POLITICS-SPAIN: ETA on a Headlong Rush

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Aug 10 2000 (IPS) - The Basque separatist organisation Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA – Basque Freedom and Homeland) is charging forward, leaving victims from several Spanish cities in its wake, even as it continues to lose public support and its pact with moderate Basque nationalists is on the verge of disintegration.

ETA’s recent wave of assassinations has triggered a widespread outcry against the radical separatists. One notable change in the ongoing series of public condemnations of the group is that Juan José Ibarretxe, a staunch nationalist and president of the Basque autonomous government, declared: “I want to tell ETA that I will never take part in a strategy of confrontation.”

And another nationalist, Román Sodupe, who serves as general deputy in the Basque province of Guipúzcoa, said this week that “ETA is against nationalism and the Basque Country, it is the enemy.”

So far this week, ETA terrorists have assassinated Basque nationalist and president of the Guipúzcoa province’s employers’ union, José María Korta, and army second lieutenant Francisco Casanova, and have exploded two car-bombs, one of which injured 11 people in Madrid.

Four ETA members also died this week in the Basque city of Bilbao when the explosives they were transporting in a car for yet another attack exploded.

Korta died Tuesday, when ETA exploded a car-bomb outside his company in the village of Zumaia, just as he was getting into his own car, unarmed and without bodyguards.

The entrepreneur was a supporter of peace dialogue among all sectors, including ETA. He had said as much on July 17, asserting that the peace process was worth the risk “and even worth making mistakes.”

Korta was also a steadfast defender of the Basque language, ‘Euskera,’ and founded the ‘ikastola’ (Basque school) in Zumaia.

But, as president of the employers’ union in Guipúzcoa province, he had also spoken out against making contributions to ETA, sums known as the “revolutionary tax” that the separatist group regularly collected from business owners, threatening their lives.

Korta was “one of ours, a true Basque nationalist,” declared Sodupe. “ETA has attacked the hardline of Basque nationalism.”

The Council of Deputies (the executive body of Guipúzcoa province), made up of members of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and of its offshoot, Eusko Alkartasuna (EA), both moderate organisations, said they “blamed themselves for the failures and crimes that, in the eyes of the ETA executioners, José María Korta must have committed to receive this death sentence.”

“Each and every one of the members of this government council asked Korta and the rest of the business community to resist blackmail” by refusing to pay the ETA tax.

ETA’s other victim this week, second lieutenant Casanova, had been part of the Berriozar community for more than 10 years, part of the autonomous community of Navarra, which voted in a referendum in the 1980s against joining the Basque Country, but ETA and its followers consider the region to be theirs.

Casanova worked at the army’s local offices. Wednesday, as he entered the garage at his home, he was assassinated with three gunshots to the head. The first person to arrive on the scene after hearing the shooting was his 11-year-old son.

Representatives of the national government of centre-right Popular Party (PP) president, José María Aznar, and members of the principal opposition force, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), met Thursday and expressed their total agreement in condemning ETA violence.

The newly-elected PSOE secretary general, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, in addition to emphasising his support of the government against ETA, warned the PNV that until it completely severs its ties with those who support ETA, “there will not be even a minimum of understanding or dialogue.”

The PNV and EA have so far maintained their political agreement with Euskal Herritarrok (EH), a party considred to be ETA’s political voice.

This political accord is manifest in the coalitions leading various Basque municipal governments and in the Basque autonomous parliament, and is based on shared principles of sovereignty, though some understand it as independence-leaning and others as a reaffirmation of the Basque nationalist will.

Several public opinion polls indicate that EH is losing support among the Basque electorate, today losing two to three percentage points of the 17 percent of the vote it won in the last elections.

These surveys also show a slight decline in support for the PNV and the EA. Backing for the Popular Party, meanwhile, has risen to the extent that for the first time political analysts say there is a possibility that the next Basque president might not be a nationalist.

Given the current situation, many members of the moderate nationalist movement are turning against their leader, Xavier Arzalluz, aligning instead with Sodupe in calling for a complete break with ETA and its supporters, namely the EH party.

Thursday, the Attorney General’s Office charged EH leader and spokesman, Arnaldo Otegui, for the crime of defending terrorism.

Otegui had publicly stated that the four ETA members who died in the explosion on their way to launch an attack were “young patriots who fought for their country’s independence.”

“The death of these four colleagues signifies that the future of this country is something we will conquer struggling and fighting,” he added.

ETA has apparently begun attacking the moderate nationalist movement because its political leaders have been preparing to cut off ties with the extremists so that its parties do not continue losing votes among the Basque electorate.

“The ETA terrorist organisation is only interested in seeing Ibarretxe, Arzalluz and Garaicochea (EA founder) on their knees or seeing them hanging from a triple political crucifix,” said Fernando López Agudín, who served as media chief for the Interior Ministry under the most recent socialist government (1993-1996).

In that period, there was an official investigation of the crimes committed under that government’s first years, a period known as the “dirty war,” in which there were more than 40 attacks against the Basque independence movement, leaving 29 people dead and dozens wounded.