By Tito Drago
PARIS, Oct 27 2000 (IPS)

Spanish journalist Carmen Gurruchaga received the annual award of the international organisation Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF – Journalists Without Borders) at a Friday ceremony for her ongoing fight to defend press freedoms in Spain’s Basque Country.

The Paris-based RSF, which defends the rights of journalists and press freedoms around the world, made the first of its annual awards in 1992, won that year by Croatian reporter Zlatko Dizdarevic. Subsequent prizes went to China’s Wang Juntao, André Sibomana of Rwanda, Nigeria’s Chris Anyanwu, Isik Yurtou of Turkey, Cuban Raúl Rivero, Syria’s Nizar Nayyouf and San San Nweh of Burma.

This year, alongside Gurruchaga, who is a journalist in Madrid for the daily ‘El Mundo’ and for Spain’s ‘Radio Nacional,’ the finalists included Ignacio Gómez of Colombia, Reza Alijan of Iran, the Congolese M’Mbayá Tshimanga and Serbian Mrioslav Filipovic.

Gurruchaga was born in the Basque city of San Sebastian and worked as a reporter there for the newspapers ‘Unidad,’ ‘Diario 16’ and ‘El Mundo.’ She became the victim of several attacks perpetrated by the Basque separatist group ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, meaning Basque Fatherland and Freedom in the Basque language).

On Dec 22, 1997, ETA exploded a bomb at the door to her home, setting it ablaze. There were no injuries, thanks to the fact that she and her two young children were on the back patio.

As a result of the bombing, she was forced to relocate to Madrid, where she now lives and works under police protection.

Gurruchaga, known as “Mamem” among her colleagues and friends, told IPS that she was moved by the RSF award and received it on behalf of “a group of Spaniards, Basques included, who work under (ETA) threats and violence in order to report the truth.”

ETA has attacked numerous journalists in the Basque Country. Last May 7, the separatists group’s members assassinated José Luis López de la Calle, an ‘El Mundo’ reporter who in his younger years had been imprisoned for his activism against the Francisco Franco regime (1939-1975).

In recent years the group has broadened the scope of its threat, sending bombs to individuals living outside the Basque region. In most cases, the bombs have been detected before detonating.

Some 50 journalists in Spain have requested police protection, some in the Basque Country, others in Madrid. Another 100 work under official or private protection, while 10 more have been forced to leave the Basque Country, fearing for their personal safety, says RSF.

Gurruchaga hopes that the RSF award “helps people to think who otherwise don’t think and behave irrationally, and end their violent and anti-democratic acts.”

“For those who report or comment on politics, especially on Basque politics, it is very difficult to work with this ongoing threat. But I am sure that the irrational ones will ultimately lose and that all citizens will be able to live in freedom and democracy,” she stated.

Gurruchaga, despite the attacks and threats against her, continues to give conferences about Basque issues. She is a co- founder of the SOS-Balkans association, created in 1991 to support the victims of the Yugoslavian war and is an active member of women’s organisations.

In September, together with fellow Basque journalist Isabel San Sebastian, she published the book “El árbol and las nueces” (The Tree and the Walnuts), which provides an analysis of the relationship of Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) with ETA.

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