Vitoria (EFE).- The spokesman for the support network for ETA prisoners, Sare, Joseba Azkarraga, has opined that it is an “error” to ask the inmates and their social and political environment to expressly use the terminology of “recognition of the damage caused” and has ensured that self-criticism cannot be claimed only from one party after requesting it “from those who forget torture and from victims of state violence.”
Azkarraga has spoken in this way during the joint appearance with representatives of the association of relatives of ETA prisoners, Etxerat, in which they have read a statement to assess the end of the dispersal once the Penitentiary Institutions agreed on Friday the transfer to Euskadi prisons of five ETA members, the last inmates of the terrorist group who remained far from the Basque Country and Navarra.
Through this statement, both organizations have expressed their satisfaction because “after 35 years it can be said that the distance has ended.” “We have finally achieved it and we have reached the end of this cruel time,” the text states, which states that 16 people have died in traffic accidents when they went to visit their imprisoned relatives and that more than 1,000 have been killed. wounds.
Yesterday the president of the PNV, Andoni Ortuzar, referred to this end of the dispersal policy to urge the inmates and their social and political environment to recognize “the unfair damage caused” to the victims and society because this gesture would mean ” a very important step towards coexistence among Basques and for the coexistence of Euskadi with the rest of the world”.
Asked about this location, Azkarraga has considered that requiring a “very specific terminology is a mistake” and has referred to the interview granted by the Basque Government’s prison advisor, Jaime Tapia, to EFE, in which he said he did not have ” no doubt” that the ETA prisoners who are granted the third degree of prison are sorry even if they do not expressly use the word ‘forgiveness’.
In addition, it has considered that “the time has come for the demand for self-criticism to also be made to the other party”, specifically, to “those who try to forget that there have been 5,000 cases of torture and 200 deaths due to State terrorism , other violence, or even by the Security Forces”.
For this reason, he pointed out that “we must move forward together.” “Self-criticism must be done by all of us,” she claimed.
At this point, the joint communiqué states that once the dispersal has ended, the demand of both associations will go through to claim the “process of return home of prisoners, refugees and deportees in line with the route provided by the law”.
For this reason, he insists that they are going to focus on demanding that ordinary legislation be applied to them and that “the obstacles placed on the prisoners” of ETA be overcome.
They denounce the validity of the laws that “make perpetuity possible and those that “prevent the time served in French prisons from being computed” and ask that the competence of the progressions of degree and prison permits not be in the hands of the National Court, but rather of the local courts.
In this sense, the communiqué points out that even though they are in the second degree, these inmates are denied permits, as well as that according to their calculations there are only 33 ETA prisoners in the third degree when it corresponds to 110, and that they continue to produce regressions of degree and in In short, “the laws of exception continue to be in force.”
The two organizations will continue to promote mobilizations, in a way “compatible with the support and demand for reparation for all the victims of all forms of violence.”
