Republican News · Thursday 22 August 2002

Pity the Basque nation

BY ROISIN DE ROSA

The Basque nation has suffered a history of foreign conquest and occupation. In our times, from the moment when Franco, in 1936, aided by Nazi Germany, overthrew the democratically elected government, the Basques have suffered violent and vicious repression of their movement for independence.

d today, when many would point to the present Aznar government, including the sons and daughters of Franco's regime, the story goes on - the repression continues. In recent days, the Spanish premier, Aznar, has taken the initial steps to ban the political party, Batasuna, the voice of the Basque movement for autonomy and independence. Over 500 young activists are held in jails, isolated in prisons all over Spain and France. The vain attempt to crush the century old national movement has taken a yet more repressive course.

A very interesting meeting to discuss the course of the Basque Struggle took place in Dublin last Thursday. Paddy Woodworth, author of The Dirty War: Clean Hands, which exposed the covert killing of Basque nationalists by the Spanish state, and Sinn Féin councillor Eoin Ó Broin, whose book on the youth movement in the Basque country is to be published later this year, spoke to an audience that included a number of Basque people. It was an interesting exchange of views and one that raised many important questions about today's Europe.

Paddy set the scene. He raised important questions about the origin of the struggle for independence by the Basque people. He talked of how the Basque nation has been occupied and yet has never lost its distinct national identity, language, and culture. What makes its struggle for independence legitimate?

He spoke of how in the fifties, in response to the continuing repression under Franco, there grew up a youth movement, a student study group, out of which ETA emerged and a path which included armed struggle. Many in this movement held to the strategy of these times: action which leads to repression which leads to resistance and again to action, and so on, to building a revolutionary movement, which would overthrow the Franco dictatorship.

To this Franco had responded like the proverbial Pavlovian dog - with brutal repression. With the approach of Franco's death, the Basque people rejected, by the clearest of majorities, the new proposed constitution for Spain, and voted their support for autonomy and the right to national self-determination.

Eoin dealt with the later years - the ceasefire, the subsequent failure of the Lizarra Garazi project of negotiations, the refusal of the Spanish government to negotiate, and the following repression by Aznar's government. Three times the government has banned the mass youth movement, arrested and imprisoned their leaderships.

Young activists have recently been arrested, charged and sentenced to long years in jail, often in solitary confinement, for taking part in demonstrations and protests. Two weeks ago, Aznar began the first steps to delegalise the political party, Batasuna. Visitors and tourists to the Basque country come back with tales of the frightening behaviour of the Guardia Civil, violently attacking demonstrations in the attempt to ban political dissent.

Do the current policies of the Spanish government allow alternatives to the current strategies of the Basque movement, when it is so clear that one party does not intend any negotiation with the other party?

How can it be said that today's Spain is democratic, when the government's response to huge support for national autonomy amongst the Basque people is to ban the political representatives of this movement, with whom, at the end of the day, they have to negotiate?

d what do these questions imply about the EU of today? These were the questions the discussion raised. Hard questions.