Arrests of Refugees and Dispersal

We received this text from our friends at the Irish Basque Committees:

Basque political refugees arrested in Belfast and Venezuela

At the request of the Spanish authorities Arturo “Benat” Villanueva was arrested last Wednesday by the Extraditions Team of the PSNI. The arrest happened at 8am at his home. The PSNI officers involved in the arrest were correct throughout the arrest and the custody at the Musgrave barracks.

40 people supported Benat inside and outside the Court buildings. After a hearing before Judge Burgess and having previously agreed with both the Crown prosecution and the PSNI Benat was released on a £5000 bail, curfew at home from 9pm to 7am, he has to remain within the six counties and has to sign at a barracks every day once. A full hearing will be held on the 13th of May at the Lagan Court in Belfast.

As we’ve reported many times Benat’s case is not an isolated one, it’s part of a broader pattern of repression against the Basque Country . Over the last decade newspapers, political parties, youth groups, cultural associations...have been banned and their members arrested.

Benat has been living and working openly in Belfast for the past 5 and half years. He said: “I’ve made this country my home, made many great friends and become a proud part of a very strong community. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everybody for the welcome and support they’ve extended to myself and the Basque people over the years.”

Between Tuesday and Wednesday Basque political refugee Inaki Etxeberria was arrested in Venezuela. Very little information has come out surrounding this arrest.

The Basque pro-independence movement spoke out against the arrests and branded them as political and reflection of the overall political situation of repression in the Basque Country. The pro-independence movement asked other governments not to follow the Spanish authorities estrategy. Finally expressed their solidarity with the arrested and thanked those in Ireland, Venezuela and the rest of the world who have welcomed and supported Basque refugees along the years.

The Belfast Basque Solidarity Committee has stated that the arrest of a member of the Basque community , living in Belfast, is yet more evidence of the Spanish authorities attack on Basque Civil society.

Speaking on Wednesday a spokesperson for the group, Kevin Morrison, said:

“The arrest of a member of the Basque community, living in Belfast, Arturo “Benat” Villanueva, is yet more evidence of the continuation of attacks by the Spanish government on Basque civil society.

“The extradition warrant issued by the Spanish authorities is accusing Arturo Villanueva of membership of Segi, a youth organization banned in 2005 in a series of draconian clampdowns on Basque cultural and societal organizations.

“Since then newspapers and radio stations have been closed, human rights groups have been banned, and Batasuna, the Basque pro-independence party has been proscribed and its leadership arrested and imprisoned. All of these are blatant infringements of basic human rights and the freedom of speech within the European Union.

“This attitude of the Spanish government has recently been described by UN Rapporteur, Martin Scheinin as ‘too broad’ targeting ‘groups that have nothing to do with violence’.

“Benat has been living openly in Belfast for over five years and now has a life here.. We are a calling for immediate dropping of this case and an overall end to such repression of Basque civil society.”

20 years of dispersal policy

The EPPK/Basque Political Prisoners Collective released a statement on the 20th anniversary of the implementation of the dispersal policy by the Spanish government followed after by the French authorities. Since 1989 hundreds of Basque prisoners have been scattered in dozens of prisons across Spain and France. Nowadays 765 Basque political prisoners are imprisoned in 85 jails.

In the statement the EPPK says they won’t allow to be used to damage the Basque National Liberation Movement. They called upon Basque society to continue working against the dispersal policy.

The EPPK goes on to ask the French and Spanish government to take the prisons policies out of the confrontation lines and take the path of common sense.

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Eusko Flickr : Untitled

IMG_2347
Originally uploaded by jon.ntx

Gorlizko Udaletxea.

Ayuntamiento de Gorliz.

Gorliz Town Hall.

Guardian's Original Article About Gernika

The English newspaper The Guardian has published the original article regarding the bombing of Gernika:

Town of ten thousand in ruins

28 April 1937

Guernica, a town of some 10,000 inhabitants, was yesterday reduced to a mass of burning ruins by countless numbers of German "planes which kept up a continuous bombing for three and a half hours".

The full story of yesterday's massacre is not yet known, but what details there are are horrible enough. It is now disclosed that the rebel planes bombed and set fire to isolated farmhouses for a distance of five miles around Guernica. Even flocks of sheep were machine-gunned.

In Guernica itself it is not known how many hundreds of people have been killed; it may indeed never be known. The town is in ruins. The buildings left standing can be counted almost on the fingers of one hand. The convent of Santa Clara, which was being used as a hospital, was destroyed, with many of its inmates. Another small hospital, with 42 beds, was completely wiped out together with its 42 wounded occupants.

The raid occurred on market-day when the town was full of peasants who had come in to sell their produce. Many of the people who raced desperately for the open fields were systematically pursued and machine-gunned from the air by swooping fighters.

The survivors spent a night of horror sleeping where and if they could, awaiting with resignation their evacuation to-day. Since early this morning the roads leading to the rear have been thronged with long streams of peasants whose possessions are dumped on oxcarts. Today I visited what remains of the town. I was taken to the entrance of a street like a furnace which no one had been able to approach since the raid. I was shown a bomb shelter in which over fifty women and children were trapped and burned alive. Everywhere is a chaos of charred beams, twisted girders, broken masonry, and smouldering ashes, with forlorn groups of inhabitants wandering in search of missing relatives. I picked up one incendiary shell which failed to explode. It was made of aluminium, weighed nearly two pounds, and was liberally stamped with German eagles.

When I visited the town again this afternoon it was still burning. Most of the streets in the centre were impassable, so that it is still unknown how many victims there are. The bodies of the few dead yet recovered are horribly mutilated. Thousands of homeless people have been evacuated with efficiency by the Basque authorities and are now at Bilbao. Their arrival may increase the difficulties of food supply in this city.

A town of ten thousand inhabitants on market day with visitors from all the little towns in the area reduced to smoking rubble and today the Spaniards and even some members of the Basque government insist that only a few dozen were killed.

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Messi's Basque Nemesis

This article featuring Basque football player Koikili Lertxundi was published at Times OnLine:

Only way to stop a genius

Chelsea can learn from one of the few to have tamed Messi

Ian Hawkey

KOIKILI LERTXUNDI is an unusual footballer. He has a degree in history and was once the Spanish under-15 champion at Greco-Roman wrestling. During his spare afternoons, he runs a human resources business in Vitoria, the capital of the Basque country. In the mornings, he drives his camper van to his other work, parks up next to the sports cars and high-performance vehicles of his colleagues and trains as the left-back for Athletic Bilbao.

Koikili , 28, is an especially rare footballer in this season’s Spanish first division for another reason: he has tamed Lionel Messi. Many full-backs have tried, several have approached the task with an X-rated brutality, but very few have anaesthetised the menace of the little Argentinian as effectively as Koikili. Messi scored when Barcelona defeated Athletic 2-0 at Camp Nou last month but only by converting a penalty. Otherwise, he had a diminished influence, tightly policed throughout by the brainy Basque.

“I was impressed with the marking job Koikili did,” said Barça’s head coach, Pep Guardiola, who is usually keener to draw referees’ attention to how often Messi gets fouled.

“With Messi, there’s no special secret,” says Koikili. “The key is to stay right on top of him, stick close and not let him enter a duel with the ball at his feet. Once he does that, he’s at his best.”

Koikili was Leo’s limpet for most of the Barça-Athletic game, so much so that Messi drifted into a more central position and even briefly tried switching wings. He had scarcely seemed so thwarted since, 12 months ago, Barcelona went 180 minutes without a goal in the European Cup semi-final games against Manchester United. On those nights, his marshal was Patrice Evra.

You can take a good guess at Messi’s first instinct in a duel. He is conspicuously left-footed and, though his ability to attack the space outside the left-back and cross or control with his right foot has improved in the past three seasons, his natural deviation is to move inside the pitch from right wing. When Real Madrid went to Camp Nou in December, coach Juande Ramos put Sergio Ramos, a right-footer, at left-back to counter the manoeuvre. Other managers have thought likewise.

“You can understand it,” says Koikili. “Messi is stronger on his left foot and, as his marker, you are aware that’s the side he’s going to want to go past you. But left-footer or right-footer, the main thing is to stop him being in the position to set off on one of those runs.”

Continues...

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The Rise of Txakoli

We present you a fragment of an article called "Basque-ing in Wine" published at the Sonoma Valley Sun:

I generally stick with less potent starters. In an effort to broaden my stubbornly limited horizons, W.S. introduced me to Txakolina, a lower-alcohol, perfect hot-weather aperitif wine with unique characteristics, as well as a fascinating back-story.

Txakolina, pronounced CHAW-koh-LEE-nah, hails from the Basque country, an autonomous region of northern Spain. Txakolina wines include red, white and rose, although the white is by far the most abundant.

Txakolina has proud origins, and a history so obscure that there’s not much easily accessible information. W.S. suggested I contact Andre Tamers, owner of De Maison Selections, the largest U.S. importer of Txakolina. In fact, Andre and his wife Cindy Cuomo are writing a book on the subject, due for release later this year.

First I enquire about the name, variously referred to as Txakoli or Txakolina. “Well, that’s a mystery,” Andre says. “One theory is that Txakoli was the house where the wine was made, and Txakolina was the wine.” What is definite, according to Andre, is that Txakolina “has always been a part of the Basque people.” The word itself is in Euskara, an ancient language. About one million people speak Euskara. The language can differ in villages as little as 10 miles apart – the result of interaction with other languages, although Euskara predates modern dialects. In fact, Euskara is the only language that survived the Roman conquest of Hispania in 218 BC. Although attempts have been made to link it to many different languages, Euskara’s origins still remain unclear.

Over the centuries, Spanish supplanted Euskara. The Spanish dictator Franco, ruler from 1939 to 1975, outlawed Euskara, provoking Basque nationalism. Spain revoked this law at the end of the 20th century, and today, a standardized form called Euskara batua (unified Euskara) is taught in schools. Spaniards say “Chacoli,” but you will rarely see that inscribed on any Basque bottle.

Like Euskara, Basque wines nearly disappeared. Vineyards once covered more than 2500 acres. The 19th century European Phylloxera epidemic wiped out Basque vineyards, too. According to Tamers, sheer isolation helped pockets survive. With the advent of new nationalism, the wine industry revived as the Basque government subsidized winemaking. This attracted new people and technology. Wine expert Jancis Robinson writes that since the 1990s Txakolina has improved “noticeably.” For the first-time, Txakolina, once a little wine made in homes, exploded internationally. Basque country is only about the size of Rhode Island. A little more than 400 acres produce wine. That’s expected to expand exponentially. “They don’t have enough for demand,” says Andre. “This year they’re totally sold out.”

What makes this wine exciting is the fresh acidity, minerality and vibrant fruit, the result of Basque’s cooler climate, sandy soils with clay subsoils, and proximity to the Atlantic. It’s best within the first year of its release because the youthful characteristics diminish over time.

In the last decades, winemakers from the Getaria appellation also added a slight effervescence, and a Txakolina ritual evolved based on Spanish cider-drinking customs. Inserting a pourer called “escanciador” the bottle is held high over a pint glass and poured two to three fingers deep. Drinkers take “shots” of Txakolina. Like most Basques, I’ll take mine in a wine glass, thank you very much.

So, whenever you have a chance, enjoy a refreshing glass of txakoli.

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Democracy Now! and the Gernika Bombing

This video from a show dedicated to Gernika's bombing was posted at the Democracy Now! webpage:

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On Anniversary of 1937 Guernica Bombing, Basque Community in Idaho Looks Back

Seventy-two years ago this Sunday, in the midst of the Spanish Civil War, on April 26th, 1937, the Basque town of Guernica was carpet bombed by Fascist Italian and Nazi German forces. Three-quarters of Guernica was destroyed, and as many as 1,600 civilians were killed. Boise, Idaho is home to one of the largest Basque populations in the United States. We speak with a survivor of the Guernica bombing and with the director Basque Museum and Cultural Center in Boise. [includes rush transcript]

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How the Spaniards Took Over the BAC's Government

This article was published at Green Left:

Basque Country: Spanish chauvinists oust nationalists

Emma Clancy


In the regional elections held on March 1 in the south-west Basque region (Bascongadas), the Spanish state banned left-wing Basque nationalist parties from taking part.

Combined with an alliance between rival Spanish chauvinist parties, the result was that for the first time since limited autonomy was granted to the region in 1979, the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) has lost control of the Parliament of the Basque Autonomous Community.

The Basque Country (Euskal Herria) straddles the Spanish and French borders. The majority of the 3 million Basques live within the Spanish state.

The Basque people have waged a long struggle for self-determination from Spanish rule.

The Bascongadas regional elections (comprising the Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa and Araba regions) disenfranchised about 15-20 % of citizens by banning political parties Spanish authorities claimed were linked to either the armed nationalist group ETA, or Batasuna — the pro-independence political party outlawed in 2003.

The PNV won the highest number of votes, but failed to win an outright majority in the 75-seat parliament. The two main Spanish parties, the local section of the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (the PSE) and the right-wing Popular Party (PP), who between them took 38 seats, struck a deal on April 1 to form a coalition government on the basis of opposition to Basque self determination.

In the lead-up to the poll, the Spanish judiciary increased its repression of the pro-independence movement. The Supreme Court banned two more parties — Democracy 3 Million and Askatasuna (Freedom) — from standing candidates.

The left-nationalists, who generally poll 15-20%, were entirely excluded. They have no representatives in the new parliament.

The left-nationalists responded by printing and distributing illegal ballots, with which more than 100,000 people voted. Including these ballots, a majority of voters (around 640,000) backed pro-self determination parties. The PSE and PP won 482,000 votes combined.

The pro-Spanish parties, bitter rivals in Madrid, agreed to make PSE leader Patxi Lopez regional government president in return for the PP taking the presidency of the Basque parliament.

Repression

The coalition has already indicated it intends to increase repression against the pro-independence movement. Plans include bolstering the security forces, and attacks on the Basque language and cultural rights.

In a particularly vindictive move, Lopez has announced plans to cut government travel aid to the families of hundreds of Basque political prisoners that helps them visit relatives in jails throughout Spain and France.

On March 23, top Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, who is on a personal crusade against Basque nationalism, filed “terrorism”' charges against 44 pro-independence activists.

The activists are alleged to be members of banned parties, including Batasuna, the Communist Party of the Basque Lands (PCTV) and Basque Nationalist Action (ANV).

Among those charged is Mondragon Mayor Maria Inocencia Galparsoro.

In a December 16 report, the UN human rights special rapporteur Martin Scheinin said he was “troubled” by Spain’s Law of Political Parties, which provides the legislative basis to ban political organisations. He said it defined “terrorism” so vaguely that it “might be interpreted to include any political party which through peaceful political means seeks similar political objectives” as those pursued by armed organisations.

This reveals that it is not the tactics, but the political goals of the pro-independence parties that Spain seeks to repress.

Scheinin said the law against “glorifying terrorism” should “include the requirements of an intent to incite the commission of a terrorist offence, as well as the existence of an actual risk that such an offence will be committed as a consequence”.

The Spanish authorities are using this law to try to extradite former ETA prisoner Inaki de Juana Chaos, who served 21 years in Spanish jails, from Belfast, where he moved after his release last August.

A Spanish court is basing its extradition efforts on the flimsiest grounds. Its evidence is one media report that, at an August rally in Donostia, which de Juana Chaos did not even attend, someone said, “Kick the ball forward”. This is alleged to be a call to commit terrorist acts, although there is no evidence the statement was made by de Juana Chaos or that it was an incitement to terrorism.

In March, a Belfast judge ruled against de Juana Chaos, accepting the advice of the Spanish authorities that the phrase constituted “praising terrorism”. De Juana Chaos is appealing the ruling.

On April 21, 32-year-old Basque activist Arturo Villanueva Arteaga, who has lived in west Belfast running a tourism business for the past four years, was arrested under a European warrant issued by the Spanish authorities.

Spain is seeking his extradition on unspecified terror charges reportedly relating to proscribed left-wing nationalist youth organisation Segi. The extradition hearing is set for May 13.

The UN report also criticised the interpretation of kale borroka, or street fighting between young people and the security forces, as “urban terrorism”. This definition subjects those who take part in street fighting to anti-terror laws, including incommunicado detention.

The report slammed the fact that all the political cases are judged by National Bench, descended from fascist dictator General Franco’s Public Order Tribunal. The Supreme Court has only a limited ability to review the bench’s judgements.

Prisoners

The UN report criticised human rights abuses. These include the denial of the rights of “terror suspects”, who may be dheld incommunicado for up to 13 days without charge.

The UN report noted the frequent allegations of torture by those detained incommunicado, as well as the failure of the Spanish authorities to investigate these claims properly.

The Basque human rights NGO, Group Against Torture (TAT), has listed testimonies of torture from 62 people in 2008, most of whom had been held incommunicado. The allegations include beatings, sexual assault, plastic bag asphyxiation, food and sleep deprivation, use of stress positions, and threats to rape or kill detainees or their family members.

Another alleged common abuse was being forced to sing the Spanish national anthem or fascist anthems.

There are now 765 Basque political prisoners, the highest number since the Franco dictatorship fell in 1975. They are spread out in more than 80 prisons in Spain and France — on average about 600km from the Basque Country.

The return of prisoners to the Basque Country has long been a central demand of the Basque people.

Spanish chauvinists now also control the central institution that Basque nationalists have historically used to exercise a degree of autonomy — the Basque Autonomous Community parliament.

The opportunist alliance of the social democratic PSE with the right-wing, neo-Francoist PP brings into sharp relief the fact that self-determination remains the defining issue facing the Basque Country.

The conservative nationalist PNV must also realise that the Spanish state’s strategy of fostering division and trying to isolate the radical nationalists also hurts the PNV. It has lost the limited power it had, demonstrating its dependence on the left-nationalists.

In power, the PNV failed seriously to oppose the persecution of the left. Such collaboration with Madrid's anti-democratic policies, out of narrow self-interest, has backfired.

A new nationalist united front, with a strategy of extra-parliamentary mass mobilisation, will be vital to defend the political, cultural and economic rights of Basque people against attacks from the chauvinist coalition.

Left-nationalists have begun holding meetings to discuss the way forward. Basque nationalist trade unions have called a general strike for May 21.

International support for a serious, inclusive peace process — in which the Spanish and French states acknowledge the Basque people’s democratic and national rights — is now more important than ever.

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Eusko Flickr : Bilbao

Bilbao, Spain
Originally uploaded by nicholas macgowan

Support in Belfast

Supporters of Arturo Villanueva Arteaga hold Basque flags and display placards at Lagonside Court in Belfast, yesterday, April 22nd. Spanish authorities say Northern Ireland police have arrested a man suspected of having links to an outlawed Basque group. The Interior Ministry says police arrested Arturo Villanueva Arteaga, 32, in Belfast on Wednesday on a European arrest warrant. Villanueva is accused of belonging to Haika, a group outlawed in 2007 by Spain as a terrorist organization linked to armed Basque separatist group ETA, something that Spain's D.A. has failed to prove thus violating international law and treaties regarding human rights. This action by Madrid's government is part of an ongoing campaign to force governments around the world to curtail the civil rights of Basque citizens.

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Eusko Flickr : Euskal Herria

euskal herria
Originally uploaded by mermeladwarrior