Sunday, May 6, 2012

Basque Country: state "administration" leaves desolation in illegally closed newspaper

On July 15th 1998 the infamous judge Baltasar Garzón closed the newspaper Egin (and the radio of the same name), which had been improving in quality through the years and became important in socio-political criticism and investigative journalism. They were accused of "being ETA", a magic-hat legal trick that has been used once and again in the last decade and half to persecute every other Basque person or enterprise, including which was the only Basque-language diary back in the day, Egunkaria, political parties, solidarity movements, cultural associations and a too long etcetera. 

But maybe it is the closure of newspapers and the torture of journalists what more clearly evidenced the mad repressive spiral in which the Spanish residual empire had fallen in order to repress the Basque defiance. 

Eleven years later the tribunals declared that closure illegal. Now finally representatives of the editorial company that owned Egin, Orain S.A., have been able to access what was once a rotative where a much loved newspaper was edited and printed. It has been under state "administration" all this time and all what is left are images of destruction and abandonment:


The destruction was already apparent in 2003, when representatives of the company could for the first time access the building, which had been under strict police occupation for all those years (agents almost "lived" there): disorder, dirt, water leaks, lost equipment, destroyed machines... 

Nothing has improved since then. All the opposite: even more equipment, nearly all cables and even the frames of the doors, has been robbed, mold and mud are all pervading, rubble everywhere, collapsed ceilings...

Will the state assume the responsibility for this devastation? Sadly, we do know the answer: it should but it will not.

Ref. Gara[es].

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