Batasuna

Herri Batasuna's logo

Batasuna (Unity) is a Basque political party based mainly in Spain but with a French presence, which has traditionally acted as the political branch of the Basque illegal terrorist group ETA. It is part of the Basque National Liberation Movement which includes social organizations, trade unions, youth (Jarrai and Gazteriak, now merged in Haika and Segi), and women's groups (Egizan). It has been banned in Spain since 2003, ostensibly for failing to condemn the atrocities of ETA and for alleged ties between its members and the violent group, but is not illegal in France. It is included in the European Union list of terrorist persons and organisations. In spite of its banning, Batasuna has organized or supported numerous rallies, public actions and several workplace strikes. Batasuna voters have been encouraged to vote for other abertzale parties since the banning.

History and outline

The party was founded in April 1978 as Herri Batasuna (Unity of the People), a coalition of leftist nationalist political groups following the Basque region's rejection of the new Spanish constitution. Its constituent parties had been called together by senior Basque nationalist Telesforo de Monzón in a 1977 meeting called "the table of Alsasua." Herri Batasuna's founding convention was held in Lekeitio, home of Santiago Brouard who was then the leader of HASI (Herriko Alderdi Sozialista Iraultzailea or Revolutionary Socialist People's Party). The party won 170,000 votes (a 13% showing in the Basque Country) in its first general election in March 1979.

Arrano beltza (black eagle), Basque nationalist modern version of the ancient arms of Navarre.

On November 20, 1984, Dr Brouard was assassinated by two members of the GAL while treating a child at his medical clinic in Bilbao. The killing is perhaps the only one performed by the Spanish government-directed death squad within Spain itself.

In 1986, the administration of Felipe González organised a referendum to keep Spain inside NATO. The Electoral law was to count only votes in Spanish, while votes in other languages would count as null and void. Herri Batasuna resented that rule, which it considered a ploy to prevent Basque nationalists from influencing the election, and called on its supporters to vote No in Spanish. When the Spanish administration changed the rules so as to count votes in the other languages of Spain as well, Herri Batasuna called for supporters to vote in Basque. The vote in the referendum was to keep Spain in NATO, but the majority of voters in the Basque Autonomous Community stood strongly against it. Herri Batasuna was not the only party asking for a no vote.

From 1998 to 2001, Batasuna assumed the name Euskal Herritarrok (We Basque Citizens).

The current party spokesmen are Arnaldo Otegi, and Joseba Permach Gorroño. Otegi was a member of the armed groups ETA-political-military (since 1977 or before, until 1981), and ETA-military (since 1981) and served several years in prison for bank assault. He is married and has two children. After having been brought to court early this year (2005) he was set free on parole.

Another important member of Batasuna is José Antonio Urrutikoetxea, alias Josu Ternera, the main leader of ETA between 1987 and 1989 and accused of a number of homicides like the massacre of 21 people at Hipercor - a shopping center in Barcelona. He was imprisoned in France after 1989, released after finishing his sentence and was transferred to Spanish prisons, where he stayed for 2 more years until his release by the Constitutional Court, which stipulated that he had served his prison term in France. He was elected to the Basque parliament between 1999 and 2001,and was appointed as his party's representative in the Human Rights commission at the Basque Parliament. He disappeared when the Spanish courts decided to reopen his charges, and present new ones about his current membership in ETA. Presently he lives in hiding and is considered one of the leaders of ETA that are pushing for negotiations.

On 14 November 2004, during a mass meeting in San Sebastian the party leader Arnaldo Otegi asked for an end to the armed conflict in the region, which has been continuing for decades.

Following the February 2006 deaths of ETA members Igor Miguel Angulo Iturrate, 32, (due to an apparent suicide by hanging) and Ricardo Sainz Olmos, 41, (by a heart attack), public commemmorations of the dead prisoners were banned by Basque authorities. Amid a period of independent kale borroka street attacks on the offices of the Basque Nationalist Party and other establishment targets, Batasuna together with the union Langile Abertzaleen Batzordeak convoked a day of protest and general strike on March 9.[1] On the morning of the strike, ETA detonated several bombs near highways, with no injuries. Employers reported scant overall participation in the strike, approximately 0.5% of private sector workers, 1% of government workers and 3-4% of workers in education. Tens of thousands of Basques joined mass protests, while others blocked rail lines and roads and occupied municipal halls.[2] Batasuna leader Arnaldo Otegi was ordered to appear in court to answer for the bomb attacks and disruption, but delayed his appearance repeatedly on the grounds of illness.

Electoral participation

Batasuna had around 200,000 voters and won 10% of the vote in the 2001 regional elections after boycotting the 2000 general election. Batasuna had representatives in the European Parliament and in the parliaments of Navarre and the provinces of the Basque autonomous community. It also ruled some 62 local councils[3], and had members in many more. Currently, Batasuna has lost all its representatives in the Spanish Parliaments, since regaining some their seats in elections held after the banning of the party.

While the party has been barred from formally taking part in elections since 2003 (see below), it has coordinated a variety of forms of participation (or quantifiable nonparticipation) in recent elections. After the May 2003 provincial and local elections, followers of the local lists protested claiming the council seats corresponding to the invalid votes (127.000, a 10% of the total vote in the Basque Country).

In May 2004, a list named Herritarren Zerrenda (Citizens' List) was presented in Spain and France to the European Parliament Election, 2004. Spanish tribunals rejected it, as a successor of Batasuna. However, the HZ list in France remained legal. HZ candidates in Spain then campaigned for using the French HZ ballot also in Spain, which was to be counted as null vote. There were more than 98,000 null votes in the Basque Autonomous Country and more than 15,000 in Navarre.

HZ leaders interpret the high abstention rate, which was 12% of the total vote, to mean that most of the nulls were for HZ, since in the previous European elections the null vote was less than 1%,

File:YesVoteSpainReferendum.PNG

Distribution of 'yes' votes by province in the Spanish referendum.

Batasuna called for a No vote on the European Constitution proposal in the referenda to be held in Spain and in France in 2005. The Basque Country & Navarre and Catalonia were comparatively less supportive of 'yes', but approved the referendum by a narrow majority.

For the Basque elections of 2005, Batasuna presented lists of candidates but they were dismissed as illegal. After the dissolution of the Basque parliament, Batasuna lost all their remaining elected representatives. Simultaneously, lists were presented by the new political group Aukera Guztiak ("All the options"). The Spanish prosecutors and the parties PP and PSOE contended that Aukera Guztiak was actually another front for Batasuna and tried to find evidence leading to its illegalization. The Basque Government and the Batasuna spokesmen protested against these attempts. The issue went all the way to the Spanish Constitutional Court that confirmed the ruling of the Spanish Supreme Court, forbidding the AG lists.

Once the campaign had started, a previously unknown party named Communist Party of the Basque Territories (Partido Comunista de las Tierras Vascas - Euskal Herrialdeetako Alderdi Komunista) announced that they were ready to bring the programs of Batasuna and AG to the parliament. The party had been legally registered in 2002 but had no known activity until 2005. Like those parties, representatives of EHAK-PCTV have refused to explicitly condemn the ETA attacks. The People's Party requested that the Spanish government conducts investigations to ban EHAK-PCTV too, though the State Legal Service (Abogacía General del Estado) and the Attorney General's Office (Fiscalía General del Estado) found no evidence to support legal actions against the party. Batasuna asked their supporters to vote for EHAK-PCTV.

In the Basque elections of April 17, 2005, EHAK-PCTV obtained 150.188 votes (12,5%), entering the Basque Parliament with nine seats. Aralar obtained one.

Declaration of illegality by the Spanish state

The party denies any links to ETA. However, proponents of the party's illegalization point to a coincidence of Batasuna and ETA's strategies, active participation in ETA extorsion campaigns and the deviation of resources to fund ETA activities. A significant number of Batasuna leaders have been imprisoned because of their activities in ETA. The party has never condemned any attack by ETA.

There have been a number of attempts to ban the party, and it has frequently changed its name as part of the effort to avoid this, being called Herri Batasuna, then becoming part of the Euskal Herritarrok coalition in the 1990s. Members of the Basque left consider the Spanish government's efforts against Batasuna and its successors to be part of an organized campaign targeting the social support for the independence movement. They point to government crackdowns against the newspaper Egin, the radio station Herri Irratia and the network of pubs that were gathering places for the left.

In 2002 there were renewed attempts by the Spanish government to ban the party. In June the parliament passed legislation that outlawed parties under certain conditions, on the grounds of their support for terrorism. In July Batasuna was fined € 24 million for vandalism and street violence in 2001. Following an ETA car bomb attack on August 4 the Spanish parliament was recalled. The party was suspended for three years by Judge Baltasar Garzón on August 27 to allow him to investigate the party links to ETA. Garzón and the government present 23 arguments for the ban, focusing on the party's refusal to condemn ETA attacks, reference to detainees as political prisoners, collaboration with other banned abertzale forces, and ETA's support in communiqués for Batasuna's political strategy.[4]

The ban prohibits their representatives from contesting elections, holding public demonstrations or rallies and freezes their assets. On the 26th the Spanish parliament voted for an indefinite ban, 295 to 10. The party's main offices in Pamplona were closed by the police and further offices in San Sebastian, Bilbao and Vitoria were targeted.

Before the prohibition effort, a dissenting minority left the party to form Aralar. Aralar is against armed struggle in the current circumstances of the Basque Country.

In 2003, Batasuna was declared illegal in Spain, after a reform of the law on political parties. The decision automatically cut them off from the state funding received by all legal political parties. In spite of legal text forbidding its reorganization under another name, former members planned running for the provincial and local elections of May 2003, under the names of Autodeterminaziorako Bilgunea (AuB, Meeting Place for Self-determination) and a plethora of local lists. Most of these lists were considered to be a front for Batasuna by the Spanish Supreme Court. This decision was confirmed by the Spanish Constitutional Court. In spite of this, AuB campaigned for invalid votes.

See also

• The major Basque party is the moderate Basque Nationalist Party Eusko Alderdi Jeltzalea in Basque, Partido Nacionalista Vasco in Spanish, hence its initials EAJ-PNV.

External links

• BBC news story regarding call to stop armed conflict 14 November, 2004
• Old versions of Batasuna.org homepage, (down at March 28, 2004) at Internet archive.
• New Batasuna homepage