Llibertat! – Saoirse! No.2

international | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Thursday March 09, 2006 23:10 by Catalan Solidarity - Catalan Solidarity: Ireland Committee catalansolidarity at hotmail dot com

E-news service of the Catalan Solidarity: Ireland Committee

March 2006 E-news service No.2

1. INTRODUTION
2. WHO WE ARE
3. REGIONAL POLICE CONTINUE WITH ILLEGAL RAID
4. NATIONAL UNITY DEMONSTRATION – BARCELONA
5. INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY MANIFESTO
6. STOP POLITICAL ANNIHILATION – A SOLIDARITY MESSAGE
7. COMMUNIQUÉ FROM HORTA & RESCAT
8. SOLIDARITY WITH RUBEN & IGNASI
9. FAX IN SOLIDARITY WITH RUBEN & IGNASI
10. SOLIDARITY BENEFIT FOR RUBEN & IGNASI

Catalan Solidarity

1. INTRODUCTION

This is the second e-news service of the Catalan Solidarity: Ireland Committee titled Llibertat! – Saoirse!

Our first issued e-news service has been widely welcomed in Ireland by political activists as well as a number of political and prisoner organisations who have since taken the opportunity to subscribe as a gesture of international solidarity.

Llibertat! – Saoirse! has been equally welcomed by Catalan activists from across Ireland as well as in Scotland, England and Wales.

It is viewed as an important development in generating greater solidarity and awareness during these politically awakening and historic times for Catalonia.

2. WHO WE ARE: Catalan Solidarity: Ireland Committee

Catalan Solidarity: Ireland Committee was established to provide practical support and solidarity to Catalan political prisoners, their supporters as well as information on the continuing struggle for self determination and socialism in Catalonia to challenge the media portrayal on political militants that are being fuelled by a regime, its media, its paramilitary forces, and mounting repressive laws and legislations.
In order to assist these goals we have established an online news and information service to comment on the current political situation within Catalonia, from within the prisons and on the streets.

As part of our work we aim to provide information events, pickets and solidarity protests etc to highlight various campaigns and activities and to raise awareness of the political situation in Catalonia.

We urge both Catalans living in Ireland and other non-Catalans across Ireland to write to Catalan Political Prisoners, offering them both continued solidarity and support.

We intend to issue regular news, comments & activities via email by Llibertat! – Saoirse!

At present our website is under construction however, we hope that our work will inspire you to find out more!

3. REGIONAL POLICE CONTINUE WITH ILLEGAL RAID

Rescat statement on the illegal raid of Zigor’s house by the Mossos d’Esquadra (regional police)

In the morning of 9th February the Mossos d’Esquadra appeared at Zigor’s flat, where his partner lived, telling the neighbours they had received a report of a break-in. Four individuals in uniform arrived at 5 in the morning last Friday asking the neighbours to open the door of the building and they entered the flat without forcing its door (it is not known whether they had the key for the flat or a ‘clau mestra’ – Skeleton Key). When leaving, they asked the neighbours to go in the flat to see where the thieves had escaped through (apparently through the kitchen window) and asked them for the telephone number of the person in charge of the flat. They left and left the light on and the door open.

Three days later, the neighbours phoned Zigor’s father because they thought it was strange that nobody had been in the flat after the facts and that the door was still open. Zigor’s father, along with the lawyer Frances Arnau, called in the flat and realised about the irregularity of the situation, because nothing had been lifted from the flat, except for a pair of sunglasses, a transport card and a set of keys for the flat. All papers and books with political or alternative social content had been touched and were laying everywhere on the floor, all mixed so that it was not possible to know whether anything was missing or not. The window of the kitchen had been taken off from inside the flat and had been left on the floor carefully. It is obvious that it is completely impossible that some supposed thieves had used it as their way in.

All these reasons make us doubt that anybody broke in, but rather they point to an illegal police raid, since it is difficult to understand why the Mossos would leave the flat the way they did (open and without telling the owners), and that nothing valuable is missing.

A denouncement has been presented to the Mossos d’Esquadra, but it is being dealt with in a very dodgy way, without any kind of explanation or investigation. Moreover, they have insinuated that the denouncement will be put aside.

On behalf of Zigor’s parents, and with the support of Rescat, we intend to take this denouncement to wherever it is necessary so that the facts become clear and to make this police body assume its responsibility and explain the reasons of this illegal raid.

Resact (Collective in support of political prisoners)
Barcelona, 23 Feb 2006.

4. NATIONAL UNITY DEMONSTRATION – BARCELONA
The following link is to some pictures of the demonstration of the unitary campaign for self-determination on Saturday (11th Feb) through Barcelona,
http://barcelona.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/236543
of which between 4.000 - 5.000 assisted. Organisers of the campaign said it was a very positive result, and all kinds of activities are going to be organized for the coming months.

The good thing about this is that organizations that have worked separately for years in spite of various past failed attempts to create a unitary platform (PSAN, MDT, Maulets, Endavant...), are now working together and I think this may lead to a fusion or, at least, closer links between them. There are not so many independentist socialists as to be so divided, usually because of personalities and because nobody dares make the first step towards unity, which would involve renouncing to each organization's name, informal leadership, etc...

5. INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY MANIFESTO

FREE YOURSELF FROM THE WALLS THAT OPRESS YOU!
LET’S BUILD AN ANTI-PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY!

Last year several feminist and anti-patriarchal collectives from the independentist left met under the slogan ‘Let’s Reclaim March 8th’. This year we are here yet again because, March the eighth must be a day of struggle, and because we believe it is necessary to position ourselves apart from the institutionalised feminism. We believe that March the eighth must be a daily struggle and that must be extended beyond the commercial campaigns and the demands.

We also demand, condemn and claim to end with all forms of oppression that women are still subjected to for the only reason of being a woman. But we also claim class feminism, as we understand feminism as a rejection of all forms of domination: personal, social and national.

We also suffer a form of dominance within the civic law that the Barcelona Council has imposed upon us. A law that cuts down our personal and collective liberties; criminalising and taking off the streets everything that annoys them. Without caring, again, about the popular mobilizations that have taken place against such law. Denying and repressing, systematically, the social movements.

Institutionalised politics have only given answers to specific demands of legal equality, but not real equality, between men and women. By creating certain legal reforms: such as the integral law against the violence of gender. A law to do just enough to keep out of trouble, and to become only a mere declaration of principles because the institutions haven’t yet given the necessary resources and the tools to be applicable. In fact applying such law would make their power structure to shake: the capitalist and patriarchal system.

To overcome these systems, which feed back to each other, we must set ourselves up as individuals to build a new relationship pattern between people. Each one of us is responsible for this process. It’s a job that we must do continually. And overall it is our collective project to transform reality and to achieve this new society that we desire.

Issued By Fabrica Roja, Justa Revolta, Dones del Sac,
Dolça Lluita, ENDAVANT, MAULETS, MDT, CAJEI

6. STOP POLITICAL ANNIHILATION

In this issue we would like to add our voice, our call, for an end to the political policy of extermination by the Spanish Government following the murder of two Basque political prisoners whilst in prison within a matter of months. Besides the suspicious circumstances of their deaths, the Spanish Government is determined to eliminate any way they can, political opposition and resistance which they face from the numerous organised political collectives and organisations throughout the State.

Those imprisoned are without doubt easy targets that face a daily regime of brutality: beatings, torture and isolation, and the practice of these unlawful activities such as the dispersal of prisoners, denial of free association and education is widespread.

The Spanish State denies and obstructs with every means at their disposal the right to self-determination which the Catalan, Basque and Galician nations struggle daily for. And as we have witnessed even murder will be allowed. An injury to one is an injury to all!

Catalan Solidarity: Ireland Committee

7. COMMUNIQUÉ FROM PRISONER SUPPORT GROUP’S

This is a communiqué from the prisoner support groups, Horta (Catalan Countries) & Rescat, to the prisoners, and also a communiqué from Laura & Diego.

Communique from Laura Riera & Diego Sánchez
Picassent (Catalan Countries) March 4th 2006

Salut comrades,

These lines will get to you all surely by the end of March to Picassent Prison, l’Horta, where we are two of the Catalan political prisoners. And with this small text we would like to send through these cold walls and wire netting, a warm revolutionary embrace to all those people who have traveled to this goal to condemn and to make known the Spanish penitentiary politics and to show solidarity with the political prisoners.

From inside we want to say to you that nothing has changed within the Spanish prisons since the new government of Rodríguez Zapatero.

Regarding the repression upon the political dissidence, Zapatero’s party PSOE is still on the vengeance and authoritarian path that previously was marked by José María Aznar (PP) and the extreme right.

Moreover in this small communiqué we couldn’t leave aside with all our rage and emotion to mention on the last tragic consequence of the penitentiary politics of PP-PSOE. On February 27th the Basque political prisoner Igor Angulo appeared dead in his cell in Cuenca (Spanish State) prison. Igor has been a victim of the dispersal politics, humiliations and tortures that the Spanish monarchic democracy applies against the political prisoners, in the same way as within the last few years were José Angel Altzuguren (died in Soria prison) Juan Carlos Hernando (died in Albacete) or José María Aranzamendi (in Alcalá-Meco).

But their penitentiary and repressive politics won’t be able to stop the eagerness for freedom of the Catalan and Basque people. They have used all their weapons and hate upon the political prisoners. They call us terrorists, they disperse us around hundreds of miles, they torture us, they isolate us, they don’t allow us to study or to go out to the yard, and definitely they try to break us up as persons. But they won’t be successful, and they won’t be because we fight for freedom and the right of the oppressed nations to decide against a State that denies speech and the existence of the Catalan and Basque nations. We fight to see in a near future a free Catalan and Basque Countries without exploitation, tortures or impositions.

We send you a huge hug from inside these tall walls of Picassent, where we are still fighting as you all are doing day after day in each town and neighbourhood of the Catalan Countries.

Freedom Catalan political prisoners!

Picassent (l’Horta), 4 de març de 2006

Communiqué of Rescat & Prisoner Support Group Horta

Friends and comrades,

Near by the walls of Picassent jail we can prove, as we have previously, that political prisoners are not alone. Nor isolation neither dispersal nor any other cruel tactic of the oppressing State will be able to stop our solidarity. In here there is still a wall that separates us from our comrades, but with our presence we have made stronger the basis of that bridge that keep us and the political prisoners united in struggle, the hope and also in suffering.

Because solidarity, it is the strength of the people and of the movements that fight for freedom and justice. And today in Picassent we can assure you that repression is not going to stop our march. For this reason from Rescat and the Support Group to the Prisoners from Horta we want to thank you for your presence here and also for the support of more than 30 collectives that have called for this march. We thank you sincerely with the certainty that the ones who are here today, are only a tiny part of all those who day after day, throughout the Catalan Countries, struggle for the political prisoners cause, which is also our cause.

We must be aware that from the self-proclaimed democratic States there will always be political harassment against the organised Social movements, struggling for the people’s and worker’s freedom, to try and silence them. And all those involved somehow in the changing of our society for a fairer future, suffer this repression daily in the Catalan Countries. But above all, the political prisoners suffer the most as, apart from being restricted of their most basic liberties, their basic human rights are also seriously affected, even the lawful rights contemplated within the State’s legislation.

That’s why we have gathered here today outside Picassent jail, to show our support to Diego Sànchez and Laura Riera who have been imprisoned for over five years and recently moved to this jail last December. Both of them are political activists within the Catalan social movements. Because of their activity and beliefs they are now in the other side of the wall. Both of them suffered the brutality of the Anti-terrorist Law and were both sentenced based on the self-blaming statements that they made while being tortured. They both are suffering the prison dispersal system which contradictorily, is already considered illegal within the Spanish Laws.

But today we also remember the rest of Catalan political prisoners: Zigor, Juanra, Lola, Rubén and Ignasi and the remaining political prisoners in both French and Spanish jails. We can’t forget though all those who have already walked out of prison: Benjamí Ramos, the Cabanyal Four, the comrades from Torà, the Gràcia Three and the Hospitalet Four, are threatened with further imprisonment. For them we are also here today. Because when we deal with repression we can’t make differences between socialists and libertarians, independentists and non-independentists, only between the oppressed and the oppressors.

We all are aware that the path towards Utopia is long and difficult, but we must walk slowly but surely without leaving anybody on the way. There is no Anti-terrorist Law, policing body or jails that will stop us, all the opposite, our solidarity to overcome them will make us stronger.

Political Prisoners: Freedom!

8. SOLIDARITY WITH RUBEN & IGNASI

Last October 4th, three youths were arrested under suspicion of having participated in the petrol bomb attack at the Gràcia police barracks. The three youths were brought to court two days after having suffered aggressions, tortures and vexations within the different police barracks they went through.

That day, on the 7th, the judge in Barcelona, Mr. Ramírez Suñer, decides to let one of them go, a neighbor of Cornellà del Llobregat (Barcelona), in waiting of trial. The other two were imprisoned based on the self-blaming statements the police obtained from them after having ill-treated them physically and psychologically.

A fourth youth was also called to give statement a few days after and was charged but allowed to go until the trial date. The ones imprisoned, from Hospitalet del Llobregat (Barcelona), spent two months in the jail for youths Trinitat (Barcelona) until December 3rd, when they were released with the obligation to sign on in court every week.

During this year three formal complaints for tortures have been submitted, two of which have been put away while the third is still open and we are awaiting for the policemen to give statement.

Demonstrations, information talks, gigs…and many solidarity actions arrived from around the State and abroad in solidarity with the three youths arrested, have shown that solidarity has no boundaries and that’s why we are still here.

At the moment the Barcelona court number 22 is accusing the youths of: attempt, damage and public disorder a total sum of 8.5 years in prison and 6.000 euro for damages of the police barracks and urban property.

Solidarity has no boundaries. If you are young and rebel you are a target.

Salut and Resistance to those who fight & resist every day Prison bars won’t silence our rebel voices.

Also:

9. FAX IN SOLIDARITY WITH RUBEN & IGNASI

This text is an idea to be sent via fax; to jutjat nº 13 de Barcelona (court room) which is taking the case of the comrades imprisoned Ruben and Ignasi.

F.A.O. JUTJAT D’INSTRUCCIÓ Nª 13 DE BARCELONA

Passeig Lluís Companys núm. 5. 08003 Barcelona
Núm. Fax (0034) 93 556 99 13

The collective, association, person in its own name, organisation…undersigning below, regarding the arrests and further imprisonment of Ruben Masmano and Ignasi Antolino last February 9th, state/s:

• That the accusations that exist against them are very fragile and that no explosive or flammable material has been found in the raids carried out.

• That preventive prison without trial is usually applied in cases where a risk of escape exists, and in Ignasi’s and Ruben’s case the causes are not given.

• That the presumption of innocence has not been respected neither at the moment of their arrest nor in the application of preventive prison without trial that they are suffering

• That their arrests are based in political investigations with the aim to take reprisals against the anarchist movement.

With all this, it is demanded:

THE IMMDIATE RELEASE OF THE COMRADES RUBEN & IGNASI.

Signature and/or stamp

10. SOLIDARITY BENEFIT FOR RUBEN & IGNASI

FRIDAY 10TH MARCH 6pm - Late
THE COMMON PLACE
23-25 WHARF STREET, LEEDS
Tel: 0845 345 7334
Cheap door + music + booze = Mandatory

Llibertat! – Saoirse!
E-news service of the Catalan Solidarity: Ireland Committee
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