POLITICS-SPAIN: Murder Triggers Massive Protests Against ETA

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Jan 9 1998 (IPS) - The murder of another young Basque country politician, Jose Ignacio Iruretagoyena, of the governing Popular Party (PP), who was killed Friday by the Basque separatist organisation ETA, triggered massive protests.

The president of the autonomous government of the Basque country and leader of the Nationalist Basque Party (PNV), Jose Antonio Ardanza, speaking in the name of the political parties represented in the Basque country, urged the citizens to protest the violence waged by ETA and demand peace.

The 34-year-old Iruretagoyena, a married father of two children and town councillor of the centre-right PP in the town of Zarauz in the northern province of Guipuzcoa, was killed when a bomb exploded under his car.

The non-governmental organisation (NGO) “Gesture for Peace” called silent protests in 162 towns in the Basque country and the neighbouring province of Navarra.

Another NGO, White Hands Initiative, with the Autonomous University of Madrid, opened a page at its Internet address (http: manos-blancas.uam.es) dedicated to receiving condolence messages that will be delivered to the murdered councillor’s family.

The Movement against Intolerance called a protest at the Puerta del Sol in downtown Madrid, and similar protests were staged in Valencia, Barcelona, Sevilla and other regional capitals.

Jose Maria Setien, the Bishop of San Sebastian, the capital of Guipuzcoa, who has been criticised for his calls for dialogue with ETA, condemned the attack, describing it as “a political perversion, far removed from any democratic principle.”

The head of the Basque country government, Ardanza, spoke in the name of the ‘Mesa de Ajuria Enea’, an organisation seeking routes towards peace in the region and encompassing all the political parties represented there, with the exception of Herri Batasuna (HB), the political arm of ETA.

Ardanza stressed that “all democrats are with the PP” and its representatives, ETA’s chief targets.

The Mesa – which represents 85 percent of the votes cast in the Basque country – described the stance taken by ETA and the HB as “aberrant and absurd.”

The town council of Zarauz, a town of less than 20,000 inhabitants near Bilbao in the Basque country, held a plenary session packed with onlookers and condemned the murder. The HB voted against the motion.

Amidst hostile shouts, an HB councillor read a message of condolence in the Basque language, while stressing that the incident was a product of “the strategy of confrontation being experienced in the Basque country.”

In its message of condemnation, the town council issued a special call to HB councillors “not to be hung by the hangman’s noose of political servitude to terrorist organisations.”

It also urged them, “in the face of the feeling of repugnance that they should feel for the murder of our colleague, to have the valor to show the slightest inkling of humanity and condmen this brutal murder.”

Iruretagoyena was the fourth PP town councillor killed by ETA. The wave of attacks – which included the burning of the business concern of another Basque country PP councillor, Victorio Fernandez, on Thursday – led the party to demand a special deployment of the regional police by the province’s autonomous government.

Carlos Iturgaiz, pesident of the Basque country branch of the PP, issued “a special call to the Ertzaintza (Basque police) to stop these villains.”

But the Basque country government and the ‘Mesa de Ajuria Enea’ set more store by mass protests for peace than police action as a way to put an end to the violence in the region.

HB and organisations with ties to ETA, meanwhile, say peace will come through political negotiations with that group’s leadership.

The refusal by the Spanish government, presided over by Jose Maria Aznar, to engage in dialogue until ETA puts a stop to its violent activities was reiterated Friday by government spokesman Miguel Angel Rodriguez.