RIGHTS-SPAIN: Massive Protests After ETA Strikes Again

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, May 6 1998 (IPS) - People began to gather outside town halls throughout Spain Wednesday to protest the violence waged by the Basque separatist organisation ETA, just minutes after the group killed a town councillor in Pamplona, 400 kms north of Madrid.

Tomas Caballero, 63, who sat on the town council in representation of the Union of the People of Navarra (UPN), a centre-right party that co-governs the autonomous community of Navarra in northern Spain, was shot twice in the head as he was leaving his residence in Pamplona in his car, alone and unarmed.

Basque nationalists claim that Navarra is part of the Basque Country, but the people of Navarra refuted that claim in a referendum held in the late 1970s, when they voted to become an autonomous community with their own regional government and parliament.

A coalition comprised of the UPN and the centre-right People’s Party (PP) governs Navarra. The PP also governs Spain, with the support of moderate nationalists from the Basque Country and Catalonia.

In the PP’s two years in government, ETA has killed four town councillors representing that party in Basque Country municipalities, and in the city of Sevilla in the southern province of Andalucia the group killed town councillor Alberto Jimenez-Becerril and his wife Ascension Ortiz.

To an ETA threat that it would continue killing elected representatives of the citizens, Tomas Caballero responded that “these murderers know they can’t win with democratic methods, so they keep killing just like in the worst dictatorships.”

When Caballero’s murder was reported, the Labour Conferedation of Workers Commissions (the pro-communist CCOO) called for “a solid base of unity of democratic forces against terrorism.”

The confederation added that “ETA’s political discourse continues to be crime,” a view shared by Spain’s unions and political parties, except those with ties to ETA.

Miguel Sanz, president of UPN and of the autonomous government of Navarra, also called for “the unity of all democrats, and the rejection of any dialogue with criminals.”

“ETA does not want peace,” said Ramon Jauregui, the socialist vice-president of the Basque Country autonomous government.

While citizens gathered outside town halls throughout Spain to pay tribute to Caballero and demand an end to the violence, the discussion on the sense of seeking dialogue with ETA and its political arm, the Herri Batasuna (HB) coalition – which won 11 percent of the vote in the Basque Country’s last elections – was renewed.

“Those who boast of talking with HB should abandon their cynicism and join the rest of the democrats in expressing contempt for HB and ETA,” Carlos Iturgaitz, the president of the Basque Country branch of the PP, said Wednesday, referring to the moderate Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), which governs the Basque Country in coalition with the socialists and the nationalist Eusko Alkartasuna.

PNV president Xabier Arzalluz said Monday that his party meant to “keep talking” with HB, and that it did not do so with ETA only “because we have been unable to.”

“We will make contact, to sound out what is happening in that world (ETA), which is more heterogeneous than it seems,” said Arzalluz.

In a communique issued last Thursday, ETA called for a negotiated solution to the conflict in the Basque Country, and called on the PNV to join “the forces fighting for the national construction” of the Basque Country.

At the time of Caballero’s murder, Interior Minister Jaime Mayor Oreja was being interviewed live by the public stations Television Espanola (TVE) and Radio Nacional de Espana (RNE).

Although ETA “aims to keep doing damage and continue its escalation of violence,” the government is “capable of putting up with both easy and difficult situations. We are persevering,” said Mayor Oreja.

He called the PNV’s contacts with HB “irresponsible and foolish.”

“We don’t know what sense these conversations have, when we see that the entire Basque Country interior team continues to be targeted by ETA. That is not an indication of willingness to dialogue.”

The government’s position, backed by all parties except HB, is that before any dialogue is possible, ETA must stop killing.