Communique against the repression of the Social Movements in Catalonia..
AOB | 27.09.2001 16:43
During the last few months the Catalan Social Movements are suffering a very hard offensive carried out by the Spanish government and other political institutions. This offensive it is not only manifested by police repression but also by the corporate media's manipulation of information.
By using the strategy of linking people from the Social movements to the armed organisation ETA, the Ministry of Interior is trying to achieve the following:
- To recuperate the legitimacy of the different police and security forces. Public opinion has increasingly been questioning police conduct in recent times, examples of this are the raids and deportation of immigrants last August in Barcelona , or the police brutality during the demonstrations against the World Bank last June.
- To isolate, through criminalisation, different sections of the Movement that have a more autonomist approach (squatting groups, social centres and others), so to stop bigger movements, such as the antiglobalisation, to adopt methodologies that are more difficult to control by the powers, and could eventually become alternatives to parliamentarian "democracy" (political parties, elections, and so on).
- To discredit any political approach which encourages dialogue as a way of resolving the conflict in the Basque Country (which is the favoured option of most of the political, social, and unionised forces of Catalonia).
- To strengthen the hegemony of the Popular Party all over the Spanish state, whilst, on the other hand, trying to break its static share of the vote in Catalonia by accusing the whole of the Catalan Left of being in agreement with terrorism.
- To promote fear and insecurity within large parts of society (by exaggerating the incidence of terrorism) with the intention of tuning society into Right wing politics, with the goal of bringing society itself into demanding more repression. To hide the fact that the veritable social problems, and the real insecurity (labour precariousness, high cost of living, privatisation, etc...) are a direct consequence of the Right wing policies of the Popular Party's government and the capitalist system they promote.
All these objectives are currently a priority of the Popular Party’s government in the Spanish State, and they are being carried out even if this means indiscriminate arrests and jailings, tortures in police stations and detention centres so to get false auto-accusations, and continuous lies which are constantly repeated in the corporate mass media so to try to convert them into truths.
We are calling to society in general to show solidarity with the Social movements that are being criminalised and to demand the respect of human rights to these under detention. In order to resist the criminalisation of our movement, and to distance ourselves from the violence between the State and ETA, we,the Catalan Social movements,reaffirm ourselves in our processes of social transformation; in a public, participative and horizontal way.
Barcelona, September 2001
By using the strategy of linking people from the Social movements to the armed organisation ETA, the Ministry of Interior is trying to achieve the following:
- To recuperate the legitimacy of the different police and security forces. Public opinion has increasingly been questioning police conduct in recent times, examples of this are the raids and deportation of immigrants last August in Barcelona , or the police brutality during the demonstrations against the World Bank last June.
- To isolate, through criminalisation, different sections of the Movement that have a more autonomist approach (squatting groups, social centres and others), so to stop bigger movements, such as the antiglobalisation, to adopt methodologies that are more difficult to control by the powers, and could eventually become alternatives to parliamentarian "democracy" (political parties, elections, and so on).
- To discredit any political approach which encourages dialogue as a way of resolving the conflict in the Basque Country (which is the favoured option of most of the political, social, and unionised forces of Catalonia).
- To strengthen the hegemony of the Popular Party all over the Spanish state, whilst, on the other hand, trying to break its static share of the vote in Catalonia by accusing the whole of the Catalan Left of being in agreement with terrorism.
- To promote fear and insecurity within large parts of society (by exaggerating the incidence of terrorism) with the intention of tuning society into Right wing politics, with the goal of bringing society itself into demanding more repression. To hide the fact that the veritable social problems, and the real insecurity (labour precariousness, high cost of living, privatisation, etc...) are a direct consequence of the Right wing policies of the Popular Party's government and the capitalist system they promote.
All these objectives are currently a priority of the Popular Party’s government in the Spanish State, and they are being carried out even if this means indiscriminate arrests and jailings, tortures in police stations and detention centres so to get false auto-accusations, and continuous lies which are constantly repeated in the corporate mass media so to try to convert them into truths.
We are calling to society in general to show solidarity with the Social movements that are being criminalised and to demand the respect of human rights to these under detention. In order to resist the criminalisation of our movement, and to distance ourselves from the violence between the State and ETA, we,the Catalan Social movements,reaffirm ourselves in our processes of social transformation; in a public, participative and horizontal way.
Barcelona, September 2001
AOB