Saturday, October 9, 2010

Basque Country: judge sentences that showing photos of prisoners is no crime

As you may know, the undemocratic government of self-proclaimed Lehendakari López in the Western Basque Country, as well as their acolytes in Navarre, have been arbitrarily persecuting people and organizations for showing solidarity and keeping the memory of Basque prisoners. 

This has caused that several festive konpartsak have been banned and their members persecuted and even occasionally arrested. Similar aggressions have been made against taverns and people on the grounds that showing prisoners' photos or banners asking for them to be imprisoned in the Basque Country was "apology of terrorism".  I understand that the repeated and pointless banishment by social site Facebook of the phoenix-like fan page of Arnaldo Otegi has the same legal and certainly inquisitorial context. 

Try living a normal life with these masked gunmen (police) all day in the streets and possibly in your very home any night.

The whole persecution context of these last years of undemocratic government has caused great budgetary deficit, I presume, by unnecessary expenditure in police charges and raids against opposition members, as well as in pointless trials against people only showing their solidarity with repressed Basques and demanding they come back home. 

However [entering ironic mode], do not worry, that the deficit will be charged to the pensions of the retirees and the unfair taxes on consumption, which we all pay equally and make products more expensive, damaging the economy as whole. After all, the budgetary woes, the economy and the working class are not the problem but, apparently, the thousands that choose to remain solidarious in workdays as in holidays with Basque prisoners. The only problem in this country seems to be that there is too many people that do not believe that myth of Spain being a democracy (and/or this applying to the Basque Country in particular) and not liking the armed and masked minions of King Double Bourbon, people who dare to express their opinions in spite of all the threats and welcome back the prisoners held in remote Spanish jails for decades possibly. [end ironic mode]

Well, the case is that the Spanish Audiencia Nacional (centralized political tribunal, heir of fascist Public Order Tribunal, in turn moral heir of the Inquisition) has ruled that the there is no crime in showing photos of Basque prisoners and has therefore acquitted four members of the konpartsa Txori Barrote (wordplay implying a caged bird) for doing it. 

Members of Txori Barrote and Kaskagorri, along with others, held a protest at the Town Hall these fiestas

This sentence evidences the total lack of legal support for the administrative policies of the Spanish nationalist parties against this deeply rooted (several decades old) Basque tradition. Crucially it also evidences the fascistoid nature of the mayor of Bilbao, I. Azkuna, who belongs to the Basque Nationalist Party (christian-democrats), and his allies of the United Left, who dared to ban this year the two konpartsak who had prisoners' photos in their stands. The result was a Great Week (fiestas) in black color, as all other konpartsak solidarized with them. The photos of prisoners were anyhow present in the fiestas as hundreds of lines of them were hang from the trees and light posts (and replaced soon after police retrieved them).

You cannot fence the Ocean.

Ref. Gara[es]

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