerve to ask me why the Basques insist in having their own country, how would you feel if your language, your culture and your democratic institutions could be attacked on a regular basis by a totalitarian regime?

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Japanese Leader Visits "The Guernica"

This is what I call ironic, for a Japanese to go to Madrid to pay a visit of a painting that represents one of the worst crimes committed by the Spaniards against the Basques.

Shouldn't Picasso's "Guernica" be on display in lets say, Gernika, or in any other museum in the Basque Country?

Here you have the note:

Japanese leader takes time out to visit museum in Madrid

Mon Apr 28, 4:13 PM ET

MADRID (AFP) - Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi took a break from diplomatic negotiations in Spain to take in the finer sights at the Queen Sofia contemporary art museum, Japanese diplomatice sources said.

The Japanese leader admired works by Spanish painters such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and Joan Miro but he was particularly taken with Picasso's famous Guernica mural symbolising the horrors of war.

The huge 1937 painting depicts the terrorised and dying civilians of Guernica, a small Basque village in northern Spain that was bombed by German planes in April 1937 during the Spanish Civil War.

About 1,600 civilians were killed or wounded in the attack.

Koizumi visited the museum after a working lunch with his Spanish counterpart Jose Maria Aznar with whom he discussed the North Korean nuclear weapons crisis.

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Gernika : A Poem

Gernika continues to be a source of inspiration for artists that are against the war and against repression. Whenever I read something about Gernika I also remember the victims of the bombing in Durango.

Here you have a poem I've just found inspired by Gernika, and a commentary by the author of the poem:

Guernica

Picasso's passion for peace
Symbol of war's horrors
Screams of death and agony
Fallen man, fallen horse

Nazi Luftwaffe bombs falling
On small Basque village
It was market day, market day
The streets were jammed

Nazis bombed and strafed
Planes diving, machine guns firing
The young Luftwaffe pilots
Found the marketplace

Screaming villagers and peasants
Running for their lives
As death blurted from the sky that day
Seventeen hundred murdered and maimed

Picasso shared his human outrage
In his unforgettable Guernica
The Guernica of screams and death
Of fallen man, fallen horse

Cowardly diplomats and generals
Try to hide Guernica but they cannot;
Cover Guernica and it emerges
Starker, stronger, truer

Guernica was painted for you
Watch the ones who avert their eyes
As they slink by in shame
Planning new wars, new sorrow

David Krieger
February 2003

Guernica

By David Krieger

Guernica is a small Basque village that was brutally attacked by the Nazi Luftwaffe on April 27, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. The attack on the unarmed inhabitants of Guernica left 1,700 villagers and peasants dead or maimed. It was still unusual at that time for an air force to deliberately bomb a civilian population.

The tragedy and brutality that occurred at Guernica was immortalized by Pablo Picasso in his impassioned mural expressing his outrage at the murderous attack. It is one of Picasso's masterpieces that is known throughout the world. It depicts the horrors of war, the silent screams of men and beasts.

Of late, Picasso's Guernica has been in the news. The tapestry reproduction of the famous mural that hangs outside the entrance to the United Nations Security Council was covered with a blue curtain on the occasion of US Secretary of State Colin Powell presenting his evidence to the Council for war against Saddam Hussein. UN officials said that the blue curtain was to provide a better background for the television cameras. Certainly it is a more comfortable background, far easier on the eyes and minds of those who plead for war than the twisted, tormented figures portrayed in Picasso's Guernica.

No leader should be protected from Picasso's Guernica. The tapestry of Guernica hanging outside the Security Council is a reminder to leaders of the brutality of war. To cover such art is to hide from the truth, and is made all the worse when it is done to protect the sensibilities of leaders who would wage war.

Those leaders who would promote war for any reason should at a minimum have the courage to look straight at Picasso's Guernica. War should never be sanitized or made to appear heroic. There is nothing heroic about middle aged war hawks sending young men and women off to kill and die. It was not heroic at Guernica, and it is no more so today.

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Behind The Tapestry

Yesterday was a day of commemoration, the Basque community around the world remembered what took place on April 26th of 1937 when their beloved city of Gernika was demolished and burnt to the ground by Europe's Fascist powers. The combined forces of Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy and Franco's Spain unleashed a devastating attack against the civilian population of the town, killing at least 1600 people, must of them women and children.

This crime went unpunished for one simple reason, the Allies (France, England and the USA) betrayed the Basques, their allies throughout the entire conflict. Eisenhower (a fascist himself) had promised to expel all Fascist regimes from Europe, but then he got scared before Russia and decided to easy up the restrictions on Spain, a country that had openly supported the Axis before, during and after the war (when hundreds of Nazis found safe haven under Franco).

If today Euskal Herria is not a free and independent country is in great part due to the Allies betrayal. Everyone remembers the Nuremberg Trials, yet, no one was ever taken before a court of law for the crimes committed by Francisco Franco in Durango and Gernika.

Pablo Picasso stated that he did not want his painting, the "Guernica" back in Spain until the democracy was restablished. Thanks to the campaign that sanitized Franco's crimes from recorded history and to a big lie called "the democratic transition" the painting is back in Spain.

Today the world is witnessing a cruel war unleashed by George W. Bush, Tony Blair and José María Aznar. Spain is again on the side of the fascist powers, only that this time it is the USA and England the ones conducting a genocidal war in Iraq. That may be the reason why the reproduction of Picasso's "Guernica" was concealed behind a blue curtain in the weeks previous to the inhumane bombing of Baghdad.

I've just found an article from The Washington Times that highlights this issue:

The cover-up

U.N. Report
By Betsy Pisik


A tapestry of Pablo Picasso's powerful anti-war tableau "Guernica" has hung outside the U.N. Security Council since 1985, and it would be difficult to imagine a more fitting example of site-specific art.

The original 1937 painting depicts the terrorized and dying civilians at Guernica, a small Basque village in northern Spain that Generalissimo Francisco Franco's Nationalist regime, battling the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War, allowed the German air force to use for target practice. About 1,600 civilians were killed or wounded in three hours of bombardment.

The estate of Nelson Rockefeller, who gave the money to buy what is now the U.N. compound, donated the tapestry expressly for that famous wall as a show of faith in the U.N. mandate.

Television cameras routinely pan the tapestry as diplomats enter and leave the council chambers, and its muted browns and taupes lend a poignant backdrop to the talking heads.

So it was a surprise for many of the envoys to arrive at U.N. headquarters last Monday for a Security Council briefing by chief weapons inspectors, only to find the searing work covered with a baby- blue banner and the U.N. logo.

"It is, we think, we hope, only temporary," said Faustino Diaz Fortuny, a Spanish envoy whose government owns the original painting. U.N. officials said last week that it is more appropriate for dignitaries to be photographed in front of the blue backdrop and some flags than the impressionist image of shattered villagers and livestock.

"It's only temporary. We're only doing this until the cameras leave," said Abdellatif Kabbaj, the organization's media liaison. He noted that the diplomats' microphone, which usually stands in front of a Security Council sign, had to be moved to accommodate the crowd of camera crews and reporters. With the Picasso as a backdrop, Mr. Kabbaj said, no one would know they were looking at the United Nations.

The drapes were installed last Monday and Wednesday — the days the council discussed Iraq — and came down Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, when the subjects included Afghanistan and peacekeeping missions in Lebanon and Western Sahara.

So when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell enters the council Wednesday to present evidence of Iraq's acquisition of mobile biological weapons labs and terrorism ties, he will walk in front of flags that wouldn't look out of place in the auditorium of a high school gymnasium.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who keeps a Matisse tapestry and a Rauschenberg collage in his private 38th-floor conference room, denies he had anything to do with the "Guernica" cover-up.

"If you heard all the things done in my name, you'd think I was everywhere," he joked Friday. "I heard it was artistic."

Mr. Kabbaj amplified thus: "We had a problem with, you know, the horse."

It was, of course, a camera crew that noticed that anyone who stood at the U.N. microphone would be photographed next to the backside of a rearing horse.

Can you believe the lame excueses given by the UN people?

And how about that Spanish diplomat? Please, his country was behind the build up towards war against Iraq, a war supported by some preposterous accusations by a drug adict terrorist called George W. Bush.

The tapestry was hidden behind a curtain, a curtain that also hides the crimes committed against the Basque people, crimes that the UN has been remiss to address, too busy granting sovereignty to fake states like Israel. Because therein lies the reasons why the UN does nothing about Euskal Herria and the Basque people, because they know that at the heart of the matter lies the right of an entire nation to its self-determination, to its full independence. right there in the power hub called Europe, a continent still struggling to get over its colonialist and genocidal past.

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Kids Guernica Project

Here is a very interesting project, go visit it, is the Kids Guernica Project.

You can also go to this page which is full of the reports that at the time journalists all over the world sent to their respective news outlets.

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Remembering Gernika

Today we commemorate the bombing of the sacred Basque town of Gernika which was inmortalized by Pablo Picasso's painting "Guernica", a painting so powerful that today it embodies the anti-war sentiments of those who understand that nothing good comes from not giving peace a chance.

Gernika may be by now a chapter forgotten by bogus historians, martini communists and weekend human right activists, but it will stand forever as the first carpet bombing of a civilian population in history. It was also a the Nazi's first big scale ethnic cleansing operation, one that the modern keepers of the Nazi Holocoust willingly hide from the hundreds of books about the darkest era in Europe's modern history.

That attack was directed to the heart and soul of the Basques, that attack was part of a ravenous attempt by an old colonial power to retain at least a bit of its imperial image, and it was conceived in the minds of the worst fascist monsters of the XX century. But the Basques stood tall, the indomitable Basque looked at the enemy on the eye and fought it till the end and today Gernika represents our will to prevail.

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Step by Step

I've just received this information via emai:

Basque Country Step by Step

Information Service from Basque Country

Introduction

This is an information service focused on the struggle of the Basque Country for freedom and the respect of human rights included the right to self determination.

1.- Spain, a criminal state

On the 31st of March it was discovered that Cesid Spanish "intelligence" services was spying the quarters of the political party Herri Batasuna in the city of Gasteiz years before the banning. This spying had taken place for three years. During the last days of March of the present year former heads and agents of Cesid had been processed with the result of the last Director of Cesid being sentenced to three years in prison, a fine of 11,160 Euros and the inhabilitation to be employed in a public post for 8 years. The Spanish State has also being declared liable on this affair.

It has been know that the General Public Prosecutor if Spain pressured the public prosecutors of the Provincial Audience of Alava, so no penal charges would be imposed on the accused members of Cesid. The Spanish General Prosecutor is appealing the sentence.

2.- The Ikurriña banned

The Parliament of the Navarrese Autonomous Community debated on the 26th of March the new Symbol’s act. The votes of the governing conservative party, Union del Pueblo Navarro, plus the votes of the Socialist Party and conservative Convergencia Democratica approved the Draft of the Symbols’ Act that bans the use of the Ikurrina, Basque emblem, flag, in public institutions.

3.- Trade Union’s compromise with political rights

The majority of the Basque Trade Union movement in the Basque country facing the ilegalisation of Batasuna subscribed on the 5th of April a document titled "For the right to politically participate". The trade union movement claims the need "of ensuring all rights for all persons in the Basque country".

The Basque Trade Union movement hopes to build within and from the workers movement a solution to the political conflict at the Basque Country.

4.- Here comes Korrika

On the 4th of April Korrika began in the north of the Basque Country, in Maule. Korrika, meaning "running" in Basque, is one of the most important initiatives that takes place in favour of Euskara.

Aek and Korrika

The Korrika is an event organised by the Alfabetatze Euskalduntze Koordinakundea (AEK), the co-ordinating committee for promoting literacy and teaching Basque.

AEK is a popular movement that promotes literacy in Basque and teaches Basque to adults. This organisation has over a hundred centres and thousands of students throughout the Basque Country.

The Korrika is not a regular event, it is a giant race that crosses the whole Basque Country during 10 days, non-stop, night and day. It is not something that can be seen everyday: thousands of people from all walks of life and all ages taking part in this race and running over 2,100 kilometres.

Korrika, which happens every two years, has become a phenomenon that rouses Basque society. The number of people who take part in the race increases from one Korrika to the next. Thousands of people collaborate in the organisation of the Korrika in the committees formed in towns and neighbourhoods. While the campaign is on, hundreds of festivals and cultural acts are organised.

The movement created around the Korrika reflects the size of the effort that Basque society makes to recover its language. From the moment that the first Korrika crossed the Basque Country from Oñati to Bilbao in 1980, it has been one of the most highly participated events organised in support of the Basque language. Twelve Korrikas and more than 20 years have gone by since, but the success of the Korrika continue.

Korrika 13th, A nation carving its future

The work done at the Basque Country in order to recover its culture and language is not new.

During the end of the 60’s and the beginning of the 70’s Basque culture experienced a very important renaissance in all areas; music, literature and plastic arts amongst others. Ikastolak (primary schools where subjects are taught in Basque) and night schools (where adults are taught the Basque language) spread to many towns. A standardised Basque language was created (euskara batua). In music for instance, it is clear that the reason why we have a decent production level in respect of both quantity and quality, and a ‘normalised’ market today, is due to the effort made at that time.

In order to recover this spirit, the Korrika wants to pay tribute to the protagonists of this renaissance. Many people worked very hard at that time and they all deserve the tribute. Amongst them we find the cultural movement called ‘ez dok amairu’ (there is no thirteen).

This 13th Korrika wants to remember the enthusiasm and vitality of those who created ‘ez dok amairu’. Jorge Oteiza chose the name which he borrowed from a popular tale collected by Azkue in the Basque province of Bizkaia to show that Basque culture could break the spell of the unlucky number thirteen and continue to bloom.

Today the Korrika wants to tell society exactly the same thing; there is no thirteen, there is no curse. In the same way they managed to give Basque music and culture a big push during the inflexibility of the dictatorship, we also want to be able to carry on over all measures against Basque. We have to take Basque society through another period of renaissance because we are able to.

Euskal Herria, on the 15th of April, 2003.

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"A Challenge To All Journalists"

Thanks to the group Basque Diaspora we got a hold of this interview with Aidan White regarding the Egunkaria case:

Interview: Aidan White General Secretary of the International Federation ofJournalists

"The closure of Egunkaria is a challenge to all journalists"

2003-04-20

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is the biggest federation of journalist in the world: It represents about half a million journalist from more than one hundred states.

-What do you think about the closure of Egunkaria?

We are really concerned about the closure of Egunkaria. It was a newspaper which was regarded as professional and was accused of illegal activity. I think that the closure of any newspaper, which is a professional newspaper is extremely dangerous, is an attack on press freedom. In this case we are particularly concern, because Egunkaria was the only 100% Basque language newspaper. This, for us, raises very serious concern on pluralism, and it was for that reason that we expressed concern about the closure and raised the question over how it was done. We realize that this was a judicial decision, but we feel that it is extremely important that such a decision have to be based on a thorough understanding of what the potential consequences are for press freedom, and we are not quite sure that that has been considered. At the same time we are, as an organization, unequivocal in our condemnation of any group trying to use terrorism or any other illegal activity. We were very concerned when our intervention was apparently interpreted by some people as being in support of a terrorist organization. We have always taken a very strong line against organizations that threatens journalists. We have done it in Northern Ireland, in Algeria, in every region of the world where it is happening. In the case of Egunkaria, the question is: Could this actions have been taken without closing the newspaper?

-A simple accusation was used to close Egunkaria. Don't you think that such anextreme measure would need at least a firm sentence?

I think that before you close a newspaper, you have to be very very clear that the allegations against the newspaper - that is has been used for terrorist activity, in this case- have to be proved. You have to listen to what people say objectively from the outside of Egunkaria, and see if they say that it was a newspaper directed by ETA. I have reports here of media professionals telling me what the newspaper was doing, and they said that it was a professional newspaper and was doing a very good job.

Of course it represented mainly the points of view of the nationalist community. I am Irish, I come from the catholic community in Northern Ireland an I am very well aware that media have to tread a difficult line. In Northern Ireland you have two daily newspapers: One represents the protestant community and the other one the catholic community. Both tell the same story, but they tell it, naturally, from the perspective of those communities they represent. I would never say that just because a newspaper represents a certain political tradition or community it automatically supports terrorism. In the case of Egunkaria we are still waiting for a clear evidence for the justification of this action.

-Can you tell us of any similar situation in Norther Ireland? Has any newspaper been closed?

There have been restrictions, famously the television ban to use the authentic voice of Gerry Adams, which was absolutely absurd. But they have never been tempted to close newspapers, although newspapers like Republican News, for example, have been regarded as very close to terrorism -I think very much closer than Egunkaria has ever been. It has never been closed.

-Do you know of any other case similar to Egunkaria's all over the world?

Yes there have been other cases, but I can not precise right now where. From my point of view any closure of a newspaper is such a serious thing that it has to be thoroughly proved to be justified, and I think in this case it was not.

-In these cases, and in the case of Egunkaria particularly, what can your federation do?

We can raise a debate. As we did in this case, we express our strong opinion, and ask for a review of the situation. We have promoted discussion among Basque journalists and Spanish journalists, about how they respond on this question, and I think there is a lot of concern. That is the kind of thing we are going to promote. The closure of Egunkaria is a challenge to all journalists, is a challenge to Basque journalists, but is also a challenge to journalists in Spain to show solidarity and to really examen the consequences for press freedom. I do feel that solidarity between Basque journalists and Spanish journalists is essential in confronting all threats to press freedom. I hope there will be more dialog and more effective cooperation in defense of press freedom. The IFJ is going to do what it can to promote this cooperation.

-150 workers have been deprived of their jobs, and there is not a single accusation against them.

That is one of the major concerns we have, because when a newspaper is closed it is not only a threaten to press freedom, but also a threat to the livelihood of hundreds of people and their families. The fact that so many people have lost their jobs is also very bad news, and it also raises against the question that if a newspaper is going to be closed it has to be absolutely justified, and we are not convinced in this case that it was. We feel that loss of jobs is a terrible thing, and we would hope that egunkaria should be reopened, and soon.

-As Egunkaria was the only daily newspaper in Basque, we think this was also anattack against our language. Do you agree?

We have raise the concern of the impact on pluralism. Of course the Basque language is an extremely important part of this discussion. We know that minority language groups throughout Europa have expressed concern about what happened to Egunkaria, and we fully sympathize with that.

-As you know, some of the arrested people have claimed that their were tortured by the Spanish Police, and that the Spanish Government instead of investigating into it has sued them. What is your opinion on this?

If there are allegations of torture there are rules on national and international levels for those to be properly investigated. International law is very clear on that point.

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