2023-05-20 07:15:27
His public denunciation, from Covite, put into focus the terror lists with which EH Bildu strains 44 ETA members -seven convicted of blood crimes- to be elected in the municipal elections of 28-M.
How long did it take you to compare the 44 ETA members that appeared on the lists? It was a job of almost two weeks since the electoral lists were published. We were reviewing one by one, in each municipality of the Basque Country and Navarra. We contrasted the information on the convictions of each of the 44 ETA members with the newspaper archive of various media and, in some cases, also with the judicial sentences that we had.
Los seven who have blood crimes say they will not collect the record. Do you believe it?
We never tend to give credibility to the words that come from the social and political environment of ETA. They will have to prove it with facts. And of course we will be waiting for your words to become deeds. If not, we will report it. But we believe that they have been so cornered that they will have no choice but to resign from their public posts.
Why do you think they took that step of saying they won’t take office?
All the media and social pressure on this decision, absolutely unworthy and humiliating for the victims, to place murderers on their lists was taking its toll. They have realized that this was too obscene, even for them, and have stepped back, not because they think it is immoral to feature murderers on their lists, but for convenience. As always with the nationalist left, everything they do is riddled with tactics and they never do it out of ethical conviction. They continue to justify ETA’s criminal trajectory, and if COVITE had not denounced the presence of murderers on their lists, they would have continued there and, of course, they would have collected their electoral record.
The 37 who do not resign, are they being whitewashed? By those?
It seems immoral to us that these people are going to take possession of their certificate if they get it. It is true that the cases of the murderers were the most worrisome and the most painful for the victims, but those 37 candidates also contributed, through their membership of ETA, to all the crimes that this terrorist organization committed. Those who launder them are those who say that the fact that they are in the institutions is a victory for democracy, that we should be glad that they are doing politics instead of killing. The dilemma between terrorism and politics is a fallacy. First, because who is not going to prefer that the institutions be there rather than killing? Posed like this, probably no one is going to say that they prefer that they are killing. But that’s not what it’s about. The dilemma is not either terrorism or politics, but how these people reintegrate into society once they have served their sentences. Of course, the worst way for them to do it is to be proud of their criminal past and awarded positions on electoral lists precisely for not having repudiated their crimes. Or have we seen a public statement from these EH Bildu candidates condemning terrorism? Or have we seen on the EH Bildu lists people who have belonged to ETA, but who have condemned terrorist violence, such as Urrusolo Sistiaga, Carmen Guisasola or Ibón Etxezarreta? We must not forget that ETA and all those who supported and accompanied them considered terrorism as yet another way of doing politics. Moreover, it was a fundamental instrument to achieve their political objectives. In the more than forty years of ETA’s criminal history, the terrorist organization was almost always represented in the institutions. The only time they didn’t have that representation was during the few years they were outlawed.
There was talk of making the lists or Bildu illegal. The Prosecutor’s Office says that there are no reasons because ETA no longer exists. Can?
I am not going to assess the legal decisions made by the Prosecutor’s Office.
Do you see a lack of political will to carry out this process? Because?
UPyD proposed in 2012 in the Congress of Deputies to outlaw the political brands of the nationalist left and both the PP and the PSOE voted against it. There has never been a political will, since ETA stopped killing, to outlaw the nationalist left. That is not something new. And there is no such will because ETA’s main demand to abandon terrorism, when the negotiation with Zapatero took place, was precisely that its political brands become legal again. This concession was made to them and both the PP and the PSOE assumed it and executed it with all its consequences. Even Zapatero himself recently acknowledged this publicly, when until now he had always denied that any price had been paid for ETA to stop killing. It is evident that this price has been paid and that those of us who have paid it have been the victims, with impunity and having to see people in public institutions who justify the murder of our relatives.
Who should have a party like EH Bildu in the institutions? Do you understand that almost everyone defends its legality? It is best for EH Bildu to be in the institutions. They are in the institutions defending the same political project as when they were Herri Batasuna, Euskal Herritarrok or whatever their political brand was at all times. There are even the same leaders. Otegi is probably the longest-serving political leader in our country. He led the nationalist left when he killed and he continues to be there now that ETA no longer kills, but without having renounced the same political objectives for which ETA killed. He was never so suffocated, in every way, the world of the nationalist left than when they were outlawed. They practically had no money to make banners. They are the ones who most urgently needed to return to the institutional arena. And I understand that almost everyone defends their legality because, indeed, they are legal. This is how the Constitutional Court decreed it, even though it did so reversing previous rulings from the Supreme Court, the National Court and even the European Court of Human Rights. But it is one thing for them to be legal and another thing for them to be a democratic political force, which clearly is not. A political party that builds a large part of its identity on a legacy of crimes, persecution, threats, and extortion of those who did not think like them, and that shamelessly despises its victims, cannot be considered democratic.
“Never was the world of the Abertzale left so suffocated, in every way, than when they were outlawed”
What worries Covite now?
We worry about many things. That the new generations in the Basque Country and Navarra are growing up with a suffocating presence of ETA in the streets in the form of graffiti, banners or demonstrations to demand the release of terrorists. We are concerned to see how some institutions in the Basque Country, mainly town halls, promote a narrative in which terrorists are considered “victims of human rights violations” simply for having been arrested or tried and imprisoned to do justice to their crimes. and that this vision be transferred to institutional web pages. We are concerned to see that, if it were not for the work we do from associations like COVITE, nobody would know about these issues and nobody would denounce them. Every day I am more convinced that our work is essential, because if not, the degree of legitimacy that ETA would have in Euskadi and Navarra would probably be much greater.
“They will continue saying that, by denouncing all their outrages, we oppose peace and coexistence”
What do you think will be next?
More of the same. They will continue to provoke the victims by saying that the murderers of our relatives are “political prisoners.” They will continue saying that, by denouncing all their outrages, we oppose peace and coexistence. That we are “ultra-right” and that we do not know what campaigns. It is nothing new, they also told us, when ETA was active, that we, the victims, were the terrorists. They told us this at the peaceful rallies we held to protest the murder or kidnapping that had taken place that day. We always had a counter-demonstration in front of us with enraged people telling us these barbaric things. I think many people are unaware of the enormous effort that victims of terrorism in the Basque Country have had to make to conquer the public space that was denied to us. We have done it in the midst of humiliation and conditions of contempt, but we have done it because we needed it so that intolerance would not end up crushing freedom in every inch of our society. Now that we have conquered that space, we have the responsibility to ask the part of Basque society that made us invisible to make the effort that corresponds to it and that it is not doing, which is to look in the mirror of the history of ETA to wondering where they were as they persecuted, threatened, and murdered their neighbors, co-workers, or even friends. If that part of Basque society closes the book on the ETA horror story as if nothing had happened, it will be closing its own future as a mature and democratic society. It is not about doing the victims a favour, but about restoring their dignity and rebuilding the moral fabric that was deeply damaged after decades of terrorism.
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