Press statement 9 February 2008

Protest action against recent banning on Basque political parties EHAK and ANV

The Basque Information Centre calls to protest against the banning by the Spanish justice at 8 February on the Basque political parties EHAK and ANV through casting a vote on the website www.vredesprocesbaskenland.nl for the banned party ANV.

For more information you can contact us at info@baskinfo. Or visit our website on www.baskinfo.org

In favor of the right for self-determination of the Basque Country!
For an independent and socialist Basque Country!
Vote ANV!

Again Spain bans democratic political parties from the Basque Country. Again an important part of the Basque voters are excluded from participating in elections, now it concerns the Spanish parliamentary elections of 9 March. After a previous ban on the political party Batasuna and successors from the Basque leftwing independence movement – since 2003 all parties representing the choice for a leftwing and independent Basque Country are banned – Spain now bans the political parties EHAK and ANV. While Spanish politicians are demanding from the Basque independent movement only using democratic means to achieve their political objectives, they make it impossible for that same movement to participate in elections. The so-called ‘Transition’ – the transition from dictatorship to a parliamentary democracy – is not only never completed but is also partly reversed with these latest banning.

The Accion Nacionalista Vasca, the ANV, dates from far before this ‘Transition’, even from before the Spanish Civil War and the following dictatorship. The ANV is a leftwing party that split off from the rightwing Basque nationalist movement. Shoulder to shoulder with a.o. the Spanish social democrats they fought before, during and after the Civil War against the fascism of the Franco-regime. The small ANV was a loyal defender of the Second Republic, in the end defeated by Franco. The party participated in the struggle with four battalions and lost 550 members defending the Republic. In the last years of the Republic the ANV even took part in the Basque government and after the victory of the fascists the ANV was active in Basque exile governments together with the social democrats and committees for the preparation for the return of democracy in Spain.

The ANV is used to be banned, she has been illegal for 40 years. But she could never have expected that her former brothers in arms of the Spanish Socialist Party PSOE would – more than 30 years after the death of Franco – conspire with the inheritors of the dictator to ban the party again.

The ANV’s goal is a leftwing and independent Basque Country. The ANV wants to achieve that aim by democratic means – she rejects the use of violence in her founding documents – and demands of Spain that the political system had to be adjusted to make this possible. In other words, the ANV demands that the Basques are allowed to decide their political future themselves. Madrid reacts with a ban. Not only on the ANV, but on every organisation that pursues these goals. The main argumentation of Madrid is that these organisations pursue the same goals as ETA without condemning the means ETA uses. With that argumentation not only ETA's’means are banned, but also their aims. That’s called political prosecution.

The Basque Information Centre calls for protest against the banning and to stand up for the democratic right of the Basque people to cast a symbolic vote for the ANV on this website.

With kind regards

BIC
Pobox 2884
3500 GW Utrecht
 info@baskinfo.org
www.baskinfo.org
www.vredesprocesbaskenland.nl