Basque S.O.S. to the world

In Basque Country, a little piece of land in Southern Europe, there is no time for love. Historically, our people have tried to survive among several cultures and invasions surrounding us: indoeuropean, roman, goth, arab, frank, castilian... many peoples have passed around and have had contact with us. All of them are part of our heritage too, as our language and culture have been influenced by them. Actually, our neighbours are called Spain and France.

Although our struggle for keeping alive has never been easy, the last few years have been especially hard. Spain and France have increased prosecution of basque separatist ideas, and in that sense even the foundations of modern democratic states have been damaged, just as separation of powers. It has become commonplace judges asking policemen to sue somebody (like judge Garzon and Ertzaintza did with my friend Pablo and myself). The excuse of prosecuting terrorism is being used as well in some controversial processes, that  international jurists locate in the edge between democracy and fascism:

• Egin journal and radio: the first beat against freedom of expression since Franco's dictatorship stroke these two nationalist media in 1998.
• Herri Batasuna political party: spanish lawyers banned a political movement involving 140.000 people (15% of the voters of Basque Country) from 2001.
• Egunkaria journal: second strike against freedom of expression in 2003, this time attacking basque culture and language. Several journalists were tortured.
• 18/98 trial: this Kafka-styled 2007 trial involving 52 people has become the paradigm of spanish judge corruption about basque matters.

In the same way, thousands of people are involved in other trials, and hundreds of them are in jail. The accusation is always the same: terrorism, and there is not particular trouble in case of being true. But as I said before, this procedure is being employed in a corrupt way; in fact, it is often being used to make disappear "annoying people" from streets. Even more, lots of these people have nothing to do with violence -just peaceful politics-, or with basque nationalism itself -just social movements-, and there are many whose only fault is to work peacefully for basque culture and language. We have to notice as well the methods of police: torture in Basque Country is sadly often employed with arrested people, and people is impelled to confess "what police needs to" too many times; of course,  accusations made under torture are another reason for innocent people to be imprisoned. Although these violent methods are used in Basque Country, Spain and France, Spain is the most inclined to employ it, and Spanish Government has been told several times to stop them by international organisations like Amnesty International or United Nations to stop them. Anyway, this information is not included in spanish and french mainstream media when they publish that "hundreds of terrorist have been imprisoned last year"; even international press choose spanish/french official versions when talking about us, like Wall Street Journal did in 2007 ("Basque inquisition").

I am not nationalist, and I obviously don't support ETA's terrorism. In spite of that, I am not blind and I can see that prosecution against basque nationalists is reaching a dangerous level, and this is looking like more and more of that famous poem : "First they came for the communists...". I don't agree on banning any political movement and that's why I decided to make a  peaceful protest in 2002; I was accused of terrorism and imprisoned because of that. Now, I throw this message in a bottle to the electronic sea so send an S.O.S. to the world, although I know this claim can be used to sue me again. We need help to stop this witch hunt. Spain is still different and it seems that international dennounce and solidarity is the only language they can understand. There is no time for love in Basque Country.