Redaktørens lidelser

Den 20. februar 2003 skjedde det knapt noen trodde kunne skje i et Vest-Europeisk land av i dag. Da stormet spanske polititropper redaksjonslokalene til den eneste baskiskspråklige avis, Egunkaria.

De sparket også inn dørene hjemme hos flere redaksjonsmeldemmer som ble dratt ut i natten for å avhøres gjennom flere døgn uten rett til egen advokat eller lege. Det skjedde bare fem år etter at spanske myndigheter hadde stengt en annen baskisk avis, Egin.

Baskisk presse var målet for Spanias "krig mot terror". Flere av redaksjonsmedlemmene og redaktørene ble torturert i hendene på spansk politi. Etter år med etterforskning ble det ikke bevist noen linker mellom de Egunkaria-ansatte og den væpnede separatistorganisasjonen Inaki Uria ETA. I mellomtiden var avisa holdt stengt og i praksis konkurs. En av redaktørene, Inaki Uria skrev dette fortvilte brevet fra spansk fengsel:

Letter from Aranjuez jail

Iñaki Uria

I have been imprisoned in the Aranjuez jail for more than a year for
editing Euskaldunon Egunkaria, then the only daily newspaper written
entirely in Basque. My name is Iñaki Uria. I'm 43 years old, and
I've spent 25 working in the Basque press. Basque is the oldest
living language in Europe. It has about 800,000 speakers, about 30
per cent of all inhabitants of the Basque Country. Three wars in the
19th century, the loss to Franco in the 20th, the 40 years of
Franco's dictatorship, and the waves of massive immigration worsened
the health of Basque language. It would be dead by now, save for the
efforts of many Basque people in the 1960's. They created Basque
primary schools, unified the language, and made it useful for all
aspects modern society, from art to science, from religion to
business, and, of course, including the press. Until then, the only
publications written in Basque were some Catholic journals, with
religious content, directed at rural folk.

So in the 1970's Basque journalists did not begin from scratch, but
nearly so. We were volunteers, without salaries, driven by day-to-
day necessities. Our young vocations as journalists and writers were
wholly involved in the effort to start Basque publications, even if
we had to work on something else —often during weekends— to earn a
living. We managed to inititate Argia, a weekly magazine, Susa,
first a literature magazine, then a publishing company, and Larrun,
a journal of political essays.

By the 1980's, we saw our projects becoming solid realities. We
realized that creating a daily newspaper was the next decisive step
on the way to normalizing our language—that is, enabling Basque
speakers to communicate in Basque in the normal ways people use
their language. We were young and brave —or crazy— enough to embark
in a new and difficult project. To begin with, who was going to
finance it? In the Basque Country there are no big Maecenas or
patrons for cultural projects. No big businessman or political
institution volunteered to support the project. They saw no future
in a Basque newspaper.

Apparently, all the principles of the market ran against it. But we
made it. We begged for money. And we got the support of hundreds of
citizens. It is these hundreds of individual stakeholders that
constitute the financial basis of Euskaldunon Egunkaria. After a
difficult birth, it was a success. The potential market of Basque
readers was small, but Egunkaria gained a significant part of it
and, slowly, came to occupy an important place among the papers in
the Basque Country. It gained prestige, credibility and influence.
The Basque autonomous institutions came to acknowledge its value and
began to contribute to its financing. One of its latest projects was
the edition of a series of local newspapers, initially distributed
for free, which hopefully would attract new readers to the Basque
language. And then, unexpectedly, one year ago, judge Juan del Olmo
from the Spanish special court called Audiencia Nacional decided to
close down Egunkaria.

Yes, it is as easy as that. In Spain, at the beginning of the 21 st
century, a judge closed a daily newspaper with 50,000 readers. He
sent 200 troops of the Guardia Civil (a paramilitary police force)
to close down Egunkaria's offices in five towns. They arrested 10
people, both current and former staff members. Those arrested
included the editor-in-chief, Martxelo Otamendi and myself, the
managing editor. I can tell you what happened to me.

February 20, 2003; about 1:15 a.m. I am alone at home; sleeping. The
bell rings; someone bangs on the door. I open it. Members of the
Guardia Civil enter with assault guns. There is also a judicial
secretary, or so I think. They handcuff me, arms on the back. They
search the house. They take all they want. There is no
witness. 3 hours and a half later, now blindfolded, they take me to
Egunkaria's headquarters. After searching these premises, they drive
me —still handcuffed and blindfolded— to Madrid —500 kilometers— to
the Guardia Civil's headquarters. They ask me questions, silly
questions. "Do you know who we are?
The Guardia Civil!" they proudly say. I have strong reasons to be
scared, for I am, after all, a Basque. Basque people know that lots
of people have been tortured by the Guardia Civil. Some of them have
been killed by torture: Joseba Arregi, Mikel Zabaltza and Gurutze
Yantzi are just three famous cases.

I have reasons to be frightened. I am not frightened because I have
done anything wrong. My `crime' was just editing a newspaper. I am
frightened because I am being held incommunicado in the hands of
Guardia Civil.

They take my jacket away, and leave me just my T-shirt and shirt. I
have only one blanket. I am freezing, I cannot sleep. I cannot see
either. I am blindfolded most of the time. When it is removed, I
still can't see much with my
myopic eyes: they have also taken my glasses away. I spend five long
days and nights incommunicado. I endure I don't know how many
interrogatory sessions. I suffer techniques for physical exhaustion
and psychological humiliation: they beat me, they put a plastic bag
over my head, they put a gun against my head and pull the trigger,
they aim at me with some red laser light in the dark of the
punishment cell… they do with me whatever they want. But, what for?
What do they seek from me? A confession. They want a connection
between ETA and Egunkaria: they want me to serve as the intellectual
and economic link and, therefore, as the justification for the
closure of Egunkaria.

There has never been any tie, not the smallest tie, not economic nor
of any other kind, between Egunkaria and ETA. Regarding this, I am
not worried. I am suffering a lot, but surely, after those five hard
days, the truth will be clear. After the isolation and torture, I am
led to the judge in the Audiencia Nacional. I am not allowed to be
assisted by, or appear with, or even talk to my attorney. The
judge's questions are all incriminatory. No evidence. He will not
listen to the truth. I decide not to declare. Everybody knows that
Audiencia Nacional is a special court reserved for Basques and big
drug dealers as well. Thus, he sends me to jail—a jail which is more
than 500 kilometers from my town.

Here in jail as far as the wardens are concerned I am another ETA
prisoner—a dangerous fellow. I, who have devoted myself to
journalism and other media, am a dangerous prisoner for Spain. This
has direct consequences for my quality of life. Basque political
prisoners live in a jail within the jail. To discourage visits we
are moved at least 500 kms. away from our hometowns and relatives —
many to more than 1,000 kms. Cell inspections, naked body
inspections, and isolation cells are the rule for Basques. Had our
skin been black we could talk of a racist regime, an apartheid
within the jail.

It is a year since I was sent here. There has been no trial. But
this is not surprising in Spain: you could spend up to four years in
prison without a trial—even if you are innocent! I've met people
here with two and three years of `pre-emptive' prison for being
members of organizations that work for prisoners' rights, or members
of a juvenile political organization, or an association of town
councilors. We are Basque political prisoners. We are accused of
being dangerous terrorists—with no evidence, and no trial!

The daily newspaper we worked so hard to create, Euskaldunon
Egunkaria, remains closed down. Its five sites are sealed, its bank
accounts closed, and the publishing company in process of
liquidation, following orders of the judge. Of the ten people
arrested on February 20, 2003, I am the only one in prison. On
October 20, 2003, nine people more were arrested. They all have been
freed.

The judge has turned down two requests by my attorney for my
freedom. My appeal is now in the hands of a higher court. The judge
says that "there is risk of flight". I tell him no. I do not intend
to run away, and I dare say he knows it. I suspect his real motives
are others. How could he keep the paper closed down if no one is
incriminated? If nobody had committed any crime, what would be his
justification for the closure?

What are the real reasons for this attack on freedom of speech,
freedom of the press, and the right for information? To understand
this we must consider it in the context of the Basque issue, the
conflict of the Basque Country with Spain.

Spain has been particularly skilful to take the big wave against
terrorism generated after the September 11 attack on America.
Spanish president Aznar, good servant of president Bush, began his
own attack against Basque nationalism after he won the elections in
Spain by an absolute majority. The attack intensified after 9/11
exploiting the international atmosphere the attack created. Aznar
equated Basque nationalism with terrorism, banned a political party,
almost 300 electors' associations, an association of town
councilors, and closed down a daily newspaper. This is, sad to say,
all within Spanish law, that's true. In 1996 he promised that his
policy against terrorism would always be within the law, that he
would not create his own terrorist group to make the war to Basques,
like former president Felipe González, from the Spanish Socialist
Party, did, and the so-called GAL group (27 people were killed
in "selective murders" from 1983 to 1989).

President Aznar has taught everybody a clear lesson: "you can do a
lot of things within the law. If you meet a limit, you just change
the law. That's the use of absolute majority." But we all know that
acting legally does not mean acting fairly or morally. Having
majority in parliament is never a guarantee for justice. Remember
Hitler. Many of his acts were legal within the framework of laws he
created.

During the last years, using ETA as an excuse, Spain has committed
big injustices against Basque people. Political, social, and
cultural organizations and media have been attacked, under the
umbrella of made-to-order laws. The Supreme Court, the
Constitutional Court, the Attorney General and the National Court of
Spain have all subordinated to the executive. I'm not alone
denouncing it. All Basque political parties and the Spanish parties
not in office have made the same claim. But mass media are highly
controlled, no less in Spain than in
Berlusconi's Italy. In a nutshell, the health of democracy in Spain
is in very bad condition.

In these circumstances, the rights of the Basque minority (2.6
million people) are ignored by the government of Spain (43 million
people). Most Basque people want ETA, the armed separatist
organization created during Franco's dictatorship, to end its
violent activities once and for all. But we also want the Spanish
government to stop the war against the Basque Country and its people
it conducts with its media, its police, its judiciary, and its
control of political and economic forces.

The conflict of the Basque Country is not new. Leave aside the wars
of the 19th century, and focus on the 20 th . On April 26, 1937, the
fascist —German, Italian, and Spanish— air force killed 2,800 people
in three hours, in Guernica. It was the first experimental air
bombing against civil population. These are the sad figures
of that war against Franco in the Basque Country:


• 10,800 soldiers killed in the front; 3,000 disappeared
• 4,700 soldiers and 10,500 civilians killed by air raids
• 17,500 soldiers disabled in the front
• 12,500 soldiers and 19,500 civilians injured by air raids
• 21,780 executed in the rearguard
• 34,550 prisoners
• 52,000 in work fields and concentration camps
• 150,000 refugees

This makes a total of 336,830 direct victims out of a total Basque
population of 1.5 million.1

Today there are more than 700 Basque prisoners distributed in jails
of Spain and France; there are more than 3,000 refugees. From 1968
there have been 1,150 people killed; almost 6,000 injured; 5,300
reported cases of torture; 30,000 detentions —10,000 of them for
demonstrations—, thousands of fines, billions of euros in losses.2

What's the relevance of these figures when compared to those
corresponding to the conflict between Israel and Palestine, or
between Russia and Chechnya? What if compared to those of Ireland?
Nothing spectacular. That's true. Moreover, unlike most of them, we
have no important lobby to work for our case in the U.S.A. Where can
we look for help?

After the end of the Spanish War, the Basque president José Antonio
de Agirre collaborated with the U.S.A., putting at its service
important men from his government in exile and his party —the Basque
Nationalist Party, PNV. In the war against communism Basque
Catholics were loyal allies. Neither president Agirre nor the PNV
expected that the U.S.A. would afterwards support Franco's
dictatorship. But Eisenhower and Dulles did so in 1953. Today Bush
and Aznar are friends. In the context of their "war against
terrorism" they don't distinguish among Basques, Algerians or Iraqis—
all are the same. The Spanish government doesn't distinguish among
Basque nationalists. Town councilors, journalists, businessmen, and
members of the parliament are basically assumed to be in league with
terrorists. Dialogue is banned as a means of resolving the conflict.
In Spain the war on Basques, portrayed as a brave battle against
terrorists, gains votes. The Basque Country is for Aznar's
government what Iraq is for the U.S.A.'s or Chechnya is for
Russia's. With a difference: in the Basque Country there are almost
no terrorist attacks in the last years. Why? Because the Basque
people do not support it.

There is no solution for this conflict without the commitment of
international organizations. The Spanish powers have closed down two
daily newspapers and a radio station in the Basque Country, with
absolute impunity.
Attacks on free speech should be decried throughout the European
Union. But who does so? The Basque Autonomous Region can do nothing
except complain about these measures. The Basque Autonomous
Parliament itself has been considered "law breakers" by the Spanish
government. The president of this
Parliament is `lynched' everyday by the government and mass media in
Madrid. Spanish President Aznar has never officially met Basque
President Ibarretxe in the last four years. What Ibarretxe presents
as a proposal to normalize the relations between Spain and the
Basque Country, Aznar sees as a way to break relations between them.
Most Basque people want a new political status for the Basque
Country within Europe. We know that concepts like sovereignty,
nation, and state are subject to change, especially in a Europe in
the process of re-inventing itself. But we are a European country
and we want to be recognized as such, without the obstacles posed by
Spain and France. We don't want terrorism, that's clear. Neither
ETA's nor anyone else's. But our country needs new ways. Ways of
peace and self-determination. Our country needs its voice. It needs
and it has the right to be listened to, to be respected, whatever it
democratically decides. But Spain
wants hear nothing about that: "There is no conflict with the Basque
Country. In fact, there is no Basque Country. All people are
Spanish. Anything else is terrorism."

I've been in prison a year for having worked for 13 years in
Euskaldunon Egunkaria. This is my only crime: being the managing
editor of the daily newspaper entirely written in the oldest living
language in Europe, an
endangered language, according to UNESCO. I'm proud of having been
part of Euskaldunon Egunkaria. Fourteen years ago our aim was to
create a paper that would be in Basque language, national, open,
plural, independent, militant, professional and modern. In thirteen
years of seeking the truth, we made those
aims reality, and we gained our readers' trust. The Basque
autonomous government partially supported the paper. The Spanish
government did not. Eventual support from the Spanish government
seems like a conceptual impossibility to Basque people. The Spanish
Government likes to say that it "loves the old Basque language".
They love it only as a dead language. They don't like to see its use
promoted, its vocabulary standardized and updated, and the necessary
infrastructure developed to keep it a live language. Linguistic
diversity is a treasure… but one to be kept in a museum. If Basque
is used in everyday life, or in mass media or posed as a
qualification for a job, that is called discrimination.

The Spanish linguistic policy towards Basque can be dubbed
just "extreme neo-liberalism". The policy of laissez faire. To leave
the language seriously wounded by Franco's regime to its natural
death. And when they see the Basques, against the tide, are making
small steps forward, as they have for the last fifteen years, they
attack through the press, the police, and the judiciary as we are
clearly witnessing in the Egunkaria case.

The party that has been in office in Spain for the last 8 years, the
Partido Popular, Franco's right wing heirs, now directly or
indirectly controls almost all TV channels, radio stations and
newspapers. In the Basque Country it has closed down two newspapers
and a radio station that it did not control. Recently the heads of
the Basque public TV were called to the Audiencia Nacional to
explain their coverage of an ETA interview.

This is the state of Liberty among us. Even this letter, I'm sure,
would not be published by any Spanish paper or journal whatsoever.
Not even by those few nearer to the opposition. I don't know whether
it may be published in an American one without annoying the `Spanish
friend'. When the Parliament of Idaho approved a memorial stating
the right of the Basque Country for self-determination, the Spanish
ambassador hurried up to look for the intervention of the White
House.

We know that the international community has a lot of urgent
injustices to deal with; we know that every day millions of people
have their rights as humans violated. Given this, how will you
remember a small daily newspaper that was closed down in a small
country that is between Spain and France, or its managing
editor that is in prison for more than a year? Perhaps we are too
small.

In the end, the Basque issue is just an issue about democracy; an
issue of respecting the civil and political rights of Basque people.
If we are a country, why can't we decide about our own future? Why
should anyone force us to be what we don't want to be? Why don't
they just ask Basque people what they want?

This was the context in which Euskaldunon Egunkaria survived for 13
years. We had an open mind. We thought we enjoyed a free press. We
thought we had the right to inform and being informed. We thought we
were free to think and to express what we thought. But we were
wrong. Spain has proven us wrong. Being Basque and supporter of the
Basque language is "to share the goals of terrorism" (judge Del
Olmo, Egunkaria closure decree). Calling the paper "national"
referring to the Basque nation, not to the Spanish one, is also "to
share the goals of terrorism". Being militant, that is, to work
under compromise and with low salaries, is "to share the goals of
terrorism" too.

The powerful don't usually apologize for the injustices they commit.
The U.S.A. didn't apologize for the victims of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. France and the United Kingdom didn't apologize for the
disasters in Africa and India. Spain didn't apologize for the
genocide in South and Central America… I don't expect the Spanish
Audiencia Nacional tell me "sorry, we have committed an injustice
with you; please, go on editing Egunkaria." No. Unfortunately, in
our world thinks don't work that way. I know that the path to truth
and justice is difficult
and silent. It could take years and a lot of work in the Basque
Country and also out of it. But there is no other way. If most
people in the Basque Country believe they constitute a nation and
want to live their future as a nation in Europe, speaking their own
language, they have the right to do so. If they want to have
newspapers, TV channels or whatever in Basque they have the right to
do so.

One day, Spain and France will have to accept a new status for the
Basque Country, with the exercise of self-determination for Basque
people. In Slovenia, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, for instance,
this has been possible. In Flanders and Walloonia too, they seek
their way. Why not in the Basque Country? Why shouldn't the Basque
people constitute a free nation in Europe, if that's what they want?
Wouldn't Europe be more democratic if the forms of organization
wished
by their citizens were respected?

Aranjuez (Spain), February 2004

1 Ugalde, Martin (2003), Idazlan politikoak. Periodismo politico.
Edited by J. M. Torrealdai, p. 72.
2 Ormazabal, Sabino (2003), Sufrimenduaren mapa (osatu gabea).
Bilbao: Robles-Arangiz.