The budget for maintaining the Spanish royal household, and the use made of these public funds by King Juan Carlos, are fuelling ongoing debate as Spain endures a severe economic crisis accompanied by severe cuts in social spending and soaring unemployment.

King Juan Carlos Credit: SalamancaBlog.com/CC BY 2.0

The 74-year-old king’s recent accident on a hunting trip in Botswana, where he broke his hip from a fall at his hotel, sparked a wave of criticism from Spanish citizens about the expense, as well as his personal behaviour, seen as being in conflict with environmental principles.

The expedition involved large outlays on the flight to that southern African country, staff, rifles and munitions, the royal security detail as well as the cost of the hunting trip itself.

A 12-day stay in one of the camps, with a licence to shoot an elephant, costs some 37,000 euros (48,600 dollars), according to tourist and travel agencies. A photograph of the king, a keen hunter, beside a slain elephant on this trip has been widely circulated.

The expensive jaunt stood in stark contrast with the crisis in Spain, where public employees are facing wage cuts of 25 to 30 percent and five million people are unemployed.

Leaving the hospital on crutches on Wednesday Apr. 18, King Juan Carlos apologised for the lavish hunting trip. “I am very sorry. I made a mistake. It won’t happen again,” he told reporters.

Had it not been for his accident, the king’s trip to Botswana would not have become public knowledge. This brings to the fore a fact that was known, but not previously criticised by the political parties: the king is not obliged to account for how he spends the royal household budget, and has never done so.

Among the harshest critics is Julio Anguita, former coordinator of the United Left (IU) coalition, who said it should be realised that the king “has always had scandals in his court” and that the monarchy “should vanish.” “No one can be above the law,” he said.

The IU formally asked parliament on Wednesday to clarify whether the king’s trip to Botswana was paid for out of the annual royal household budget voted by the legislature, which amounted to 11.2 million dollars in 2011, and whether any ministry contributed in funds or in kind.

While funding for the ministries was cut this year by an average of 17 percent compared with 2011, the royal household budget was reduced by just two percent, with no change to the personal stipends received by members of the royal family. The cutback will only affect maintenance and travel costs.

Rosa Díez, spokeswoman for the centre-left Unión, Progreso y Democracia (UPD – Unity, Progress and Democracy) party, told IPS prior to the king’s apology that it was painful that he had not acknowledged the situation “we are facing, and was instead hunting in Africa at a time when the country is enduring a triple crisis: economic, political and social.”

Similar opinions were expressed by leaders of the opposition Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), whose parliamentary spokeswoman Soraya Rodríguez said she understood “the incomprehension, ill feelings and outrage” triggered by the incident.

In contrast, the ruling centre-right People’s Party (PP) declined to comment. Its secretary general, María Dolores de Cospedal, said the party would not participate in “the controversy that some sectors are trying to stir up.”

Civil society organisations added their voices to the uproar against the royal household. Animal welfare activists gathered around the hospital where the king was convalescing from his hip replacement, demanding that he reconsider his hunting activities.

Javier Moreno, the spokesman for Animal Equality, an NGO, said the pain the king suffered as a result of his accident should make him think about the pain he has inflicted on animals “for so many years.”

Actuable, an organisation that combats injustice, called for the king to be stripped of his honorary presidency of the Spanish branch of WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature), a post he has held since 1968, arguing that it was incompatible with his passion for hunting.

WWF said only that they would inform the king about the large number of requests from their members recommending that he step down.

But big game hunting in Africa is not the only blot on the Spanish royal house at present.

Another problem occurred when the king’s grandson, 13-year-old Froilán Marichalar, accidentally shot himself in the foot with a shotgun during target practice on a family estate. Firearm use is illegal in Spain for children under 14.

But the worst headache for the royal household at the moment is the judicial investigation of the king’s son-in-law, Iñaki Urdangarín, the husband of Princess Cristina, for allegedly embezzling public money.

Manuel González Peeters, defence lawyer for Diego Torre, who was Urdangarín’s partner at the charitable Nóos Institute, said he had turned documents over to the SER radio broadcasting chain that, if confirmed, may even implicate the king.

The secretary general of PSOE in Madrid, Tomás Gómez, asked King Juan Carlos to choose between his responsibilities and either face up to the various cases that have arisen, or abdicate. The latter course, it is whispered, might lead to Spain’s becoming a republic, although it is generally agreed that this is a remote possibility.

Spain’s new conservative government has announced changes in environmental policy that are a significant step backwards for environmental protection in the country, provoking an immediate, harsh reaction from the opposition and civil society.

Mario Rodríguez, head of the Spanish chapter of the environmental NGO Greenpeace, told IPS that the only fit response to the government’s announcement is “citizens’ protests to demand that the achievements for the defence of the environment over the past two decades are not all torn down.”

In Rodríguez’s view, environmental organisations and affected communities should “be ready to take legal action”.

Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Environment Miguel Arias Cañete informed the lower house of parliament that the government led by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy since Dec. 21, 2011 will propose a “thorough” reform of the 1988 Coastal Law to “harmonise protection of the coastline with the development of non-detrimental economic activities.”

Rodríguez says that if what the minister announced comes to pass, “pro-environment legislation achieved over the last 20 years will be demolished.”

Presenting the government’s plans to his parliamentary party, Arias Cañete defended the proposed reform of the Coastal Law, arguing that it would contribute to the improvement of legal security for owners of land rights on the coast.

In his opinion, it would also allow economic resurgence in “zones that are already degraded and lacking in environmental value”, and foment a proper ordering of economic activity on the Spanish coast, where anarchic development and unrestrained urbanisation has already drawn reprimands from the European Union.

The governing People’s Party has an absolute majority in both houses of parliament, and can therefore approve the reform without legislative hindrance.

Several organisations stress that the reform will allow new land uses on pristine coastlines, so large areas that are currently protected will lose that protection.

Minister Arias Cañete made some other announcements that alarmed environmentalists. He said the legal framework for the protection of the natural environment will be revised, measures will be taken to improve management of the network of national parks and the Red Natura 2000 (an EU biodiversity conservation scheme), and there will be a reform of the National Hydrological Plan.

“The grey economy is back,” after all the progress the country had made towards a green economy, said José Díaz Trillo, the regional environment minister for the government (Junta) of Andalusia, the largest and most populous region in Spain, governed by the opposition Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE).

Rodríguez gave IPS an indication of how Greenpeace will respond to the measures announced. “When these measures begin to come into effect, we will decide what response to make, but no doubt it will include organising demonstrations and analysing the legal situation to see if the changes to the laws can be appealed,” he said.

Greenpeace issued a communiqué on Feb. 1, just after the minister announced the new policy, expressing its fears that Spain would return to the bad old water management policies, and that lower standards would be applied to environmental impact assessments for future development projects.

“After the minister’s speech, it is clear that the present government regards environmental policies as an obstacle to economic development, and not as an opportunity to overcome the crisis,” Rodríguez said.

“While we wait for the details of the ministry’s strategy to emerge, Greenpeace will vigorously oppose any measure that would lead to lower levels of environmental protection than those that have been achieved so far, especially if they involve the Coastal Law, the fight against climate change or regulation and control of overfishing.”

According to Greenpeace, the Rajoy government’s stated intentions strike at the basic principles of the defence of the Mediterranean coastline, and of public use of the coast.

This interpretation is based on the premise that increasing the number of coastal concessions and relaxing their conditions, especially in the tourism industry, “will accelerate the loss of the land-sea public domain and open the door to new forms of land use on the coast, leaving the Coastal Law without effect.”

Greenpeace particularly criticises the ambiguity and vagueness in the minister’s speech; “when he said ‘curbing economic activity on the coast does not guarantee conservation,’ he is opening the door to new urbanisation projects,” Rodríguez said.

In Greenpeace’s view, such a prospect would affect the environmental health of the “saturated” Spanish coastline.

The NGO also complains that the minister did not clarify whether he supports a 30 percent reduction in European greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, as a way of mitigating climate change.

“This omission is striking when, two days before the minister’s speech to parliament, the European Commission published a study showing clear economic benefits for each of the EU member states from intensifying the fight against climate change,” Rodríguez said.

That is why Greenpeace is calling on the government to end public subsidies to dirty industries, and to commit itself to ensuring that new emissions rights granted to the electricity sector after 2012, are all allocated by auction.

In 2009 it was determined that electricity companies would cease to have free emissions rights from 2013. Spanish electricity generating companies will need to buy emissions rights for an estimated 104 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) next year, at a cost of some 2.8 billion dollars.

The PSOE environment secretary, Hugo Morán, said “the minister’s strategy of demolishing all current environmental legislation poses the greatest risk to the future viability of our country’s principal economic pillars: agriculture and tourism.”

Meanwhile, the regional environment minister for Andalusia, José Díaz, said that if the government’s reform package goes through, it will “set Spain back 40 years in terms of environmental policy.”

Another trial opened Tuesday with Spain’s best-known judge, Baltasar Garzón, in the dock for attempting to investigate crimes against humanity committed during the 36-year dictatorship of Francisco Franco.

This is the second and most important of the trio of lawsuits against him.

Garzón is again before the Supreme Court in Madrid only five days after his last appearance. The verdict is still pending in the earlier trial, for alleged illegal telephone tapping of conversations between detainees and defence lawyers in the “Gürtel” affair, one of the biggest corruption scandals in the history of Spain’s democracy.

The new case has wide implications because Garzón’s action in authorising the investigations was founded on the application of international law to the crimes of the 1936-1939 Civil War and the 1939-1975 Franco dictatorship.

Garzón in fact pioneered the principle of international jurisdiction in cases of crimes against humanity when he issued an international warrant for the arrest in London in 1998 of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (1915-2006).

Francisca “Paquita” Sauquillo, a distinguished anti-Franco activist for rights and freedoms since the 1960s, told IPS Monday that “Garzón must be absolved because he has not committed any crime and because he is a leading example of the correct application of the laws in Spain.”

Both the Gürtel affair and the present lawsuit, known as the “Historic Memory” case, are extraordinary in that the Supreme Court is prosecuting Garzón against the wishes of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which has called for dismissal of the charges in both cases for lack of evidence of any crime.

But the Supreme Court, which is empowered to prosecute judges in active service, chose to pursue these suits that were brought by private persons through prevarication, that is, the rendering of a knowingly unjust ruling.

In the present Historic Memory case, the plaintiffs are two Francoist organisations which are requesting that Garzón be barred from the judge’s bench for 20 years.

The Gürtel case (so called after the German word for “belt”, in Spanish “correa”, the surname of the chief accused) was adjourned pending verdict on Jan. 19. The plaintiffs in the case are lawyers for Francisco Correa, the ringleader of the scam, and others accused of bribing senior politicians in the ruling conservative People’s Party,

Paradoxically, those accused of bribery and corruption have not yet been brought to trial.

Joan Garcés, a renowned jurist and a close personal aide to former Chilean socialist president Salvador Allende (1970-1973), told IPS that the trial of Garzón for alleged abuse of power over the investigation of crimes of the Franco era is “wrong”.

He said “the testimony of internationally recognised jurists should be admitted (in the trial) because Garzón has been one of the strongest promoters of international law,” but this testimony has already been refused by the court.

The charge of prevarication (criminal malfeasance) is leveled against Garzón because he opened an investigation into his court’s competence to rule on the forced disappearance of 114,266 people between July 1936, when a military coup against the legitimate government started the Spanish Civil War, and December 1951.

Garzón is accused of not applying the 1977 Amnesty Law, which it was ostensibly the duty of his office to comply with.

He is further charged with having declared himself competent to investigate the disappearances of persons during the Civil War and the Franco era. Tens of thousands of the slain lie buried in shallow graves and ditches in Spain, without their families ever being able to recover their bodies.

Juan Ignacio Cortés, spokesman for the Spanish chapter of Amnesty International, told IPS it is “scandalous for a judge to be put on trial for defending justice, truth and reparations for the victims, and their relatives, of a massive violation of human rights.”

Earlier, Amnesty issued a communiqué saying it was of no importance whether or not Garzón had infringed national legislation, because it is the 1977 Amnesty Law that is at fault for preventing prosecutions for crimes defined by international law.

Amnesty also complained that maintaining the 1977 law “incurs non- fulfilment of obligations contracted by Spain by virtue of international law”.

Therefore, in Amnesty’s view, investigating human rights violations can never be regarded as a crime, even if doing so entails setting aside an amnesty law or other norms stipulating the prescription of such crimes.

At the root of the legal actions against Garzón is his decision five years ago to authorise the exhumation of 19 mass graves, one of which was presumed to contain the remains of poet Federico García Lorca (1898-1936), and to charge 35 high-ranking officials in the Franco regime with responsibility for the atrocities.

The Supreme Court criminal chamber ruled in November 2008 that Garzón did not have jurisdiction over the matter. In May 2009 the Supreme Court accepted a suit against Garzón by a Francoist group, and a year later decided to try the case.

Consequently, Garzón was suspended from his position as a member of the National Court, Spain’s high court where major cases are heard.

Enrique Borcel, head of the Hispanic-Argentine Observatory in Madrid (OHA), a cultural and human rights NGO, told IPS that the trial of Garzón seeks to cover up the events of history, so that the whole truth about the crimes committed by dictatorships – in Spain or elsewhere – never comes to light, “because the actions and example of this judge attract attention from all over the world.”

Borcel was kidnapped and tortured in 1967 by agents of the Argentine military dictatorship of that time, and bargained for his freedom by selling his property and offices so as to pay “a ransom”, after which he emigrated to Spain where he has lived ever since.

The human rights activist emphasised the worldwide scope of the role played by Garzón in the fulfilment of United Nations treaties and international laws on human rights.

For example, he said, it was thanks to Garzón that investigations were opened in Spain into what happened to the thousands of firing squad execution victims who were buried in unmarked graves during the Franco era, and that in Argentina 43 members of the armed forces and one civilian were prosecuted for alleged repressive actions during the 1976-1983 dictatorship, after Garzón issued international arrest warrants.

Meanwhile, Cortés stressed that the right course of action is the opposite of what the Supreme Court is doing: it ought to support and promote the quest for justice, and support those who are victimised for defending human rights. This, he said, is an obligation under international law “which the Spanish state must uphold”.

Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, the International Commission of Jurists and the Association for the Recovery of Historic Memory (a Spanish NGO working to find and identify those disappeared by the Franco regime) made a joint statement Monday in support of Garzón, reviving the phrase “Garzón is innocent, whatever the Supreme Court says!” coined by anti-corruption prosecutor Carlos Jiménez Villarejo in 2010.

Reed Brody, counsel for Human Rights Watch, said, “What bitter irony that Garzón is being prosecuted for trying to apply at home the same principles he so successfully promoted internationally.

“Thirty-six years after Franco’s death, Spain is finally prosecuting someone in connection with the crimes of his dictatorship – the judge who sought to investigate those crimes,” he complained.

After this second trial, Garzón faces yet a third lawsuit before the Supreme Court, in which he will be accused of illegally receiving funds from the Santander Bank as payment for delivering some seminars at a university in the United States, which later allegedly influenced him to take a judicial decision in favour of Santander Bank president, Emilio Botín.

Strong as support for Garzón may be within Spain and beyond its borders, the judge’s enemies appear to have achieved their purpose, as it seems highly unlikely the 56-year-old Garzón will be able to return to his High Court position, from which he opened so many doors for international human rights law.

"Indignados" protesting home repossessions in Málaga. Credit: Inés Acosta/IPS

By Tito Drago and - -
MADRID, Nov 21 2011 (IPS)

The crushing defeat suffered by Spain’s governing socialist party may pave the way for the emergence of a new alterative left capable of standing up to the centre-right People’s Party (PP), which won a landslide victory in Sunday’s elections.

Above and beyond the mistakes the government of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero may have committed, the parliamentary elections were influenced by the “indignados” – “indignant” or “angry” – movement that emerged in May, occupying squares in cities across the country to protest an economic model they perceive as socially unjust, and a political system they say is subordinate to economic concerns.

Ahead of the elections, the indignados – also known as the 15M movement, for May 15, when a clampdown on a demonstration in Madrid gave rise to a spontaneous mass protest at the famous Puerta del Sol square – worked hard to undermine both the socialist PSOE and the PP, and to strengthen smaller alternative parties.

On Sunday, the PSOE’s total number of seats in the 350-member parliament shrank from 169 to 110, while the PP’s share grew from 153 to 186, giving it a broad margin to appoint its candidate for prime minister, Mariano Rajoy.

The third-largest party is the conservative Convergència i Unió (CiU) from the northeast province of Catalonia, with 16 seats, followed by the United Left (IU), a Communist Party-led coalition that won 11 seats, up from just two – its best performance at the polls since 1996.

Key to the IU’s strong showing was the campaign by the 15M which, based on an analysis of the results of earlier elections and the opinion polls, decided on which small party to throw its support behind in each voting district, in order to weaken the PSOE and the PP.

The IU was not the only minority party to grow. The CiU Catalonian coalition won seats in every district in Catalonia with the exception of Barcelona, and the centre-left Unión Progreso y Democracia (UPyD) saw its seats shoot up from one to five, and is no longer an exclusively Madrid-centred party.

The PSOE was also hurt by lower voter turnout, which dropped from 76 percent in the 2008 general elections to 72 percent on Sunday. Blank votes totalled 1.4 percent.

Prime Minister Zapatero, who had already announced that he would not seek a third term in office, said his party would hold a congress in February to analyse the reasons for its devastating defeat and to set out on a “new phase.”

The elections were also marked by a strong performance by nationalists in Catalonia and the Basque country in the north, both centrist and leftist groups, an indication that demands for independence for the two provinces will soon grow louder.

The moderate Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV) garnered 323,517 votes, up from 306,128 in 2008, while the CiU went from 779,425 to over one million votes. And the leftwing Basque alliance Amaiur took more than 330,000 votes, making it the strongest Basque country party, with seven seats in Congress.

On Monday, Amaiur called for early elections in the Basque country. Legislator-elect Iñaki Antigüedad said they were necessary because the Basque parliament has to represent “all political sensibilities,” which he said it does not at the present time.

The Basque country is currently governed by Patxi López of the PSOE, who is set to stay in office until 2013, unless his government decides on early elections – a move it does not appear likely to make.

Analysts pointed to the strong backing won by Amaiur, that includes former supporters of Batasuna, the political wing of the armed Basque separatist group ETA, which declared a definitive ceasefire on Oct. 20 – an announcement that was welcomed with scepticism as the group did not offer to lay down its weapons.

Eugenio, a former member of ETA who lives in Madrid and abandoned the group 15 years ago, told IPS that the unexpected number of votes won by Amaiur was because Basque voters now feel they can back the demand for independence without it implying that they support violence.

“Many, like myself, who understood that violence gets you nowhere can now express our demand for independence, but in peace, without bloodshed,” said Eugenio, who did not give his last name.

It is not clear how Rajoy, who will become prime minister on Dec. 20, plans to address the severe economic crisis that has driven Spain’s unemployment rate up to 22 percent – the highest in the EU.

One advantage he has is that this is the first time in Spain’s democratic history that a party will govern with an absolute majority in parliament.

On the other hand, experts say that if his administration implements the tough austerity measures demanded by the banks, business community and international financial institutions, unemployment will rise further and social unrest will continue to grow.

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Oct 17 2011 (IPS)

International mediators meeting in a peace conference Monday in Spain’s northern Basque region were hopeful that the armed separatist group ETA would respond positively to their call for the group to lay down arms.

The group of international personalities who have helped broker solutions in places like South Africa and Northern Ireland said “We believe it is time to end, and it is possible to end, the last armed confrontation in Europe.”

“We call upon ETA to make a public declaration of the definitive cessation of all armed action,” they said in a statement read out at the meeting in San Sebastián, in the Basque Country.

The negotiators, who included former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan and former prime ministers Bertie Ahern and Gro Harlem Brundtland of Ireland and Norway, respectively, were trying to help bring about an end to ETA’s four decades of violent struggle for an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwestern France, in which it has killed some 850 people.

But while the mediators were optimistic, sceptics pointed out that the Spanish government has held peace talks with ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna – Basque Fatherland and Freedom) several times, and the group’s declarations of a ceasefire have generally ended abruptly with a new terrorist attack.

In June and July 2006, government representatives held talks with ETA in Geneva. But in December that year, members of the group detonated a car bomb that destroyed a parking garage at the Madrid airport, killing two people and injuring 20 others.

And an indefinite ceasefire declared by the group in 1998 lasted 13 months.

A member of the Basque region government who asked not to be identified told IPS that the problem is that one faction of the group could be opposed to a peace deal and might return to the use of violence on its own, regardless of what the leadership has decided.

Former deputy prime minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, the governing socialist party’s candidate for the November elections, said “the only communiqué that would mean anything is one in which ETA declares an irreversible and definitive end” to the violence.

In January, ETA announced that a September 2010 ceasefire would be “permanent and verifiable” by international observers. But the government refuses to engage in talks until the group lays down its arms and disbands.

Spain’s police union expressed its doubts in stronger language Monday, saying the peace conference in San Sebastián would only lead to more deaths, because it makes ETA “stronger than yesterday” by recognising it “as a political agent with which it is necessary to negotiate.”

However, the police union said the group is in its “final stretch” thanks not only to the broad political rejection but, fundamentally, to the effective police work that has “profoundly weakened it” over the last five years.

The police union said the socialist party (PSOE) and the main opposition party, the centre-right People’s Party (PP), must continue to refuse to negotiate with ETA until it disbands.

Other participants in the conference were Gerry Adams, head of the Irish Sinn Fein party that was the political wing of the now-defunct guerrilla Irish Republican Army, and former French interior and defence minister Pierre Joxe.

Although the government did not formally participate in Monday’s peace conference, two representatives of the ruling PSOE party, Carlos Totorika and Jesús Eguiguren, took part, as did Iñigo Urkullu, leader of the moderate Basque Nationalist party, and representatives of several Basque nationalist groups.

No representatives of the PP, which is expected to oust the PSOE in November, attended the conference.

In their statement, read out by Ahern, the international mediators said: “We know from our own experience that it is never easy to end violence and conflict and secure lasting peace. It requires courage, willingness to take risks, profound commitment, generosity and statesmanship. Peace comes when the power of reconciliation outweighs the habits of hate; when the possibility of the present and future is infinitely greater than the bitterness of the past.”

“We also know from our own experience that when a genuine opportunity for peace arises it must be seized. The growing demand of the citizens of this country and their political representatives to resolve this conflict through dialogue, democracy and complete non-violence has created this opportunity.”

But many Spaniards, including PSOE supporters, criticise talk of “reconciliation” in a “conflict” when there has been no confrontation between two parties, but merely terrorist actions carried out for so many years, and continued for decades under the current constitution – the same constitution that allowed the political branch of ETA to take part in democratic elections.

The conference also called for steps to recognise and compensate ETA’s victims, and urged Spain and France to agree to talks if the group declares a “definitive cessation of all armed action.”

In addition, the mediators suggested that “non violent actors and political representatives meet and discuss political and other related issues, in consultation with the citizenry, that could contribute to a new era without conflict.”

For its part, the PP spoke out against the peace conference. The party’s deputy secretary of communication, Esteban González Pons, said the participants were “thinking about Ireland or South Africa, but really don’t have any idea at all of the country they are in, and of what kind of conflict has taken place here.”

González Pons said peace conferences are held “in conflicts where there are two parties at war; but it isn’t peace that has been lacking in the Basque Country” but “freedom” that has been lacking in the whole of Spain.

The conference was organised by the International Contact Group (ICG) promoted by South African lawyer Brian Currin, the Basque peace movement Lokarri, the Berghof Foundation for Conflict Studies, Conciliation Resources, the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation and the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre (NOREF).

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Oct 7 2011 (IPS)

As the number of apartments and houses left empty in Spain due to failure to make mortgage or rental payments climbs, tens of thousands of families, including many immigrants, are living on the streets, in shantytowns, or crowded into seedy boarding houses.

Since the global economic crisis reached Spain, the banks have repossessed more and more homes. And as a large proportion of properties going to foreclosure auctions are remaining unsold, banks themselves are repurchasing the homes – at prices significantly lower than what was owed by the original mortgage-holder.

Under Spanish law, it is not enough to merely hand over the housing unit to the bank to cancel the debt; lenders can foreclose not only on the house but seize all the assets, including part of the wages, of the debtor to cover the outstanding mortgage debt.

The bankers “want their clients to pay everything back, with their bones if necessary,” Gustavo Fajardo, a lawyer with the Americas-Spain Solidarity and Cooperation Organisation (AESCO), told IPS.

Between their high salaries, stock options and bonuses, the bankers are not among those feeling the impact of the crisis.

For example, the CEO of the Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), Francisco González, earns 5.6 million euros (7.5 million dollars) a year, and Santander CEO Alfredo Sáenz, the highest-paid banker in Spain, rakes in 9.1 million euros (12 million dollars) a year.

Both of these totals represent a 10 percent drop from 2010.

Meanwhile, shantytowns have been mushrooming around Spain in the past few years, as the number of people living on the streets soars – despite the fact that there are 800,000 to one million empty apartments, according to a report by the state-run Banco de España; or up to twice that number, according to non-government sources.

AESCO’s Fajardo said this is happening because legislators do not want to modify “a perverse system” since “they aren’t going to take aim against the banks, to which they are heavily indebted…and which are not foreclosing on them or forcing them to pay their debts.”

With respect to the future of immigration, the activist said that “in the current circumstances in Spain and in the situation that can be expected over the next five years, no one is going to come, and those who did are now fleeing the growing poverty and evictions here.

“Human beings have always migrated out of need, fleeing drought, famine or social violence; logically they go where there is land fit for farming, work, and the minimum conditions for survival,” he said.

But there is “less and less work here, while employment has become more precarious, and there is an army of seven million men and women who are deprived of an essential human right: access to work,” he added.

Immigrants make up more than 10 percent of Spain’s population of 46 million, one of the highest proportions in the European Union, and the country’s unemployment rate has skyrocketed to 21 percent – the highest in the bloc.

He said there are “450,000 families whose homes have been auctioned and repurchased by the banks,” and 25 percent of these families are foreign-born or second-generation immigrants.

Fajardo said the attention drawn by the plight of immigrants is because “they are a combative population who organise and fight for their rights, while Spanish families in trouble on their mortgage payments are embarrassed to appear in the media, to mobilise, to protest.

“This is because they don’t organise to fight back, they have been socially disarmed, and the trade unions are too focused on defending their turf in the world of business to take on a social leadership role that goes beyond their relationships with companies,” Fajardo said.

In foreclosure cases, judges do not generally take social concerns into account.

One illustration of this was the case of Paz Ahora (Peace Now), a local NGO that helps refugees in the Palestinian occupied territories, among other activities. The organisation was evicted from the small apartment it rented in Madrid for its national headquarters because it owed rent, water, power and heating bills from December 2010 – a total of 15,000 euros (20,000 dollars), including interest.

Sources with the group told IPS that their financial difficulties were the result of a cut in central government funding for regional governments, several of which helped support the NGO and were no longer able to do that this year.

Lawmaker Mauricio Valente of the United Left coalition said that “at times of crisis, cooperation is even more necessary, and it is not the NGOs themselves, but the people they help who suffer from the evictions.”

The Platform of those Affected by Mortgages (PAH) has been holding increasing protests around Spain, with support from other civil society organisations, calling for a halt to the evictions and demanding that housing be treated as a public service and a right rather than merely a business opportunity.

One of the popular chants of the demonstrators is “One banker went out to play/Upon the real estate bubble one day./He had such enormous fun/That he called for another banker to come!/Two bankers went out to play…” etc.

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Jul 30 2011 (IPS)

Protesters from several European Union cities have begun to follow the example of hundreds of demonstrators from Spain who are marching from Madrid to Brussels, the bloc’s de facto capital, in a growing protest against the effects of the economic crisis and the fiscal adjustment policies adopted to combat it.

The march – literally, on foot – began Tuesday Jul. 26 with half a dozen people at the Puerta del Sol, in Madrid, the “kilometre zero” point from which all distances in the country are measured. The “‘Indignant’ People’s March” aims to cover the 1,550 km to Brussels by Oct. 8, one week ahead of the global demonstration planned for Oct. 15 by Democracia Real YA (Real Democracy Now!)

Marchers from other European cities will stop in Paris on the way to Brussels, to support the Occupy Wall Street initiative, aimed at occupying and disrupting what they call the “financial Gomorrah” of the United States.

Adbusters, a counter-cultural Canadian magazine, quoted Professor Raimundo Viejo of the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona as saying: “The anti-globalisation movement was the first step. Back then our model was to attack the system like a pack of wolves. There was an alpha male, a wolf leading the pack, and others who followed behind. Now the model has evolved. Today we are one big swarm of people.”

The Adbusters article calls on U.S. President Barack Obama to set up a presidential commission tasked with “ending the influence money has over (the country’s) representatives in Washington.”

It also proposes “dismantling half the 1,000 military bases (the United States) has around the world,” among other pro-democracy measures.

But the May 15 Movement (15M), which emerged on that date with large demonstrations in the main squares of cities across Spain held to protest the political, economic and social system, is also drawing attention to issues not prominently covered by the international press, such as repossessions of the homes of those who fall behind on their mortgage payments.

The evictions have come in for a great deal of criticism because creditors not only seize the property, but also institute lawsuits to claim the outstanding debt on the mortgages.

The 15M demonstrators, also known as the “indignant” protesters, have managed to prevent low-income families from being thrown out on the street by holding flash protests when court officials and police show up to evict the residents. However, the law remains in place and continues to be enforced.

A document from the 15M movement was delivered to the Spanish parliament early this week, and the as yet unofficial indications are that lawmakers will debate the document in early September, after the August summer recess.

Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero announced Friday that early elections will be held in November, and that he will not be standing as a candidate. Thus, one of his last official duties will be to tackle the challenges posed by the 15M movement.

Leftwing legislators from the governing Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) as well as the United Left (IU) coalition believe that addressing the demands of the movement is a task too urgent to be postponed.

One lawmaker told IPS that, in the event that the centre-right People’s Party (PP) wins the November elections, the issue would be dealt with by the new, PP-dominated, legislature, “which would be terrible for the ‘indignant’ movement,” he said.

The 2010 and 2011 polls have consistently put the PP in first place, well ahead of the PSOE.

The 15M movement document delivered to parliament details broken electoral promises, apathy in the face of speculation, and unsolved problems in agriculture, public services and the environment.

Among the failed promises, it says that in the last three parliamentary terms the candidates promised to build a hospital in the district of Alcañiz, in the northeastern rural province of Teruel, but construction work has not even started.

Pledges were also made to freeze the pay of high-level officials as a show of austerity in the midst of the crisis. But the document points out, for example, that in Nava del Rey, in the north-central province of Valladolid, the mayor granted himself a salary hike of 238 percent, and in La Gineta, in the southeastern province of Albacete, the local councillor draws 1,500 euros (2,160 dollars) a month for working just eight hours a week.

With regard to speculation, the document mentions the city of Calafell, in the eastern province of Tarragona, where the largest housing development in Europe was built; the population has grown from 24,000 to over 120,000 in only two years. It also says that in the southern city of Jaén, publicly owned land was granted for the site of a hospital, but here, too, building has not even begun.

Another issue, which the document describes as “fraudulent speculation”, involves the Guadarrama tunnel under the Sierras de Madrid mountains, which carries northbound traffic. Politicians promised to make the tunnel toll-free in 2012, but now this is not set to happen for another 50 years.

In agriculture, the “indignant” protesters are adding their voice to what farmers have been demanding for decades: to rein in price increases imposed by middlemen and product distribution chains, because if the present situation continues farmers will have difficulty selling their produce on the international market.

For example, in Teruel small farmers selling almonds are paid two euros (2.90 dollars) per kilo, while in the big supermarkets almonds are sold to consumers at 20 euros (nearly 29 dollars) per kilo.

With regard to public services, the document mentions problems like ambulances taking more than three hours to respond to calls, the lack of paediatricians in villages, schools being closed because they lack the minimum number of students, the privatisation of schools, budget cuts for cultural events, and outages of telephone and internet services in small towns.

Among environmental issues, the 15M movement complains of inefficient waste management and lack of conservation in green areas, and the government support for the construction of nuclear power plants and nuclear waste dumps. For instance in Zarra, in the eastern province of Valencia, there are plans to build a nuclear waste dump in an area prone to earthquakes.

Another heated environmental issue mentioned in the document is the plans by the conservative governor of the province of Madrid, Esperanza Aguirre, to privatise Canal de Isabel II, the company that supplies water to the capital.

The “indignant” movement also criticises the lack of job protection, citing the example of Castel de Cabra, in Teruel, where mines employing 1,000 workers have been closed. The workers were merely laid off, and have been offered no employment alternative.

(At 21.3 percent, Spain’s unemployment rate is the highest in the European Union.)

Against this backdrop, there appears to be little chance for socialist Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba’s bid to succeed Zapatero as prime minister by beating PP leader Mariano Rajoy in November.

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Mar 8 2011 (IPS)

Spain put the brakes on the use of clean energies to generate electricity, as the government approved an energy savings programme to cope with its large oil bill which affects its commitment to reduce non-renewable sources by 2020.

José Luis García, head of Greenpeace-Spain’s climate change and energy campaign, told IPS that after years of progress, Spain is retreating in its support for renewable energy sources.

In García’s view, the retreat is because renewable energies “are substitutes for other sources that are controlled by large companies, whose managers made their position clear to the government in public.

“It’s understandable that the companies should do this, but what is unacceptable is that the government should pay attention to them,” he complained.

In January 2010, the European Union approved an energy plan to fight climate change, at an average cost of three euros a week for every citizen of the 27-nation bloc, the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Durâo Barroso, said at the launch of the project.

Under this programme, Spain had planned a 40 percent reduction in non-renewable fuels by 2020, and their replacement by clean energy sources.

But the government may lower its goal by as much as five percentage points, Industry Minister Miguel Sebastián announced, as part of an effort to save on energy costs. Subsidies for solar energy, for instance, could be cut by up to 45 percent.

According to García, “pressure from electricity companies like Iberdrola, Endesa and Gas Natural has influenced” the savings measures announced by the government, some of which came into effect Monday Mar. 7.

He said “this might be seen as appropriate action now, but it bodes ill for the future.”

Spain has been hit hard by soaring oil prices and price swings resulting from the crisis in Libya, as it imports 75 percent of the energy it consumes.

Since 2007, parliament has turned down three proposals by the United Left coalition (IU) to reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels and promote consumption of clean energy instead.

In formulating its proposals, the IU had the support of Comisiones Obreras (CCOO), a trade union federation, the environmental group Ecologists in Action, Greenpeace and the Spanish office of the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).

The energy savings package approved Friday Mar. 4 by the government of socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero aims to save three billion dollars a year by taking temporary and permanent measures that will make cuts in energy imports equivalent to 28.6 million barrels of oil.

The package includes lowering the maximum speed limit on highways and motorways from 120 to 110 kilometres per hour, from Monday Feb. 7 until at least Jun. 30. Tyre replacement, which also saves fuel, will be subsidised.

The plan aims to reduce annual oil imports by five percent, to launch a citizen awareness and information campaign to promote energy savings, and to introduce subsidies for low-consumption light bulbs. This type of light bulb will also be used for street lighting throughout the country.

Red Eléctrica, the company that manages the electricity grid in Spain, announced that in January and February, 38 percent of the country’s energy came from non-polluting sources, such as solar, hydroelectric and wind energy.

This figure is two points lower than for the same two months in 2010, and is lower than the share represented by fossil fuels, which generated 42 percent of total electricity consumed.

First Vice President of the government and Interior Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba said although the package of measures “may be unpopular,” they are absolutely necessary because “with the highest priced litre of gasoline in history, we must make savings, because our economic recovery is at stake.”

Rubalcaba, of the governing Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party (PSOE), said “Spain is a country that has thought for a long time that energy is free, and it isn’t, it’s very expensive.”

Lawmaker Gustavo de Arístegui of the rightwing Popular Party, the main opposition force, criticised the efficiency measures, especially the unpopular new speed limit.

He proposed instead “a speed limit appropriate to the cars and highways of the 21st century, of 140, 150 or even 160 kilometres per hour on certain stretches,” and said these limits should be “strictly enforced.”

The government is also studying the idea of promoting manufacture and use of electric vehicles, which would allow maximum advantage to be taken of the country’s large wind power capacity. At present the wind turbines have to be shut off for periods of time because they produce more energy than is consumed, and the surplus cannot be stored.

Renewable energies are in fact being boosted by the situation across the Mediterranean Sea. The head of Fundación Renovables (Renewables Foundation), Javier García Breva, said the popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East will have serious and unpredictable consequences for imports of oil and derivatives.

Based on reports from the International Energy Agency and the European Central Bank, Breva said economic recovery in the EU will be threatened if oil prices climb any higher than their current level of 117 dollars a barrel, or if the situation in Libya causes a lengthy oil supply crisis.

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago and Federico Mayor Zaragoza
MADRID, Feb 4 2011 (IPS)

Civil society is more coordinated and stronger at an international level today thanks to the Internet, and cyberspace can play an important role in efforts to eradicate the death penalty, says Federico Mayor Zaragoza.

"The death penalty is the cruellest, most degrading and inhumane punishment," Federico Mayor Zaragoza told IPS. Credit: Wikicommons

Mayor Zaragoza is also chair of the IPS Board of Directors.

The International Commission Against the Death Penalty, originally the initiative of Spain’s socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, was officially established on Oct. 7, and its first two-day global meeting ended Thursday in Madrid.

Q: Is capital punishment a human rights violation even if it is carried out as part of a judicial decision?

A: It is not simply a violation of human rights, but is the ultimate denial of human rights, because it violates the most important of the universal rights: the right to life.

Q: But what if there is a judicial ruling?

A: First of all, it’s important to remember that on more than one occasion, after death row convicts have been executed, it turned out that they were innocent.

The death penalty is the cruellest, most degrading and inhumane punishment, which at times is applied unfairly and is generally used in a disproportionate, discriminatory and arbitrary manner. We must also keep in mind that even the most abject criminals can repent and be reformed.

Q: If the United Nations approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which proclaims the right of every individual to protection from deprivation of life, in 1948, why hasn’t it enforced a ban on the death penalty?

A: The U.N. can recommend, but it cannot enforce its resolutions.

Q: What explanation is there for the continued application of capital punishment in not only one of the industrialised nations, but the most industrialised nation, the United States?

A: There is no explanation, although we should not overlook the positives steps that are being taken, like President (Barack) Obama’s attempt to persuade the 36 states that maintain the death penalty to at least adopt a moratorium.

And in that country, the most important thing now is to take action in order to raise public awareness on the problem, to keep them from voting again in favour of keeping the death penalty on the books.

Q: And what about China?

A: With respect to that country…we should not look the other way, but should issue a loud international call for it to at least apply a moratorium and stop the killing.

It would be difficult to get China to change its laws immediately, but we should try to get it to suspend executions. Although all executions are worthy of condemnation, in this case we must stress that there are “assembly line executions”: killings of dozens of people who are deprived of a fair trial and the right to a defence.

Q: Can killings of civilian populations by the armed forces be considered a kind of capital punishment, given that many bombings, for instance, are carried out in compliance with orders given by democratically elected governments?

A: No, that isn’t the death penalty; these are murders, state terrorism, and those responsible for them should be tried under both national and international laws.

Q: Until capital punishment is revoked in the countries that still apply it, can steps forward be taken?

A: One thing that should immediately happen is a stop to executions of persons under 18, pregnant women or people with mental disabilities.

In the U.S. state of Virginia, a mentally retarded woman was recently executed. It is inconceivable that this is still happening in a country that claims to defend human rights. Human rights are indivisible; it is not possible to try to uphold some while violating others.

Q: But are there international norms that make it possible to apply the death penalty?

A: It has been clear that this isn’t possible since 1948, when the U.N. approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which proclaims the right of every individual to protection from deprivation of life and states that no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

It is clear that the death penalty not only violates the right to life but is also cruel, inhuman and degrading.

Furthermore, studies carried out by the U.N. in 1988, 1996 and 2002 state that no scientific study has shown that executions have a greater deterrent effect than life sentences.

Q: What immediate objective is sought by the International Commission that you chair?

A: To raise citizen awareness of the issue and get them involved in fighting the death penalty, and to get the 58 countries where it is still applied to abolish it by reforming their laws, with a view to its complete eradication.

Q: What responsibility do reporters and the media have with regard to this issue?

A: As with so many other issues, their responsibility is to broadly inform, in a veracious, accurate and objective manner. But we also have to understand that citizen participation in communication, through cyberspace, is growing day by day. It is very likely that the traditional media will become irrelevant.

Q: And what future do you see for a news agency like IPS (Inter Press Service)?

A: We have to keep in mind that unlike other agencies, IPS does not have a party, a multinational corporation or a state behind it, but is a truly international agency, a non-governmental organisation recognised as such by the U.N., with correspondents of all nationalities, that puts an emphasis on providing veracious, accurate, objective, verifiable information focused on major issues that affect the present and future of society, not trivialities.

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Jan 10 2011 (IPS)

Spain’s political parties demanded that ETA surrender its weapons and abandon violence for good, in response to a statement issued by the group Monday in which it declared a permanent ceasefire, verifiable by the international community, and called for negotiation.

In its communiqué published online by the Basque-language newspaper Gara, ETA — Euskadi ta Askatasuna or Basque Fatherland and Liberty, in the Basque language — said that to put an end to what it described as the “centuries-old political conflict” in that northern Spanish region, a democratic process is needed, “with dialogue and negotiation as its tools and with its compass pointed towards the will of the Basque people.”

Fernando de Salas, honorary rector of the Society for International Studies, told IPS that the communiqué is interesting, but does not go far enough, because “the first thing ETA has to do is turn over its weapons and accept international verification that it has given up violence forever.

“The Basque Country, like the rest of Spain, is governed by democratic rules that allow political ideas to be set forth and defended at the ballot box, without excluding anyone,” which means any use of violence should be rejected outright, he added.

The Basque region, one of the 17 autonomous communities into which Spain is divided, was one of the first to have an autonomous government, and has its own police force and separate tax system, which pays part of what it collects to the central government.

Interior Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba of the governing socialist party, seen as the possible successor to Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, said in a news briefing that ETA’s statement does not mark “the end, nor is it what society was expecting.”

He said Spanish society is demanding “an irreversible, definitive end” to ETA’s separatist violence.

“The government has rejected international verification over and over again. In a democratic country under the rule of law it’s for the state security forces to verify” the ceasefire, Rubalcaba said.

The president of the Association of Victims of Terrorism (AVT), Ángeles Pedraza, called the communiqué an “electoral ploy” designed to allow ETA’s political wing, the banned Herri Batasuna party, to participate in the May municipal elections, under the guise of an offer of peace.

But that participation “should in no way be allowed, because it would make a mockery of citizens who want to live in peace, democracy and freedom,” she said.

The leader of the United Left (IU) coalition, Cayo Lara, expressed himself in similar terms, demanding that ETA “lay its weapons on the table,” and stating that “the only possible communiqué that it can make is one that talks about an irreversible ceasefire.”

The consensus in Spain is that ETA is at its lowest point ever. Since it was founded over half a century ago, it has killed more than 900 people.

In its last bombing attack in Spain, ETA killed two members of the Civil Guard with a car bomb on Jul. 30, 2009 in the Balearic Islands. On Mar. 17, 2010, a French policeman was shot and killed near Paris in a shootout with members of the separatist group after a police patrol checked the identities of a group of people who had stolen cars from a garage.

In the last few years, after an attempt at peace talks failed in 2006 when ETA broke a truce after killing two people with a car bomb at the airport in Madrid, the group not only became less and less active, but its top leaders began to be captured. And last year alone, more than 100 members of the group were arrested, along with several weapons caches.

The evidence of its decline, apart from the arrests of its leaders, is that it has not managed to stage new attacks, although the Interior Ministry had not ruled out the possibility that it could make an attempt at any moment.

ETA wants negotiations to include a discussion of the release of its imprisoned members, to which the associations of victims’ families are opposed, as well as the country’s political parties.

“I am the first to want the end of ETA, but when I hear talk about prison releases, it’s as if I had been stabbed,” Antonio Salvá, the father of a young member of the Civil Guard who was killed by the terrorist group, said in an interview published by the Madrid newspaper El Mundo.

The statement published by Gara is dated Jan. 8, the day that tens of thousands of people demonstrated in the Basque region to protest the government’s policy of holding people convicted of separatist violence in prisons far from their homes, and to demand an amnesty for the prisoners.

Javier Arenas, a leader of the centre-right Popular Party, said the real goal of the demonstrations was to allow ETA’s political arm to take part in the municipal elections, which he said must not happen.

In late 2009, Herri Batasuna leaders Rufi Etxeberria and Rafael Diez Usabiaga presented a document stating that “the democratic process must develop amidst the total absence of violence, and without interference.”

In assemblies held shortly afterwards among ETA supporters, 80 percent approved the abandonment of violence.

That stance is supported by South African human rights lawyer Brian Currin, who has led attempts to convince ETA to declare a “permanent, unilateral and verifiable ceasefire,” with the support of international figures.

Currin, who has extensive experience in conflict mediation in his country, Northern Ireland and the Basque region, met on Mar. 29 to that end with former president of Ireland Mary Robinson, and with Nobel Peace laureates F. W. de Klerk, the former South African president; Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa; and John Hume from Northern Ireland.

After ETA issued its statement Monday, Currin told the Spanish news agency Europa Press that he was pleased that the group had responded “positively” to the call for a verifiable ceasefire expressed by the group of international personalities.

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Dec 2 2010 (IPS)

The highest authorities of Spain’s judicial system will have to explain to the Congress of Deputies their repeated refusals to bring U.S. soldiers to trial for the 2003 killing of journalist José Couso in Baghdad. The recent diplomatic cables made public by the whistleblower organisation Wikileaks reveal contacts with U.S. authorities aimed at preventing a trial.

José Couso in a photo taken shortly before his death in Baghdad, Apr. 8, 2003. Credit: Public domain

“It can’t be left like this. It is a matter of justice and of responsibility to our citizens, which no government body should ignore, much less Congress,” he said.

The pressure on the Attorney General’s Office, the government and Congress to take action comes from different sectors, including Couso’s family, while the main force of political opposition, the right-wing Popular Party (PP), looks the other way.

The PP’s parliamentary spokesperson, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, has argued that the content of the leaked documents about the killing “has not been confirmed” and therefore her party will abstain from taking a position on the matter.

She also suggested that the international community should respond jointly to the 250,000 secret or confidential documents made available online by Wikileaks, and beginning on Nov. 28 were published by five major global newspapers published on their websites — including the Spanish daily El País.

Most of the texts were cables between the U.S. State Department and its embassies around the world.

“The documents could affect important aspects of diplomatic and international relations,” said Sáenz.

PP leader José María Aznar was Spain’s prime minister from 1998 to 2004 and brought the country into the Iraq War, which began in March 2003. He did so despite strong opposition from the majority of the Spanish public and other political parties.

Couso, who was covering the war for the commercial Telecinco TV channel, was killed one month after the U.S.-led invasion.

At a press conference, Couso’s family expressed indignation that both the Attorney General’s Office and the government, “rather than defend national sovereignty and investigate what happened, act in the service of a foreign power and then hide the truth.” The family members said they are planning further legal actions.

Spokespersons for the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and his Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), did not respond to IPS’s questions on the matter, and instead referred to recent statements by Foreign Minister Trinidad Jiménez.

On Tuesday, Nov. 30, Jiménez underscored that “in Spain the judiciary is independent and acts with great seriousness… it is unthinkable that it could be pressured in any way to close a judicial proceeding.”

At the Dec. 1 weekly plenary session in which the prime minister reports to Congress, during the breaks Zapatero and Jiménez answered reporters’ questions with only silence and smiles.

But the commotion has not ceased in Spain since El País began publishing — in digital and print editions — the texts that refer to the Couso case included among the secret U.S. documents released by Wikileaks.

According to those documents, the current government supported everything the U.S. embassy in Madrid did to prevent the case against the soldiers from moving forward. Operating a tank, the U.S. soldiers fired shells at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, the known residence of foreign journalists covering the war. Couso was on the balcony of the 14th floor filming the action alongside other colleagues.

In one of the documents, sent in May 2007 to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. ambassador in Madrid, Eduardo Aguirre, assured her that the Spanish government had “helped in the wings” so that the judge’s decisions would face appeal and end the investigation into the reporter’s death.

The appeal “will go to the same court which originally dismissed the case (in 2006) on procedural grounds,” wrote Aguirre.

Two years earlier, in October 2005, Judge Santiago Pedraz, of the Audiencia Nacional (a federal court), had issued an international arrest warrant for the three U.S. soldiers who fired at the hotel in Baghdad. The warrant failed, primarily due to Washington’s refusal to recognise it, but also to the passive stance of the Spanish government.

The State Department papers disclosed by Wikileaks, already dubbed “Cablegate,” show that Spanish officials collaborated to prevent international arrest warrants for the U.S. soldiers from being finalised, just as Aguirre had assured his superiors in a cable.

Among those involved, the document mentions Spain’s then-secretary of state for foreign affairs and current presidential secretary-general, Bernardino León, as well as Miguel Ángel Moratinos, who served as Zapatero’s foreign minister from 2004 until October 2010.

In another cable the ambassador sent to the State Department on May 14, 2007, he states, “While we are careful to show our respect for the tragic death of Couso and for the Spanish judicial system, behind the scenes we have fought tooth and nail to make the charges disappear” against the U.S. soldiers who fired on the hotel.

The powerful vice-president, María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, who also served until October 2010, held a meeting around that time with the ambassador. She told him that Attorney General Conde-Pumpido had remarked on the excellent cooperation from the embassy and U.S. authorities in helping to conclude the case.

This “excellent cooperation” was referred to this Tuesday, Nov. 30, by the Attorney General’s Office in a statement which underscores that its actions are based on strictly legal criteria, with no external interference.

But the statement also assures that the office maintains a close and productive relationship with its U.S. counterpart and with similar entities in other countries, primarily in the area of the fight against international terrorism, drug-trafficking and organised crime. But it did not clarify if the Couso case is included in that “area.”

Following several starts and stops in the court case, on Jul. 30, 2010, a Spanish judge ordered the arrest and detention of the three U.S. soldiers implicated, but Interpol did not process the arrest warrants and the United States has refused to accept them because the events involved a “military crime” under its own jurisdiction.

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Sep 9 2010 (IPS)

Civil society organisations welcomed the announcement of an additional 1.27 billion dollars in development aid funding by European Commission president José Manuel Durâo Barroso, but said it was insufficient to reduce extreme poverty by 2015, as stipulated by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Eduardo Sánchez, the president of CONGDE, the national platform of Spain’s development NGOs, told IPS that Barroso’s announcement Tuesday did not make it clear whether the amount mentioned was extra funding, or a transfer of funds from one budget bracket to another, and added that “it is not enough, the contribution should be much greater.”

Laura Sullivan, European Policy and Campaigns manager for ActionAid, said meeting the MDGs — a series of anti-poverty targets adopted by the international community in 2000 — requires urgent aid, which means the announcement is positive.

But she warned that the additional funds must be accompanied by consistent policies in the EU member states.

At a “high level meeting” Tuesday on “Post-crisis global: efectos en los países en desarrollo y su impacto mediático” (Post-Crisis World: Effects on developing countries and their media impact), Uruguayan writer and journalist Eduardo Galeano looked beyond the issue of the amount of public aid funds, and instead criticised their destination and uses, in countries of the industrial North as well as the developing South.

The meeting, organised by the Spanish International Development Cooperation Agency (AECID) and international news agency Inter Press Service (IPS), was held in the context of the Foreign Ministry’s Spanish Cooperation Week taking place Sept. 6-11 in Madrid.

It was attended by personalities and journalists from countries of the South, and among its goals was debating the role of development aid in overcoming the global financial crisis.

In a special guest lecture, “Deadly Sins in an Upside Down World,” Galeano referred to examples of absurd expenditures such as the Berlin Wall, built in 1961 to divide that German city in two and demolished in 1989. He also said the wall recently constructed by Morocco in the territory it occupies in Western Sahara “is 60 times bigger than the Berlin Wall.”

Galeano also mentioned other walls, like the one built by the United States along its border with Mexico in an attempt to keep migrants out, Israel’s barrier in the West Bank, and Spain’s wall separating its enclaves in Ceuta and Melilla from Morocco.

Sánchez, in another presentation at the meeting organised by AECID and IPS, said that European countries and the United States should slash their armaments budgets and devote the funds to development aid.

He also proposed that the United Nations should approve a tax on international financial transactions, for the same purpose.

In 2009 alone, the United States spent 700 billion dollars on arms, while the United Nations has said that with 40 billion dollars a year, world hunger and poverty could be halved by 2015, Federico Mayor Zaragoza, chair of the IPS Board of Directors and of the Foundation for a Culture of Peace, said at the meeting.

Mayor Zaragoza emphasised the immediate need to establish worldwide recognition of democratic values and equal dignity, as “we must move from violence to a culture of dialogue, and from an economy of speculation and war to one of sustainable development throughout the world.”

For her part, Spain’s Secretary of State for International Cooperation, Soraya Rodríguez, highlighted the need to differentiate between development aid and humanitarian aid.

She said it is obviously right for rich countries like Spain to make substantial donations to address the effects of catastrophes like the earthquake in Haiti. “That is humanitarian aid,” she said.

But it is quite another challenge to support development in countries of the South, by sustaining and stimulating their economies, and encouraging access to international markets for their products.

Other important steps, she added, would be to impose a tax on the global financial system and use the revenue to promote development, and to implement an international financial system that makes it more clear where funds come from and where they go.

Meanwhile it should not be forgotten, she said, that over one billion people in the world are hungry, “something that is simply inconceivable.” She mentioned the case of Afghanistan, a country wracked by violence, “but where more casualties are due to extreme poverty than to war.”

At the high level meeting the editor of El Nuevo Diario, a Nicaraguan newspaper, Roberto Collado, said there are times when development aid from the North is not used properly, for instance when the recipient governments are tied up in red tape.

This used to happen during the 1980s in his country, when it was governed by the leftwing Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), he said. But at present it no longer occurs, he added, even though President Daniel Ortega, a Sandinista leader, returned to power in 2007.

The reason, he said, is that at present aid funds are received directly by NGOs, most of which work in rural areas “lifting thousands and thousands of small farmers out of poverty.”

Armando Rivarola, editor of the Paraguayan newspaper ABC, stressed that it is essential “to discover what happens to aid funds,” to investigate and in particular to find out how the money is actually spent, something that does not currently occur in his country and in other Latin American nations.

Franklin Huizies, vice president of the community radio broadcasters support organisation AMARC Africa, in South Africa, said the media have an important role to play in fomenting effective development policies.

“The media should not only cover the news about events, but also initiate dialogue, inviting local and foreign governments to take part, as well as NGOs and civil society at large,” he said.

Meanwhile, Sánchez stressed that Spain’s present economic crisis has not affected volunteer work in grassroots development projects. “Volunteers are constantly at work, transferring Spanish aid to the most vulnerable populations and this year, with disasters like Haiti’s, we have seen that the solidarity of ordinary citizens has been maintained, in spite of the crisis,” he said.

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Aug 28 2010 (IPS)

The 17th Titirilandia (Puppetland) Festival will conclude with a marathon puppet show, to be held Sunday Aug. 29 in Spain’s capital city in aid of a school in the remote Bolivian mining province of Potosí.

Elisa Iglesia, in charge of volunteering for Ayuda en Acción (the Spanish branch of Action Aid, an international anti-poverty agency), who is helping with the marathon, told IPS the idea of ending the puppet festival with a marathon to raise funds for educational projects in countries of the developing South was conceived in 1994.

Action Aid Spain has been the beneficiary of funds raised in 15 of the 17 annual marathons, and receipts this year will go towards building a school in Tacara, in the southwestern Bolivian province of Potosí. The direct beneficiaries will be 207 Quechua Indians in that remote community.

Children in Tacara have to walk 15 kilometres, or three hours and a half, to the nearest school. Not surprisingly, 58 percent of the children do not finish primary school, even though it is compulsory.

“Building a school will give them the chance of a more just and dignified life,” said Iglesia.

The Action Aid volunteer said they plan to “build a classroom and equip it with school furniture and appropriate teaching materials, as well as housing for teachers, and a toilet block. Teachers and school officials will be offered tailormade training workshops.”

There are 36 children among the 207 people living in the tight-knit farming community of Ayllu Q’orqa, in the vicinity of Tacara.

Iglesia explained that the distance of the village from the nearest town means that municipal and provincial authorities pay very little attention to its basic needs, “especially infrastructure for schools.”

Not only do the children have to put up with education that is far away and unreliable, but teachers themselves lack basic tools for their work.

Iglesia said the Titirilandia cultural association has become a “strategic partner” of Action Aid, because “we share the goals of working towards a fairer, more equitable world, paying special attention to children, through puppets, stories, theatre and other activities.”

In 1994 the funds raised went to a project in Rwanda, and then to Nicaragua (1995), Bolivia (1996), El Salvador (1997 and 1998), Peru (2002, 2003, 2005, 2006 and 2009), Mexico (2004), India (2007) and Honduras (2008).

The marathon, like the festival, is held in Madrid’s historic Parque del Retiro, and six groups of puppeteers and other storytelling groups will take turns performing. They are offering their shows on an honorary basis, without even charging expenses. There will also be a tombola, as well as workshops and other activities.

“Puppets entertain and are also educational,” said Carlos Alpuente, a teacher who regularly brings his pupils to the marathon.

The school in Tacara is part of Action Aid’s extensive work in Latin America.

The NGO has built 350 earthquake-resistant housing units in the south of Peru since an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale killed 596 people on Aug. 15, 2007 and left tens of thousands homeless.

It has also funded the building of 24 new schools serving more than 4,000 students in the districts of Santiago, Ocucaje and San José Los Molinos, which were the most affected by the earthquake, and continues to support business projects to assist recovery of the local economies.

Action Aid says its support and technical advice has helped many families hit by the quake to start income-generating projects to improve their living conditions, such as production of construction materials, especially stone, as well as plant nurseries and livestock raising.

It also funded the area’s first fish farm, a country restaurant, electric light and water services and biodigesters for the treatment of waste water.

Post-earthquake reconstruction in the area was also funded by the official Spanish international development aid agency (AECID), local bodies in Spain and a number of private companies.

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Jun 29 2010 (IPS)

Senegalese businesswoman Marie Thiaré makes her business cards by hand, because she has no way to have them printed — a sharp contrast with the situation faced by women entrepreneurs in Europe, where it is easy to order business cards, and most people even have their own home computer and printer.

Thiaré was speaking to a Jun. 25-27 meeting of women entrepreneurs from Europe and Africa who met in Madrid to discuss how to replicate in the economy the advances that have been achieved in politics in terms of gender equality.

In Spain, the growing number of women managers and executives is already generating improvements in the situation of women and playing a significant role in breaking down existing barriers, Spain’s Minister of Equality, Bibiana Aído, told IPS.

The gender equality law passed in 2007 in Spain with the support of smaller opposition parties but not the main opposition force, the centre-right People’s Party, established that 40 percent of candidates on party electoral lists must be women.

The law also requires companies with more than 250 employees to negotiate “equality plans” that set a medium-term target of women representing 40 percent of the members of boards of directors.

At the three-day meeting between women entrepreneurs and business associations from Europe and Africa — the Encuentro de Emprendedoras Africanas y Españolas — organised by the Fundación Mujeres (Women’s Foundation) with backing from the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), European businesswomen made a firm commitment to work with and support their African counterparts.

In the opening session, Thiaré gave an idea of the extent of the challenges faced by many African women entrepreneurs, especially in rural areas, by pointing out that even something as simple as business cards is out of their reach.

The Senegalese entrepreneur also stressed that in her country, it is women who are in charge of most economic activity, because so many men have been forced to go abroad, mainly to Europe, in search of jobs that enable them to support their families.

She said empowerment of women is not only fair, but makes sense, since in her country, for example, “Women are more efficient and manage money better.”

Microcredit institutions like the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh have found that women indeed do a better job than men when it comes to paying off loans.

The aim of empowering women is to modify the traditional division of labour and roles, Thiaré said, pointing out that they are unequal not only in Africa, but in Spain as well.

She also stressed that women’s empowerment in Africa strengthens development in a continent where 80 percent of food is produced by women, most of whom work in the informal sector, “something that should also be put on the list of complaints and demands.”

One reflection of the huge proportion of women in the informal sector is the fact that only two percent of African women have bank accounts, said Spain’s Secretary of State for International Cooperation, Soraya Rodríguez.

“The poorer the State, the more important is the work of women,” said Rodríguez. For that reason, Spain’s official development aid programme has incorporated cross-cutting gender policies since 2004, which has made it possible to increase fourfold the number of actions aimed at improving conditions for women in Africa.

A report by the Chair of Entrepreneurs at the University of Cadiz, presented Monday in that city in southern Spain, makes an in-depth analysis of the differences between women and male entrepreneurs in Spain and abroad.

The study, based on a survey of 800 women and men entrepreneurs, recommends the design of public policies aimed at promoting gender equality in business.

One fact that stands out is that in 2009, only eight percent of entrepreneurial enterprises in Spain were led by women, mainly in the area of production of consumer goods, followed by industry.

The study recommends, for example, fomenting closer ties between financial institutions and business enterprises and stimulating the creation of mixed groups of male and female entrepreneurs.

At the meeting, in which women from Spain and 28 African countries took part, around one hundred stands were set up by women entrepreneurs selling products ranging from crafts and farm products to furniture and audiovisual products, financed by the AECID.

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, May 25 2010 (IPS)

Governments from the European Union and from Latin America and the Caribbean are confident that at year’s end the international climate conference will produce a concrete legal mandate to truly protect the environment.

The 16th Conference of Parties (COP 16) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will take place starting Nov. 29 in the Mexican resort city of Cancún.

Leaders from both regions have pledged joint actions for sustainable development, especially strategies to reduce climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions.

Mexican President Felipe Calderón stated that one of the ways to achieve that goal is the upcoming launch of the European Union-Latin America/Caribbean (Eurolac) Foundation.

“It is a space for dialogue and agreement between the two regions,” said Calderón of the initiative that came out of the 6th European Union-Latin America/Caribbean Summit, held May 18 in Madrid.

Spain’s Secretary of State for Climate Change Teresa Ribera told Tierramérica that her country “will dedicate itself to using the lessons learned in the Ibero-American forum in our international cooperation policies for the region through various initiatives.”

Among them, she named the Clean Development Mechanism, as set out in the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change; the UN Development Programme’s Millennium Development Goal Achievement Fund; the REDD initiative (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries); and cooperation among meteorology services on climate matters.

As for the pollution caused by Spanish transnational corporations in Latin America, Ribera said, “The government has promoted a law that regulates the environmental responsibility of those companies… although it is difficult to ensure they obey the laws of other countries.”

“Other tools are essential, such as, of course, the local governments, but also the companies’ social responsibility and brand image in public opinion and the markets,” she added.

“Today, environmental ethics are a factor of leadership in business, and the market value of companies is increasingly linked to the presence or absence of risk in their environmental behavior,” Ribera said.

The Spanish official added, “If we want to halt the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, we have to make the best practices and available technologies widespread, we have to reverse deforestation, and we have to promote innovation and consistency in the decisions of government and the private sector.”

However, environmental activists are wary of the market-based nature of the agreements.

“Most of the agreements between the two regions are determined by their market profile, which responds to a clearly liberalising and deregulatory model, in which environmental issues do not play a determining role,” Pablo José Martínez Osés, coordinator of Plataforma 2015 y Más, an umbrella of 14 Spanish non-governmental organisations.

“The potential joint accords that will materialise either through international cooperation or the Cancún Summit, sadly, will remain subordinate to market interests of profitability for a few owners on one side or the other,” Martínez Osés said.

“We have asked the Spanish government to help put an end to the impunity with which our country’s companies operate in foreign territories, limiting regulations and rights to the maximum,” he added.

In the activist’s opinion, “to achieve a true reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, we must reform the norms and mechanisms of an irrational, predatory system.”

“Proposals must be introduced that are linked to food sovereignty, an economy based on and oriented to human rights, and the capacity of governments to plan and decide on economic policies,” he said.

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)

Excerpt:

Sustainable development actions are bringing Latin American and European countries together in agreements that activists are criticizing due to their “market-based profile.”

Will the frustrations of the Copenhagen Climate Summit be repeated in Cancún? - Ana Libisch/IPS

The 16th Conference of Parties (COP 16) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will take place starting Nov. 29 in the Mexican resort city.

Leaders from both regions pledged to promote joint actions for sustainable development, especially strategies to reduce climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions.

Mexican President Felipe Calderón stated that one of the ways to achieve that goal will be the upcoming launch of the European Union-Latin America/Caribbean (Eurolac) Foundation.

“It is a space for dialogue and agreement between the two regions,” said Calderón about the initiative that came out of the 6th European Union-Latin America/Caribbean Summit, held May 18 in Madrid.

Spain's Secretary of State for Climate Change Teresa Ribera told Tierramérica that her country “will dedicate itself to using the lessons learned in the Ibero-American forum in our international cooperation policies in the region through various initiatives.”

Among them, she named the Clean Development Mechanism, as set out in the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change; the UN Development Program's Millennium Development Goal Achievement Fund; the REDD initiative (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries); and cooperation among meteorology services for climate matters. As for the pollution caused by Spanish transnational corporations in Latin America, Ribera said, “The government has promoted a law that regulates the environmental responsibility of those companies… although it is difficult to ensure they obey the laws of other countries.”

“Other tools are essential, such as, of course, the local governments, but also the companies' social responsibility and brand image in public opinion and the markets,” she added.

“Today, environmental ethics are a factor of leadership in business activity and the market value of companies is increasingly linked to the presence or absence of risk in their environmental behavior,” Ribera said.

The Spanish official added, “If we want to halt the increase in emissions, we have to make the best practices and available technologies widespread, we have to reverse deforestation, and we have to promote innovation and consistency in the decisions of government and the private sector.”

However, the critical view from civil society's perspective is wary of the market-based nature of the agreements.

“Most of the agreements between the two regions are determined by their market profile, which responds to a clearly liberalizing and deregulatory model, in which environmental issues do not play a determining role,” Pablo José Martínez Osés, coordinator of Plataforma 2015 y Más, an umbrella of 14 Spanish non-governmental organizations.

“The potential joint accords that will materialize either through international cooperation or the Cancún Summit sadly will remain subordinate to market interests of profitability for a few owners on one side or the other,” Martínez Osés said.

“We have asked the Spanish government to help put an end to the impunity with which our country's companies operate in foreign territories, limiting regulations and rights to the maximum,” he added.

In the activist's opinion, “to achieve a true reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, we must reform the norms and mechanisms of an irrational, predatory system.”

“Proposals must be introduced that are linked to food sovereignty, an economy based and oriented to human rights, and the capacity of governments to plan and decide on economic policies,” he said.

By Tito Drago
MADRID, May 18 2010 (IPS)

The leaders of the 60 European Union, Latin American and Caribbean nations meeting in the capital of Spain agreed Tuesday that unity between the two regions is essential to weathering the global economic crisis.

The summit’s host, socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said at the opening of the gathering that the two regions separated by the Atlantic ocean are “global partners facing global challenges.”

In that task, the “global partners” should open and not close borders, Zapatero added, reflecting the position stated by the delegations of Argentina and Bolivia, which urged the EU not to discriminate against immigrants.

The 43-point declaration issued by the Sixth European Union-Latin America/Caribbean Summit (EU-LAC) says the “diversification and complementarity of the energy” mix is indispensable to the eradication of poverty and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the 2015 target date.

This can be achieved, it adds, by developing renewable energy sources, improving energy efficiency, changing current consumption and production patterns, and improving regional energy interconnectivity.

The declaration also reiterates the two regions’ commitment to fighting climate change and protecting biodiversity.

“We will exchange experiences on biofuel technology, norms and regulations, on hydroelectric and on other energies,” says point number 13.

One of the concrete measures adopted at the summit was the creation of the Latin America Investment Facility (LAIF). For the 2010-2011 period, 17 projects have been identified, representing a total investment of some 3.5 billion euros (4.3 billion dollars).

The leaders also expressed a commitment to fighting impunity for crimes against humanity in all countries of both regions.

The final declaration says “we reaffirm our commitment to fight impunity, in particular for the most serious crimes under international law, notably those referred to in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Their prosecution should be ensured by taking measures at the national or appropriate level and by enhancing international cooperation.”

In addition, they “invite those countries which are not parties to consider the possibility to ratify or accede, as applicable, to the Rome Statute”, which created the ICC.

The heads of state and government and other representatives paid special attention to equality between women and men and condemned gender violence.

They also approved the establishment of the EU-LAC Foundation, which will serve as “a useful tool for strengthening our bi-regional partnership and a means of triggering debate on common strategies and actions as well as enhancing its visibility.”

The site of the headquarters of the Foundation, which will have an initial budget of three million euros (3.6 million dollars), has yet to be determined. The candidates are Germany, France and Italy.

During the summit, representatives of the EU and South America’s Mercosur trade bloc — the Southern Common Market, made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay — met and agreed to resume talks for a free trade agreement, although France and other countries expressed opposition to continuing the negotiations, which have been stalled since 2004.

Zapatero applauded the decision to relaunch the talks towards an “ambitious, balanced association agreement,” which, if achieved, would be the EU’s most important free trade accord and would create a free trade zone representing 750 million people with annual inter-regional commerce worth nearly 100 billion euros (123 billion dollars).

The declaration also expressed “satisfaction” with the conclusion of a multi-party trade agreement between the EU, Colombia and Peru, and an association agreement between the EU and Central America.

The leaders renewed their commitment to solidarity with earthquake-devastated Haiti, which Zapatero said was in need of “recovering dignity and hope.”

Leaders absent from the summit included Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Cuba’s Raúl Castro, Uruguay’s José Mujica (on doctor’s orders), Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Porfirio Lobo of Honduras, Britain’s David Cameron, Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who left after Monday’s opening dinner.

Some 80 non-governmental organisations, meeting ahead of the summit, issued a statement saying “We believe that the current crisis is an opportunity to advance more decisively with respect to alternatives for change that comprise the complexity and integrity of the political, social, environmental, cultural and economic processes on our continents.”

The NGOs also stated that “The international cooperation role cannot be reduced to the meeting of urgent needs and in no case be used as an instrument at the service of commercial and political interests,” but must be directed towards promoting development.

They called for the development of a “new architecture of global governance” and the reinforcement of the “democratic and participative nature” of national, regional and multilateral institutions.

The leaders agreed that the next summit will be held in Chile, whose new president, the conservative Sebastián Piñera, said he was not overly satisfied with the result of Tuesday’s meeting in Madrid.

Piñera said he hoped that the summit that his country will host in 2012 will be “the first with 21st century methods, speed and rhythm, and that we will tackle the problems with the same speed with which they occur.”

He said the summit in Madrid had achieved results, but added that “I frankly believe they fell short,” because old problems were tackled “with old solutions” when what are needed are innovations.

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, May 13 2010 (IPS)

The trial of Spain’s “superjudge” Baltasar Garzón is aimed at squelching the principle of universal justice by suspending its main advocate, Dolores Delgado, a prosecutor at the Audiencia Nacional, Spain’s highest criminal court, told IPS.

On Wednesday Supreme Court Justice Luciano Varela rejected an appeal by prosecutors, allowing the trial to go ahead, perhaps in two to three months. On Friday Garzón may be suspended from the Audiencia Nacional for up to 20 years.

Garzón is accused of overstepping his jurisdiction by starting to investigate atrocities committed during Spain’s 1936-1939 civil war and the 1939-1975 dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco.

The case was brought by far-right groups, which argue that his investigation into the forced disappearance of some 113,000 people during the Franco era violated the amnesty law passed by the Spanish parliament in 1977, two years after Franco’s death..

In response to legal action brought by the Association for the Recovery of the Historical Memory, which groups relatives of victims of forced disappearance, he ordered the exhumation of 19 unmarked mass graves around the country.

One of the graves is said to hold the body of poet Federico García Lorca, who was killed by pro-Franco forces in 1936 in the southern city of Granada.

The probe, launched in 2008, drew strong popular support, as well as harsh reactions from right-wing groups. However, the judge later transferred the investigations of mass graves and missing people to regional courts.

Early this week, Garzón said he intended to temporarily move to The Hague to work for seven months as an external adviser to International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, with whom he has participated in different panels and seminars on legal and human rights questions.

On Tuesday, he asked the General Council of the Judiciary, the judicial oversight board, for leave of absence, which was expected to be discussed on Monday, May 17.

But the oversight board, in response to seven conservatives who comprise a majority of its members, called a special session for Friday, to specifically decide whether to suspend Garzón, who became world-famous when he issued the warrant that resulted in former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s (1973-1990) arrest in London in 1998.

Judicial sources told IPS that given the makeup of the oversight board, it is very likely to decide Friday to suspend Garzón.

If that happens, the judge would not be eligible for a leave of absence to work in The Hague.

Moreno Ocampo said in an interview in the Madrid daily El País that “no one can doubt that in the whole world, Garzón is the judge” with the greatest experience in investigating international criminal organisations.

He also pointed out that the ICC has the mission to put an end to impunity for mass crimes, referring to the Court’s mandate to investigate crimes against humanity and war crimes that have not been tried in the countries where they were committed.

If Garzón is suspended, he would be barred from leaving the country.

Judge Varela acted in favour of the two far-right groups that brought the case against Garzón by asking them to present new indictments, in order to correct several errors that he detected.

Dolores Delgado told IPS that the Supreme Court had acted hastily in deciding to give the green light for the trial against Garzón, issuing “a flood” of resolutions of three or four sheets each, instead of the usual 100 or more pages each.

She said that indicated that the resolutions were neither closely studied nor well-founded, but were merely issued to punish Garzón without grounds.

Delgado also said the resolutions set a confusing schedule of dates devoid of logic because “the aim is to abort the International Criminal Court’s offer,” which would have allowed Garzón to work in The Hague for seven months “without representing a danger to anyone.”

She said the oversight board should give Garzón permission to go to The Hague and not suspend him until the trial actually begins.

If Garzón is suspended, “it would put an end to the principle of universal justice,” according to which the perpetrators of war crimes, torture, forced disappearance and other crimes against humanity are subject to international jurisdiction if no national court is able or willing to handle the cases.

And a suspension would make him “the last victim of Franquismo,” said Emilio Silva, head of the Association for the Recovery of the Historical Memory.

Garzón, instead of travelling to The Hague, “would be stuck in internal exile,” he said, unless the overwhelming worldwide expressions of support for the judge manage to influence the oversight board.

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Apr 22 2010 (IPS)

Argentina is an example for Spaniards to bear in mind as they investigate crimes committed during the 1939-1975 dictatorship of general Francisco Franco, says Emilio Silva, head of the Spanish Association for the Recovery of Historic Memory (ARMH).

Silva took part in the Madrid launch of the book “Alejandro, por siempre…amor” (Alejandro, forever… love) by Taty Almeida, one of the founders, and now the head, of the Argentine human rights group Mothers of Plaza de Mayo – Founding Line.

Almeida, who said that her father, grandfather, uncles, brothers and some of her sons were in the armed forces, explained that her son Alejandro Martín, a leftwing activist, was seized at his home by the security forces in 1975 at the age of 20 and never seen again.

Forced disappearances of this kind had already begun to occur even before the start of Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship, when they became widespread.

At that time, the widow of former president Juan Domingo Perón, María Estela Martínez – known to the world as Isabel Perón – was president. She was ousted by the 1976 coup d’état and held under house arrest for five years by the dictatorship. She has lived in Madrid since her release.

The book, presented Tuesday night in the Spanish capital, contains poems and writings by Alejandro Martín. It was published in Buenos Aires in 2008, after his mother discovered the manuscripts when she was sorting through a large number of boxes stored by her family.

“We must carry on fighting for the truth, and for the right to bury our dead,” Almeida said, with tears in her eyes. In recent years, she added, forensic anthropologists have recovered some remains, and “those bones speak and can lead to knowledge of where and by whom they were killed.”

She refuses to say that her son is dead. “He is detained-disappeared,” she says, because to consider him dead she would have to see his body.

She stressed that the watchword of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, which commemorates its 33rd anniversary on Apr. 30, is “¡con vida los llevaron, con vida los queremos!” (they were taken alive, we want them back alive!), and that the mothers will only accept that their children are dead when the perpetrators admit to having killed them.

According to official figures, more than 10,000 people were forcibly disappeared in Argentina, but human rights organisations claim the true number is about 30,000, based on testimony by the victims’ relatives and investigations.

In 1996, Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón opened prosecutions that led in some cases to trials for crimes perpetrated during the Argentine dictatorship and the 1973-1990 military dictatorship in Chile.

Garzón acted under international law, which states that no statute of limitations applies to crimes against humanity and that they cannot be amnestied, and under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which stipulates that when they are not tried in the country where they were committed, they can be prosecuted in any country.

Argentine lawyer Carlos Slepoy, who lives and practices in Madrid, said that in response to Garzón’s actions, “the favour should be returned” by investigating, outside of Spain, the crimes of the Franco era.

Almeida stated clearly, to loud applause from those at the book launch, that not only should members of the armed forces be investigated and prosecuted, but also politicians, members of the business community and the Catholic Church hierarchy, some of whom were active accomplices of the dictatorship.

She added, though, that “priests who followed Christ’s teachings, and kept one eye on God and the other on the people, should be remembered and honoured,” referring to clergy who were persecuted by the dictatorship in Argentina for defending human rights. The Argentine activist told IPS that recent declarations by Pope Benedict XVI about clergy who supported the Argentine dictatorship were “inconceivable, coming from someone who claims to defend human rights.”

The pontiff “only said that Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio,” accused of complicity with the abduction and torture of two priests during the military regime, “was a lost sheep, and no penalty has been imposed on him by the Church,” Almeida said.

On Apr. 14, Slepoy and human rights groups filed genocide charges in a federal court in Argentina for the 1936 murders in Spain of two mayors, Elías García Holgado and Severino Rivas, invoking the principle of universal justice.

The two men were among the victims of pro-Franco forces during the 1936-1939 Spanish civil war.

Among other legal instruments, Slepoy appealed to the United Nations Convention against Torture, approved in 1984 and in force since 1987, which has been ratified by Argentina, Spain and more than a hundred other countries.

The Convention establishes that, when there is reliable information about cases of torture occurring in one of the states party, the accused persons can be tried in court in a different state party.

ARMH’s Silva harshly criticised the Supreme Court’s Apr. 7 announcement that it would try Garzón on charges of overreaching his powers by attempting to investigate atrocities committed under Franco, which were amnestied in 1977.

Noting that socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero had said that Franco “has already been judged by history,” Silva asked: “What would people in Argentina, where members of the dictatorship have been put on trial, think of that statement?” He said that the prosecution of Garzón for attempting to establish the whereabouts of some 114,000 people forcibly disappeared under Franco is occurring because there has been no accountability in Spain for the human rights crimes of the past, which have merely been ignored.

At the conclusion of the book launch, Spanish actress Lucía Álvarez read the last poem Alejandro wrote, translated roughly as: “Until forever, my love / until forever, my comrades / winter brings fierce cold / and the barricades are waiting / the military are waiting too / until the final victory / in life or in death.”

The entire audience rose to their feet and shouted, over and over again, “Presente! Presente!” meaning Alejandro was present in their midst.

The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo – Founding Line split off from the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Association because of dissent over the latter group’s increasing politicisation.

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Apr 2 2010 (IPS)

Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón, who became world-famous when he issued the warrant that resulted in former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s arrest in London in 1998, is now facing legal charges himself, which could cost him his job.

Garzón, who sits on the Audiencia Nacional, Spain’s highest criminal court, is accused of overreaching his judicial powers for his 2008 decision to investigate human rights crimes committed during Spain’s 1936-1939 civil war and the 1939-1975 dictatorship of Francisco Franco, which were covered by an amnesty issued by parliament in 1977, two years after the dictator’s death.

The high court magistrate began investigating the forced disappearance of some of the more than 100,000 victims of that crime, arguing that under international law no amnesty can apply to crimes against humanity.

In response to legal action brought by “associations for the recovery of the historical memory” which group the families of victims of forced disappearance in different regions of the country, he ordered the exhumation of 19 unmarked mass graves around the country.

One of the graves is said to hold the body of poet Federico García Lorca, who was killed by pro-Franco forces in 1936 in the southern city of Granada.

The charges against Garzón were filed by the far-right organisations Manos Limpias, which calls itself a trade union but is not registered as such, Libertad e Identidad (Freedom and Identity), and Falange, Spain’s fascist party.

The groups accuse him of abuse of power for investigating crimes that were covered by the 1977 amnesty.

On Mar. 25, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Garzón, who argued that he did not overstep the bounds of his jurisdiction, and that his investigation was legitimate. The Court thus ruled that the case against him could proceed.

The case will be put in the hands of ultraconservative Judge Adolfo Prego, a member of the Honorary Board of the extreme-right “Foundation for Defense of the Spanish nation” (Denaes).

The charges against Garzón have triggered an outcry in Spain, from socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero – who pointed to the judge’s fight against terrorism – trade unions, civil society organisations and judicial colleagues.

The two main trade union federations, the UGT and CCOO, issued a statement “publicly expressing our solidarity at this time with Judge Garzón.”

International organisations have also expressed their concern. The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) presented an open letter to Spanish judicial authorities requesting that the charges against Garzón be dropped.

In response to questions from IPS, Garzón said the investigation of civil war crimes must go ahead because there is no proof that tens of thousands of missing detainees were ever released, and because no statute of limitations applies to the crime of forced disappearance.

He said he would continue to defend the legality of his actions and his “absolute innocence,” and added that he had merely been doing his duty.

“Like any human being, I can make mistakes, but I am certain that I would never hand down a sentence or order knowing that it is unfair. That would clearly be against the law,” he said.

In the appeal requesting that the case against him be dropped, Garzón’s lawyer, Gonzalo Martínez-Fresneda, asked that international legal experts who have taken part in prosecutions for crimes against humanity be called upon to testify.

He suggested, for example, that statements be taken from Carla del Ponte, former chief prosecutor for two United Nations international criminal law tribunals; Chilean Judge Juan Guzmán, who indicted the late dictator Pinochet (1973-1990); and Argentine Supreme Court magistrate Eugenio Zaffaroni.

In 2005, Argentina’s Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the two 1980s amnesty laws that had let the perpetrators of human rights crimes committed during the 1976-1983 dictatorship off the hook. The legal decision paved the way for the reopening of hundreds of human rights cases in that country.

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) also spoke out against the charges faced by Garzón.

“International legal standards of judicial independence prohibit the criminal liability of judges for controversial or even unjust or incorrect decisions, which should be dealt with through disciplinary procedures,” Roisin Pillay, ICJ Senior Legal Advisor for the Europe Programme, said when the case was brought last year.

“Prosecutions of judges for professional acts constitute an inappropriate and unwarranted interference with the independence of the judicial process,” she added at the time.

Garzón is best-known for issuing the arrest warrant that led to 17 months of house arrest for Pinochet (1915-2006) in London, although the former dictator was eventually released on humanitarian grounds and returned to Chile, instead of being extradited to Spain to face charges of crimes against humanity.

But the investigating magistrate has also been behind other high-profile cases. For example, he wrote the indictment that led to the trial in which 18 al-Qaeda terrorists were convicted.

In addition, he has been active in cracking down on the Basque country ETA terrorists.

Garzón also sentenced two Spanish police officers for the bungled assassination attempt against Segundo Marey, a Frenchman of Basque descent, who was mistaken for an ETA leader but lived to testify in court.

If the judge is charged in the civil war case, he will automatically lose his bench on the Audiencia Nacional, as well as his salary. And if he is convicted of overreaching his powers, he could be suspended for 10 to 20 years.

He has already announced that if that occurs, he will turn to the international courts.

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Mar 25 2010 (IPS)

The only solution for the conflict over Morocco’s occupation of the Western Sahara is to do what the Sahrawi people decide regarding their future, Zahra Ramdan, president of the Association of Sahrawi Women in Spain, told IPS.

Christopher Ross, United Nations envoy for the Western Sahara, expressed himself in similar terms this week after a tour that took him to Morocco, Algeria, Italy, France and Spain.

The aim of his visits, he said, was to reach a mutually accepted political solution that could lead to the holding of a referendum in the framework of the U.N. charter.

Western Sahara, a phosphate-rich disputed desert territory on the northwest coast of Africa bordered by Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania, was annexed by Morocco after Spain pulled out in 1975.

A political process aimed at determining the future of the territory has been at an impasse for many years. In 1991, the U.N. brokered a ceasefire to end the armed conflict between Morocco and the Polisario Front, the Algeria-based Sahrawi independence movement, which erupted in 1976.

But while a referendum on self-determination for Western Sahara, in which the Sahrawi people would choose between independence, autonomy and integration, was promised in the 1990s, Morocco has prevented the poll from taking place.

On Thursday, students grouped in the “university platform for support for the Sahara” organised a demonstration outside the foreign ministry in downtown Madrid, as part of a series of activities calling for the territory’s self-determination that began Mar. 15.

The theme of the students’ activities is “Camping for the Sahara: 35 years is enough; freedom for the Sahrawi people” – a reference to this year’s anniversary of the withdrawal of Spanish troops from the Western Sahara and the occupation by Morocco.

Ramdan pointed out to IPS that the Polisario Front has respected the ceasefire and sees the U.N.’s proposed solution as positive.

But, she added, “the problem still lies in Morocco, where the king is not in favour of allowing the Sahrawi people to decide by means of a referendum.”

Ross, a U.S. diplomat who U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed as his personal envoy for Western Sahara in January 2009, said “the negotiations…have stalled and we are all called to think and find the best way out of this impasse.”

But he also told reporters “I remain convinced that with good faith all will be reached soon to resolve this problem.”

Ross met with Sahrawi president-in-exile Mohammed Abdelaziz at a Sahrawi refugee camp in Tindouf province, Algeria; Mauritania’s President Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz; Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika; and Morocco’s King Mohammed VI.

Ramdan said that while the U.N. resolution for a referendum is positive, “Morocco has shown that it neither respects the U.N. nor complies with the Security Council resolutions.”

She was referring to a 2003 resolution known as the Baker Plan II, which envisioned Sahrawi self-rule under a Western Sahara Authority for a period of five years, to be followed by a referendum on independence, and a later 2007 resolution.

The Sahrawi activist said it is indispensable for the U.N. to make Rabat live up to the Security Council resolutions on the Western Sahara, “especially given the fact that they are supported by all of the nations involved directly or indirectly, with the exception of Morocco.”

Although the Western Sahara has rich phosphate deposits, fisheries and offshore oil reserves, it is an undeveloped, poverty-stricken territory.

Some 200,000 Sahrawi people live in the refugee camps in Tindouf province, Algeria, near the Moroccan border, where both jobs and water are scarce and summer temperatures soar to 50 degrees Celsius.

The refugee camps visited by Ross will receive another group of visitors between Mar. 28 and Apr. 3 – this time hundreds of mainly young activists responding to a call by two Spanish student groups, Voluntad y Determinación (Will and Determination) and Conciencia Saharaui (Sahrawi Conscience or Awareness).

The activists’ trip to the camps, under the slogan “Column 2010: Let’s knock down the wall and build freedom”, is aimed at sending out the message that it is time to find a fair resolution to the conflict, to allow the Sahrawi people to return to their territory and live in freedom.

During the visit, the activists will march along part of the “Moroccan wall” or “wall of shame”, a 2,500-km sand embankment built by Morocco in the 1980s, that separates the Moroccan-controlled areas and the Polisario-controlled section of Western Sahara.

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Dec 17 2009 (IPS)

Aminatou Haidar, the Western Sahara independence activist who has been on a hunger strike in a Spanish airport for 32 days demanding to be allowed to return to her homeland, was taken to the hospital just after midnight Wednesday, and is in intensive care.

Haidar has been fasting since her passport and identity document were confiscated by Moroccan authorities on Nov. 14 as she was returning to her hometown El-Ayoun – the capital of Western Sahara – via Spain following a trip to receive a human rights prize in the United States.

On her entry form, Haidar had left the citizenship line blank and listed her place of residence as “Western Sahara” rather than “Morocco” – which she said she had frequently done in the past without any problems.

Western Sahara, a phosphate-rich desert territory on the northwest coast of Africa bordered by Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania was annexed by Morocco after Spain, the former colonial power, pulled out in 1975.

After hours of questioning, Haidar was put on a plane against her will on Nov. 15 to Spain’s Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Morocco. Since landing in the city of Lanzarote on Nov. 16 she has been on a hunger strike in the airport, demanding to be given back her passport and allowed to return to her two children in El-Ayoun.

But the Moroccan authorities insist that it is a political, not a humanitarian, problem, and that her hunger strike is part of a “plot” directed by Algeria and the Polisario Front, the Sahrawi independence movement, which is based in that country.

Morocco also considers itself a “victim” of the situation, as the country’s Economy Minister Salaheddine Mezouar said Thursday in Madrid.

Because of her delicate condition, the Spanish government decided to send a plane to Lanzarote to take her on a direct flight to El-Ayoun, accompanied by a Spanish doctor and her sister Laila Haidar.

Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s chief of staff, Bernardino León, personally phoned Haidar to inform her. The flight is to take place Thursday night, although Morocco’s position has not been reported.

A few hours earlier, Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos told the press they were close to a solution arranged with the Moroccan government.

Haidar had earlier turned down Spain’s offer of political asylum or citizenship.

The 43-year-old Haidar, president of the Collective of Sahrawi Human Rights Defenders (CODESA), is one of the leading activists for self-determination for Western Sahara. She has received an outpouring of international support, from the British parliament to Nobel laureates and human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Known as the “Sahrawi Gandhi”, she has been forcibly disappeared, held and tortured in Moroccan prisons, and has won international awards like the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy human rights prize. She was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008.

Although the Polisario Front agreed to a ceasefire in 1991, the talks on Western Sahara are at a standstill over incompliance with United Nations agreements, which call for a referendum in which Sahrawis would choose between integration with Morocco and independence.

Morocco refuses to consider the option of independence, offering autonomy instead.

Severo Moto, president of the “government in exile” of Equatorial Guinea, told IPS that it is clear that the Moroccan government holds a large share of responsibility for Haidar’s situation.

But he said he believes the Spanish government is mainly responsible, because the authorities allowed Haidar into the country at Lanzarote without a passport, rather than putting her back on a plane to El-Ayoun.

He added that “the decolonisation of Western Sahara is not taken seriously, and Spain is chiefly responsible for that, even today.”

Haidar’s lawyer Inés Miranda pointed out that her client was forced to enter Spain illegally, because any foreigner wishing to enter the country needs a passport to do so.

After suffering from stomach pain and severe nausea, and vomiting blood, the activist was admitted to the hospital in Lanzarote, where she is in the intensive care unit.

Since the start of her fast she has lost six kilos, approximately 10 percent of her body weight. She had preexisting health problems, such as a gastric ulcer.

The doctors treating her warned that she would quickly go downhill, and that they would have to decide whether to feed her against her will, or allow her to fast “to the end.”

In the hospital she is only receiving painkillers, and is being rehydrated by intravenous drip. The director of the hospital, Domingo Guzmán, has been acting as her personal physician.

Haidar already held a hunger strike when she was a prisoner in Morocco, in 2005. It lasted 32 days. She was demanding to be tried as a political prisoner rather than a criminal, and was protesting the torture she had suffered in prison.

Now, in statements to the reporters who have continually flocked around her since she began her hunger strike, she has made it clear that she plans to continue her fast to the death if she is not given back her passport and allowed to return to Morocco.

Fernando Pieraita, a spokesman for her support group, said she is very weak and can barely talk, “but what keeps her going are her mental strength and the conviction of the justice of her cause.”

On Tuesday, the Spanish parliament passed a motion – approved by all parties except the centre-right Popular Party, the main opposition force, which abstained – stating that the situation should be managed “at the highest level.” That indirectly paved the way for the King of Spain to personally intervene.

The resolution also emphasised the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination, and said Morocco should allow Haidar to return home “without delay.”

Haidar says she will return home, “dead or alive.”

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Dec 2 2009 (IPS)

The firm stance taken by Western Sahara independence activist Aminatou Haidar, in her third week of a hunger strike in an airport in Spain’s Canary Islands, contrasts with the weak position of the Spanish government vis-à-vis the Moroccan government, which it has failed to pressure to allow the activist to return to her homeland.

Haidar, who is president of the Collective of Sahrawi Human Rights Defenders (CODESA), is reportedly so weak she can hardly stand or speak.

The Moroccan authorities confiscated the passport and identity card of Haidar, who is known as the “Sahrawi Gandhi”, and expelled her to Spain on Nov. 14 as she was returning to Western Sahara via this European country after a trip to receive a human rights award in the United States.

Mohamed Jadad, the delegate in Spain of the Polisario Front – the Sahrawi independence movement based in Algeria – told IPS that the government of socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero should press Morocco “to allow Aminatou to return to her home in El-Ayoun, to her family and her children.”

El-Ayoun is the capital of Western Sahara, which Morocco annexed after Spain pulled out in 1975. Although fighting came to a halt in 1991 in the phosphate-rich disputed desert territory on the northwest coast of Africa bordered by Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania, the Polisario Front continues to demand independence, but Morocco has only offered “autonomy.”

Jadad said the Spanish government does not dare risk annoying the Moroccan government, and “is turning a blind eye to human rights violations and to that country’s rejection of the United Nations 1991 and 2003 plans.”

The 42-year-old Haidar, one of the leading activists for self-determination for Western Sahara, and the winner of the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy human rights prize in 2008, has been forcibly disappeared, held and tortured in Moroccan prisons in the past.

On Nov. 14, on her way back from receiving the Civil Courage Prize from the Train Foundation in New York on Oct. 21, the police took her aside for 12 hours of questioning at the El-Ayoun airport.

On her entry form, Haidar had left the citizenship line blank and listed her place of residence as “Western Sahara” rather than “Morocco” – which she says she has frequently done in the past without any problems.

But this time Moroccan authorities said she had thus waived her Moroccan citizenship, and they confiscated her passport and put her on a plane, against her will and without papers, back to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Morocco.

Since Nov. 16 she has been on a hunger strike in the Lanzarote airport, demanding to be given back her passport and allowed to return to El-Ayoun.

The Spanish Foreign Ministry initially said Haidar could not leave the country because she did not have a passport. But Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos then offered her refugee status, which she turned down because it would not allow her to return home. And on Nov. 28, the minister personally telephoned to offer her Spanish nationality and a passport, as an “exceptional measure.” However, she also rejected that proposal.

On Tuesday, the minister said he was in contact with Moroccan authorities, and that he had suggested that they send Haidar a passport, “either her old one or a new one.”

But a senior Moroccan official said Haidar must “apologise” before her passport is returned.

A Spanish Foreign Ministry official announced Tuesday that the Spanish government had asked United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to help work things out.

Haidar, meanwhile, has received an outpouring of international support.

British MPs from the three main political parties tabled a motion stating that “this House condemns the escalating wave of human rights violations against Saharawi human rights activists…(and) is dismayed over the expulsion of prominent Saharawi human rights activist and winner of the 2009 Civil Courage Award Aminatou Haidar from Western Sahara.”

In a Nov. 17 statement, Amnesty International said it “deplores the decision of the Moroccan authorities to expel human rights defender Aminatou Haidar from Western Sahara on 14 November, and urges the authorities to immediately allow her to return to her home in Laayoune (El-Ayoun). Amnesty International is concerned that she is being targeted because of her human rights work and her public stance in support of self-determination for the people of Western Sahara.”

Human Rights Watch Middle East and North Africa director Sarah Leah Whitson said “Morocco cannot summarily denaturalise and deport its own citizens because of the way they fill out entry forms at the airport. They must let Haidar return home and stop harassing her for peaceful advocacy of Sahrawi self-determination.”

The U.S. State Department said in a communiqué that “The United States remains concerned about the health and well-being of Saharawi activist Aminatou Haidar…We urge a speedy determination of her legal status and full respect for due process and human rights.”

Her supporters around the world include 87-year-old Portuguese Nobel Literature Laureate Jose Saramago – who visited her at the airport; East Timor President José Manuel Ramos-Horta, a Nobel Peace Prize-winner; Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar; Spanish Oscar-winning actor Javier Bardem; Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano; British filmmaker Ken Loach; and British actor and former Monty Python, Terry Jones.

Among the friends and supporters accompanying her at the airport are activists from the Washington-based Robert F. Kennedy CentrE for Justice and Human Rights.

But Gustavo de Arístegui, the foreign policy spokesman for Spain’s centre-right Popular Party, the main opposition force, said the only thing that Haidar, “with her stubborn position…is doing is messing up, muddying and complicating the negotiations” on Western Sahara.

He also criticised Spanish artists and personalities who have expressed their support for the activist, saying they should mobilise for other causes, rather than this one, which he said “just makes them look more progressive and gives them greater visibility.”

The talks on Western Sahara are at a standstill over incompliance with agreements reached by the U.N. in 1991 and 2003.

In 1991, then U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed former U.S. secretary of state James Baker as his special U.N. envoy to Western Sahara, and the U.N. Security Council established the U.N. Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), which was to oversee the ceasefire that went into force that year, and to organise a referendum in which Sahrawis would choose between integration with Morocco and independence.

In 2003, the U.N. passed resolution 1495, known as the Baker Plan II, which proposed autonomy for a five-year period, followed by a referendum including the option of independence.

Leire Pajín, the secretary of the governing socialist party (PSOE), underlined that Haidar is in Spain against her will, and that all she wants is to return home to her mother and children.

Pajín urged Morocco to immediately help resolve the situation, because Haidar’s deportation “violates the U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that Morocco has also signed.”

María José Fernández of the Asturian Association of Friends of the Sahrawi People flew to Lanzarote last week to accompany Haidar, who she said was extremely weak and occasionally fainting, and needs help just to get up and go to the bathroom.

But she added that despite the Sahrawi activist’s physical weakness as a result of the hunger strike, her spirit is strong and she is clear-headed, reading the newspapers and receiving everyone who visits her.

The activist told Fernández that “she doesn’t want to talk to Moratinos on the phone anymore; if the minister wants to talk to her, he can come here.”

The coordinator of the United Left opposition coalition, Cayo Lara, criticised the stance taken by the government and told it to stop being an “accomplice” in Morocco’s “illegal” actions against the activist, who he said should be allowed to go home immediately.

In statements to Spain’s leading newspaper, El País, Haidar said that “from the very start, I saw there was complicity between the Spanish and Moroccan governments, and that my being sent back to Spain was a political matter.

“The Spanish government must rectify this flagrant violation of human rights, of Spanish law, and of international treaties,” she added.

In a communiqué, she said it is her convictions and conscience that tell her what she has to do, not those who support or oppose her, “neither the Polisario Front, nor Morocco, the United States, Moratinos or anyone else.”

PSOE’s secretary of social movements and relations with NGOs, Pedro Zerolo, and senior Foreign Ministry official Agustín Santos talked to Haidar at the airport Tuesday.

But the only conclusion they reached, Santos said at the end of the meeting, was that the contacts with Morocco must continue.

An odd footnote to the whole incident, perhaps indicative of the official treatment Haidar has received, is that Judge Ángela López fined the activist 180 euros (370 dollars) for creating “public disorder.”

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Nov 9 2009 (IPS)

Wind energy notched up a new record in Spain on Sunday, when it generated 53 percent of total electricity demand nationwide for part of the day, according to official figures announced Monday.

Powering the grid at up to 10,170 megawatts, wind turbines supplied over half the country’s demand for five-and-a-half hours, a timespan similar to windpower output on Nov. 4 and 5, when for five hours each day they provided over 40 percent of demand.

José Donoso, head of the Spanish Wind Energy Association, told journalists that in 2004 people said that wind energy would never provide more than 14 percent of electricity demand, but in the light of this event, he expects that by 2020 wind power could produce around 40,000 megawatts, or nearly four times Sunday’s output.

Electricity demand fluctuates according to whether it is daytime or night, a weekday or a weekend, and on a previous occasion in November 2008, a surge of wind power early on a Sunday caused oversupply and the electricity grid had to turn wind turbines off.

However this time the system was able to save energy for a time of greater demand, by exporting more electricity and pumping water into reversible reservoirs, to be used to generate electricity via water turbines later when demand rose.

Over the first five days of November, wind energy was the lead source of electricity generation, producing over 913,000 gigawatt-hours (GWh), more than the 908,000 GWh from combined cycle gas turbines, or the nearly 594,000 GWh from nuclear power plants. Exporting surplus energy from one country to another is one way of coping with temporary over- or under-supply, but Spain lags behind on this. Denmark is a good example, as it is able to export excess electricity to neighbouring Germany, and import it to make up shortfalls.

Spain, in contrast, has cross-border power lines to France, which has higher demand, but these can carry only three percent of Spain’s installed capacity. It also has two undersea power cables linking it to Morocco, and one very low capacity overland cable to Portugal.

For years, Spain has planned to increase its interconnection with France by 2014, but work has not yet begun, due to opposition by environmental organisations because of potential ecological damage.

Luis Atienza, the head of Red Eléctrica de España (REE), the company that operates power transmission and the electricity grid in Spain, said: “People can see that without railway lines there can be no high-speed trains, but they don’t see that without power lines there can be no renewable energy.

“Those cables they oppose are the lesser evil, and the way to fulfil our environmental commitments and our energy policy,” he said.

In Castilla y León, one of Spain’s 17 provinces, preparations are in hand to celebrate Wind Energy Day on Wednesday, Nov. 11.

This province is in the forefront of wind energy production in Spain, followed by Castilla-La Mancha and Galicia. Castilly y León currently has 161 wind farms, and has invested more than five billion euros (7.5 billion dollars) to instal them.

Wednesday’s event, under the motto “Towards a New Energy Model,” will include debates and workshops to analyse the current situation of wind energy, in the province and in Spain as a whole. The wind energy sector in Castilla y León comprises 450 companies, employing 5,000 workers.

Spanish government sources confirmed that they will roll out a plan to develop more renewable energy projects, including 2,000 megawatts of solar energy and between 3,000 and 4,000 megawatts of wind energy.

Meanwhile, it transpired that the Ministry of Industry will continue subsidies for some of the applications presented to fund these installations, but a bill is being drawn up to reduce subsidies from 2010. Ministry sources consulted by IPS would neither confirm nor deny the reports.

Galicia is a trail-blazing province in terms of renewable energy, with 64 percent of the energy it consumes coming from renewable sources.

The provincial government headed by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, of the centre-right People’s Party, approved a budget of 26 million euros (about 40 million dollars) to achieve its target of 95 percent of the electricity consumed in Galicia being derived from clean energy sources by 2015. The money will subsidise up to 40 percent of the cost of new infrastructure.

Spain is also promoting clean energy production in other countries, particularly Venezuela, a major oil producer.

Spanish companies have been contracted to instal four wind farms in Venezuela, located in La Guajira, Isla de Coche, Isla Margarita and Chacopata and representing an investment of 90 million euros (135 million dollars).

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Nov 6 2009 (IPS)

The 60,000 tonnes of rubbish collected daily in Spain, equivalent to 1.3 kilos per person, is being managed by more green-friendly methods of recovery and treatment.

One such measure adopted by the community (province) of Madrid is a non-fiscal tariff – a charge made for purposes other than revenue – “that we could call a green tax,” Javier Martín Fernández, a professor of financial and tax law at the Complutense University, told IPS.

The tariff is in line with the position of the government of socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, which introduced a sustainable development bill to parliament in September.

Parliamentary sources told IPS that the bill is likely to pass, although opposition parties may propose certain reforms.

The government adopted the definition of sustainable development approved in 1988 by the World Commission on the Environment and Development, created by the United Nations in 1983.

The Commission defined sustainable development as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Zapatero’s bill aims to promote competitiveness through research, development and innovation (R+D+i), with the goal of increasing the use of renewable energy by 20 percent by 2020, as well as reducing overall energy consumption by 20 percent.

Waste reduction and recycling play an important role in this strategy. In a 2008 study of 18 cities, the northeastern city of Pamplona was the most efficient at recycling, recovering 53 percent of glass, 69 percent of paper and cardboard and 28 percent of throw-away bottles and containers, and coming closest to fulfilling the National Waste Plan.

Two biogas plants that began to operate this year at the Valdemingómez refuse processing centre in Madrid are using organic waste to produce methane, which in turn is used to generate electricity or distributed for household use.

A facility for maintaining and servicing a fleet of 120 waste collecting vehicles, installed in 2004 in the Villaverde district of Madrid, features 120 square metres of solar panels providing heating and hot water.

Water used at the facility is recycled, and used for washing the garbage collection trucks, which run on compressed natural gas, cutting pollution by 80 percent compared to conventional diesel-fuelled vehicles.

Another initiative in Elche, a city in the Mediterranean coastal province of Valencia where garbage containers are being installed, is an exchange system for residents, who can deposit a full rubbish bin and collect an empty one, for their convenience.

Interest in automatic underground waste collection systems is increasing, and by the end of this year they are expected to be used in 55 areas in Spain, including neighbourhoods in the cities of Barcelona, Tarrasa, Vitoria, Burgos and Mollerusa, where they will be servicing over one million people.

Standing out among these is the system being built at Barcelona airport, which handles 35 million passengers a year.

Users of the automated system deposit their refuse into post-box style waste inlets, in the street or inside a building, which are accessible 24 hours a day. There are different waste inlets for each type of refuse (organic, paper, and so on).

Garbage is then transported at 60 kilometres per hour along underground pipes into containers at a central waste station, by strong air currents produced by fans. At the central station the air is filtered and clean air is returned to the atmosphere. The sorted waste is then sent on for recycling or further processing.

Among the advantages of this system is that refuse is not scattered around a rubbish container in the streets, and the nuisance of noisy, polluting waste collection vehicles coming by in the night-time hours is avoided.

In Majadahonda, a Madrid district where the system is already operational, Juan Barrios, a local resident, told IPS that apart from convenience and saving time, the collection system has done away with the mess of litter and rubbish spread around the old containers.

The streets here are quite empty of rubbish, in contrast to other Madrid neighbourhoods and other Spanish cities.

An important issue that still causes problems and is under further investigation is the final destination of waste, and the ultimate recycling of the separated materials.

The latest official report by the National Institute of Statistics indicated that only 10 percent of the total waste produced in Spain is sorted prior to collection. Of that proportion, one-quarter was glass, 10 percent was paper and cardboard, and the rest mixed waste.

The environmental activist group Greenpeace complained that a large part of collected refuse is wasted because sorting is done poorly or not at all, and the recovery of organic waste in particular is neglected.

The Spanish government’s National Waste Plan calls for local governments to provide one street container for glass and one for paper and cardboard for every 500 people, and one for plastic bottles and containers for every 300 people, by 2015. This is already being done in about 20 cities.

An increasingly popular trend is for people who have a yard, vegetable patch or larger plot of land to recycle their organic waste into compost, to use as fertiliser.

Meanwhile, a State Coordinating Committee against the Incineration of Refuse by Cement Plants was formed on Oct. 10.

The Committee claims that incineration is the most dangerous and unsustainable method of treating waste, because rather than eliminating, it spreads and scatters it, generating pollution and toxic emissions – a position that Greenpeace firmly supports.

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
OVIEDO, Spain, Oct 23 2009 (IPS)

U.S. engineers Martin Cooper and Raymond Tomlinson, considered the fathers of the mobile phone and email, respectively, received Spain’s prestigious Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research from Crown Prince Felipe on Friday.

Russian athlete Yelena Isinbayeva was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Sports, Albanian writer Ismaíl Kadaré won the Award for Letters, and Berlin took the Award for Concord, marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent reunification of the city.

The 2009 Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences went to British naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough, the National Autonomous University of Mexico won the Award for Communication and Humanities, British architect Norman Foster took the Award for the Arts, and the Award for International Cooperation went to the World Health Organisation. Winners receive a 50,000 euro prize and a reproduction of a statuette designed by Joan Miró.

Cooper was the lead engineer of the Motorola team that developed the handheld mobile phone and is considered the inventor of the first handheld cellular phone, in 1973. Two decades later he developed adaptive array technology, or smart antennas, used not only in mobile telephones but also in long-range wireless Internet.

Tomlinson, after developing several operating systems, invented the software that permitted messages to be transmitted between computers in 1971, and chose the @ sign to separate local from global e-mails in the mail address – a symbol went on to became a digital icon.

The jury said “These two discoveries are among the greatest technological innovations of our time, revolutionising the way that thousands of millions of people communicate worldwide and contributing decisively to the advancement of knowledge.”

“Their impact on society is reflected by the more than four billion mobile subscribers and the one and a half billion users of e-mail and other Internet services. All this constitutes an important aid to the developing countries, for which it supposes a source of equality and opportunities, making basic services such as health and education more accessible.”

At the ceremony held in the northwestern Spanish city of Oviedo, Cooper said it was an honour to accept the prestigious award in the name of the many people who had inspired him and worked with him in the application of wireless technology for improving people’s lives all over the world. “Half of humanity already uses mobile phones,” he pointed out.

He also said this is the start of a future in which wireless technology will connect everyone, giving rise to improvements in productivity, education, entertainment and security, as well as “a radical change in our understanding of health.”

Speaking with IPS after he received the award, Cooper said he was sure that not many years would go by before mobile telephones would be able to help anticipate health problems like heart attacks.

Tomlinson said “I want to thank the Prince of Asturias Foundation for this great honour. It is a privilege to have my name associated with this prestigious foundation and added to the very impressive roster of Prince of Asturias Laureates.”

1973 Nobel Physics Prize-winner Leo Esaki of Japan, who is chairman of the Science and Technology Promotion Foundation of Ibaraki, was one of the biggest supporters of Cooper and Tomlinson, who he said had made very important contributions to society, in terms of social impact.

Their innovations in mobile phones and email are some of the most important technological innovations of all time, he said.

Kadaré, meanwhile, commented that when he was informed of the prize, people in his country thought he had been made a noble in Spain. Smiling before the journalists, he added that although his country had lived through many years of communism, Albanians felt nostalgia for nobility.

With regard to his experience of living under a dictatorship, he said the mechanisms of writing under a dictatorship did not change in times of freedom.

He also used the opportunity to criticise the government of Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero for “transferring its internal problems” to the Balkans, by failing to support the independence of Kosovo out of fear that the ETA Basque separatist movement would cite that precedent to strengthen their own claim to independence.

He clarified, however, that the two conflicts had nothing in common, because “human and social rights are respected in Spain” while what happened in the Balkans was “a tragedy, with massacres and mass killings of all kinds, including thousands of children.”

For his part, Attenborough, who the jury said “contributed enormously to our knowledge of nature and its conservation” in half a century of TV programming on the mysteries of nature, said that when he started out, youngsters did not enjoy sitting in front of the set for hours, but that today they are trapped by videogames and other technology, which separates them from nature.

WHO Director General Margaret Chan stressed that healthy people can do the most to contribute to a country’s production of wealth, whether material or intellectual, and said social services are essential and spending on health should not be seen as expenditure but as investment.

After the ceremony, the prize-winners, jury members, government officials and participating journalists were applauded by huge crowds of people in the streets as they made their way to the Hotel de la Reconquista, where they dined.

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Oct 2 2009 (IPS)

Activists from many nations will set out from New Zealand Saturday on a march for peace and non-violence that will cover more than 90 countries on five continents, winding up on Jan. 2 at the foot of Mount Aconcagua, in western Argentina.

The coordinator of the march activities in Spain, José Manuel Muñoz Felipe, told IPS celebrations were held simultaneously Friday in more than 300 cities in about 100 countries, “calling for nuclear disarmament, an end to war and the elimination of all forms of violence, whatever pretext or argument is used to justify it.”

Oct. 2 is the 140th anniversary of the birth of Mohandas Gandhi, India’s most renowned practitioner of non-violent resistance, and has been declared International Day of Non-Violence by the United Nations.

Muñoz Felipe stressed that the march has been organised to condemn all forms of violence, including the use of force by the military or police and economic, political, racial, religious, sexual or psychological violence.

The World March for Peace and Non-Violence,organised by the humanist group World Without Wars, was launched in Spain at a Sept. 12 rally in Madrid attended by Bolivian President Evo Morales and Federico Mayor Zaragoza, the head of the Foundation for a Culture of Peace and chair of the board of directors of the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency.

In addition to Mayor Zaragoza, a former head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the World March has the backing of personalities such as the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, and Guatemalan indigenous activist Rigoberta Menchú, both Nobel Peace Prize winners.

Portuguese writer José Saramago, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano and renowned U.S. scholar and linguist Noam Chomsky are among the many supporters of the March for Peace.

Montserrat Ponsa, a journalist and justice of the peace in Catalonia, one of the 17 autonomous provinces of Spain, will be representing Mayor Zaragoza on the World March starting in New Zealand.

She was honoured in Catalonia at a Sept. 20 event organised by three local municipalities, as the sole Catalonian member of the March for Peace base team, who will undertake the entire journey.

On Saturday an event will be held in Madrid, including speeches as well as activities, audiovisual presentations and artistic and musical performances for peace. Live coverage of the base team’s departure from New Zealand will be broadcast, and the start of their journey will be marked by releasing 1,000 balloons of all colours.

Rafael de la Rubia, the head of World Without Wars, spoke to IPS before he left for New Zealand about some of the issues raised in the document he read there on Friday, which will be given to the heads of state of nearly 100 countries to be visited by the marchers on their quest for world peace.

After speaking out, of course, against violence and for peace, de la Rubia said he would be asking whether the global direction towards “human calamities of untold dimensions” can be changed.

Such a shift in direction is unlikely without policy changes, the document says, because this year – despite the severe global financial crisis, whose effects have been felt by everyone- a new record was set for military spending.

He said he would be signalling for everyone to join their voices with those of “millions of human beings of different languages, races, creeds and cultures, to ignite human consciousness with the light of non-violence.”

The document says it is “beyond absurd” to argue that nuclear weapons are a means of dissuasion.

It also reminds the leaders of the nuclear states – the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel – that “It is you who will decide between history and prehistory, between humanisation and animalisation, between an earth for all and a world of fear, between a generous earth and a polluted desert. You will be responsible for the social atmosphere that we breathe in the coming years.”

One of the goals of the World March is to “demand the dismantling of weapons of mass destruction, and reconvert an economic system that generates poverty, discrimination and death. It is necessary to safeguard life in order to build a world with equal rights and opportunities for all,” he said.

The March for Peace manifesto demands “nuclear disarmament at a global level, the immediate withdrawal of invading troops from occupied territories, the progressive and proportional reduction of conventional weapons, the signing of non-aggression treaties between countries and the renunciation by governments of the use of war as a means to resolve conflicts.”

De la Rubia’s document finishes on an upbeat note, looking towards the future: “There are thousands of us, and there will be millions, and the world will change.”

The call for peace and non-violence is linked to demands for sustainable and equitable development. As World Without Wars indicates, it is completely irrational that three billion dollars are spent every day on weapons, while nothing is done for the more than 165,000 people in the world who daily die from hunger, a total of 60 million people a year, according to United Nations figures for 2008.

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Sep 15 2009 (IPS)

Bolivian President Evo Morales wound up a three-day official visit to Spain Tuesday with a financial aid commitment from the Spanish government – in the form of a debt-for-development swap – and a reciprocal agreement to allow Bolivians and Spaniards resident in each other’s countries to vote in local elections.

The administration of socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero wrote off 60 percent of Bolivia’s total debt of some 85 million dollars. The outstanding 40 percent will go into a “Bolivia-Spain Fund” to finance development projects in Bolivia, the poorest country in South America.

Under the law governing Spanish cooperation, the fund will be used to contribute to economic growth and social development in Bolivia, through education and sustainable development projects and poverty reduction programmes.

A binational committee was created Tuesday to oversee implementation of the agreements.

At a press conference, Zapatero announced two development projects in Bolivia: “a water fund that will benefit the people of 45 Bolivian municipalities, and a project to support professional development among young people.”

The prime minister said that the second project would “make training available for young people and the unemployed in rural areas.”

Thus Bolivia remains a prominent beneficiary of Spanish development aid. Between 2006 and 2008, Bolivia received a total of 157 million euros (220 million dollars) in aid from Spain, more than from any other country.

Morales expressed appreciation for the role of the Spanish government in extending legal status to Bolivian immigrants living in Spain, saying: “What Spain has done to issue legal documents to Bolivians who live here deserves recognition. It has done this for over 100,000 people, more than the number of Bolivians who have legal status in the countries of Latin America,” where thousands more Bolivians have migrated.

Morales also emphasised that Spain is the only country to grant Bolivians the right to vote in municipal elections, which Spanish citizens will also be able to do in Bolivia, although the agreement is pending parliamentary approval in both countries.

According to the Spanish Foreign Ministry, there are an estimated 250,000 Bolivians living in Spain, only 98,000 of whom are legal residents.

Morales rejected criticism from the centre-right Popular Party, in power in Madrid, and from Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who described the pro-indigenous policies he has put into force as “totalitarian.”

Quite the opposite, said Morales. Indigenous peoples have “a culture of dialogue and friendliness,” and their movement is open to cooperation and inclusive participation.

Morales, an ethnic Aymara and head of the left-wing Movement to Socialism (MAS) party, began his political career as the leader of the coca farmers union. He is the first indigenous president of Bolivia, where around 60 percent of the population of 9.3 million are indigenous people.

The centre-right head of Madrid’s regional government, Esperanza Aguirre, said in a television interview that populism and the pro-indigenous movement were the opposite of the “freedom and democracy” Bolivians want.

Vargas Llosa, for his part, said the Spanish government was “very naïve if it thinks that pragmatism and supporting Morales and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez will prevent its companies from being expropriated.”

Spanish companies and investments were a focus in all of the Bolivian president’s meetings with government representatives, but instead of provoking conflicts, mutual commitments to resolving problems through dialogue prevailed.

With respect to the most controversial of these problems, involving Spanish energy giant Repsol, Morales was explicit: “We talked a lot about the issue of investments and Repsol, and the head of the company will shortly be visiting Bolivia to secure new agreements.”

The visiting president was warmly welcomed Sunday by thousands of Bolivians who gathered at a rally convened by more than 60 political, social and union organisations, held at the La Cubierta bull ring in the municipality of Leganés, on the outskirts of Madrid.

The event began with the Ck’oa ceremony, blessing Pachamama (Mother Earth), followed by traditional Quechua dances. Multicoloured Inca flags were waved amongst the crowd, and placards proclaiming electoral support for Morales, who according to the polls is a shoo-in for reelection in December, were prominently displayed.

In his speech at Leganés, Morales spoke out against foreign meddling in his country and declared “permanent rebellion against the looting of natural resources and the oppression of the people.” This statement, in particular, was much criticised by the local press, which said it was in contradiction to his request for more foreign investment in Bolivia.

While he made no comments about the United States’ military bases in Spain, saying only “they must be different over here,” Morales did complain about U.S. bases in the Americas.

Referring to the agreement under which Colombia will lend seven bases to the United States, he said “where there are military bases, there is no peace,” and called for the closure of existing bases and for no more to be built.

Installing military bases is “a pretext of the empire (the United States) to control natural resources,” which he said must be defended, not only so they do not fall into the hands of “the empire,” but also to preserve the ecological balance.

Turning to the continued difficulties in his country, he alluded to Bolivia’s history as a colony of Spain. He told the crowds: “We need revolutionaries at the service of the Bolivian people, and they are still hard to find, because there is still a colonial mentality, a legacy of looting and exploitation of the land.”

At the Leganés bull ring, Hugo González, a Bolivian immigrant living in Madrid, told IPS that “the World Hero of Mother Earth (a title recently awarded to Morales by the United Nations) is giving us back our confidence in our country.”

“His presence here fills us with longing to go back and be able to live there in peace and prosperity. We hope it will be soon,” he said.

Madrid Mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón of the Popular Party welcomed Morales and handed him the key to the city, a very rare honour for foreign dignitaries.

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Aug 14 2009 (IPS)

Immigrants in Spain are getting a raw deal from state institutions and at the same time from small and medium business owners, who not only take unfair advantage of them, but sometimes also physically ill-treat them.

The government has toughened its laws on immigration, and foreigners continue to be harassed by the police.

“They badger us at the subway exits and doorways to telephone booths, restaurants or discos, demanding documents and detaining people who aren’t carrying them,” said Irma Pérez, the head of the Federation of Associations of Paraguayans in Spain (FAPRE).

Pérez led representatives of four associations that lodged a complaint of police harassment with the justice system this week. Interior Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba denied there were any such practices.

Immigrants also suffer at the hands of their employers, some of whom treat them in inhuman fashion. For example, on Jul. 25 in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands, Luis Beltrán Larrosa, an Uruguayan worker without a residence permit, had a heart attack and collapsed, whereupon his employer dragged him out into the street and left him there on the ground.

His son, Pablo Larrosa, reported the incident to the justice system and told Radio Club Tenerife that several bystanders witnessed the scene, called the hospital and saw that the ambulance team found him alive and rendered assistance, but to no avail. The doctors also found bruises on the victim’s body, he said.

Another appalling case took place in early June in the city of Gandia, on the Mediterranean coast between Valencia and Alicante, where an undocumented immigrant lost an arm in an accident at work. The boss threw the arm in a rubbish container and abandoned the injured man 200 metres away from the hospital.

Organisations defending immigrants’ rights are also deeply concerned about their treatment in internment centres for foreigners run by the Interior Ministry, where undocumented persons are held until they are expelled from the country, a process that may take months.

Spain’s legislation on undocumented immigrants has become so strict that in 2008 it was the European Union country that granted the fewest asylum and refugee visas. It processed only 16 percent of applications, and of those granted refugee status to seven percent, for a total of barely 160 people.

According to the 2008 census by the National Statistics Institute, the average immigration rate between 2000 and 2007 was four times that of the United States and eight times that of France. That was when an open-door immigration policy was in place, and an amnesty was even offered to illegal immigrants in 2005.

A total of 5,220,600 foreigners were counted in the 2008 census, 11.3 percent of the country’s total population, and at the end of the first quarter of 2009 the number rose to 5,598,691 people, or 12 percent of the total.

Now, with the highest unemployment rate in the EU at 17.4 percent in the first quarter of 2009, and joblessness among foreigners twice as high as that among Spanish workers, migration to Spain is slowing, and the Spanish government in September 2008 approved a return bonus programme for unemployed non-EU workers.

The 2008 annual report by human rights watchdog Amnesty International says that torture and ill-treatment at the hands of those responsible for enforcing the law continue to occur “frequently” in Spain, where regimes of “incommunicado detention” are in use for terrorism suspects.

The London-based organisation maintains that Spain is on a level with Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and Uzbekistan in that its justice system has no remedy for complaints of torture and ill-treatment by detained immigrants, and accuses the government of socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of not responding to these charges.

When this month’s parliamentary recess is over, the government will table a reform of the law on aliens, proposed by the Ministry of Labour and Immigration, which includes a measure to increase the maximum period of detention of undocumented persons in an internment centre from 40 days to 60.

Conditions for reuniting families will also be stiffer. Immigrants in Spain who want to bring their families to this country will have to wait until they have been residents for five years, instead of three.

Borders will continue to be strengthened on land and sea, through bilateral agreements with other countries as well as by increasing the number of security forces and providing more equipment, to prevent entry of undocumented immigrants.

Immigrants’ associations are organising protests against these measures.

“We shall march on foot from Barcelona to Madrid to defend the immigrants who come to our country, whose rights are not respected,” Hugo Colacho, head of the Federation of Immigrant Associations of Vallés (FAIV), in Barcelona, the capital of the province of Catalonia, told IPS.

FAIV’s plan is to walk the 700 kilometres between the two cities in less than 50 days, with the participation of thousands of people belonging to organisations for the defence and support of immigrants, Colacho said.

These include the Council of Immigration Organisations (CODEIM), Americas-Spain Solidarity and Cooperation (AESCO), SOS Racismo and FAPRE, whose representatives will participate in a General Assembly of Immigrants’ Associations from all over the country Oct. 28 in Madrid.

The Episcopal Commission on Migration of Spain’s Roman Catholic bishop’s conference issued a press release after a Jun. 25-26 meeting in Madrid, expressing “profound concern over the proposed laws, arising from EU directives, which may on occasion affect the dignity of our migrant brothers and sisters and their families, and the individuals and institutions that work for their integration into our society.”

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Jul 9 2009 (IPS)

Trade between Spain and Equatorial Guinea is flourishing, amidst calls by activists for the government of Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to push for democracy in this tiny country on the Atlantic coast of Africa, still under the yoke of dictatorship.

Exports from Spain to its former colony grew by 11.09 percent in the first four months of the year compared to the same period in 2008, reaching a total of 52 billion euros (73 billion dollars), and involving mainly vehicles, machinery, beverages and electrical materials.

Spanish imports of oil from this African country which has been ruled by dictators almost from the moment it became independent in 1968 have remained steady, although payments are down because of the fall in international crude prices.

Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos is visiting Equatorial Guinea from Thursday to Saturday, accompanied by a multi-party group of lawmakers, journalists and representatives of different business sectors, especially oil, infrastructure and agrifood industries and commercial distributors.

Mauricio Valiente, a lawyer and chief lobbyist with the non-governmental Spanish Refugee Council (CEAR), told IPS that the Zapatero administration should demonstrate real support for democratisation in Equatorial Guinea by requiring certification of respect for human rights and democracy, instead of putting economic and commercial interests first.

“We are asking the government to take a firm position on this,” he emphasised.

He did praise the fact that some 40 asylum-seekers from Equatorial Guinea who arrived in Spain over the last year “have enjoyed a high degree of protection by the Spanish authorities.”

Spanish government sources who requested anonymity told IPS that progress is occurring in Equatorial Guinea, although there is still a great deal to be done. The most important thing, they added, is that talks with the African country’s authorities about human rights, described as educational, two-way and critical, are under way.

They also said that presidential elections may be held in December, although the Equatorial Guinean regime has not yet made an official announcement. Furthermore, it is not clear whether these would be open to all candidates, or only to authorised political parties.

At the invitation of the regime, representatives of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention visited Equatorial Guinea in November 2008, as did a delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) which came to monitor the treatment and living conditions of prisoners, including the large proportion of political prisoners, and found that several had been pardoned.

The U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, stated in a preliminary report on his mission that he “found that torture is used systematically by the police against persons who refuse to ‘cooperate,’ such as persons suspected of political as well as ordinary crimes.”

Those travelling with Moratinos this week will certainly be able to see for themselves the wretched living standards of the people of Equatorial Guinea.

A report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), presented in Madrid on Thursday, says that infant mortality rose from 103 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 124 per 1,000 in 2007, while the under-five mortality rate increased from 170 per 1,000 to 206 per 1,000 over the same period.

“The government’s failure to provide basic social services violates its obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,” the report says.

Arvind Ganesan, director of HRW’s Business and Human Rights programme, said Equatorial Guinea has a per capita GDP close to that of Spain or Italy, but its people “live in poverty worse than in Afghanistan or Chad,” two of the least developed countries on the planet which have been afflicted by destructive wars.

HRW also says that a United States Senate investigation in 2004 uncovered details of how Equatorial Guinean dictator President Teodoro Obiang Nguema used revenues from oil exports to finance personal transactions, including the purchase of two mansions in the Washington DC suburbs for 3.8 million dollars.

His son, Teodorín, has also spent huge sums: 35 million dollars on properties in California and 8.45 million dollars on mansions and luxury cars in South Africa.

Exiled Equatorial Guineans continue to battle for democracy in their country, led by Severo Moto, who spent time in prison there, and later in Spain on arms trafficking charges, until a Supreme Court ruling freed him for lack of evidence.

Moto has been president of the Equatorial Guinean government-in-exile in Spain since it was established by his Progress Party in 2003. One of its members predicted there will soon be changes in their homeland, and that Moto will be elected to power “if there are really democratic elections.”

A week ago, Obiang Nguema called on everyone over 18 to register to vote.

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Jun 23 2009 (IPS)

Spain, considered a pioneer in the area of universal justice and especially legal action in human rights cases, is about to take a step backwards in that regard. On Tuesday, activists and legal experts criticised a draft law that would limit the Spanish courts’ ability to investigate human rights abuses committed in other countries.

Leading jurists called together Monday and Tuesday by a score of human rights groups to discuss the situation agreed that the draft law to be introduced by the Spanish government to Congress Thursday would undermine human rights advances made in this country’s legislation.

The reform proposed by the socialist government of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to be debated by the lower house of Congress on Thursday, would amend a law on cross-border justice that enables judges in Spain to prosecute human rights violators in other countries if they have not been brought to justice by the courts there.

The advocates of the legal reform “want to export impunity,” Spanish lawyer Joan Garcés said at the two-day meeting. The professor of international relations was an adviser and personal friend of Chile’s first socialist president, Salvador Allende, who died in the bloody 1973 coup that ushered in a 17-year dictatorship in that South American country.

If the law is amended, the principle of universal justice would only apply to cases in which the victims were Spanish, the alleged perpetrators of genocide or other crimes against humanity were in Spain, or there was some “relevant connection” to Spain.

Passage of the legal reform is expected because it has the support of both the ruling Socialist Party and the main opposition force, the conservative Popular Party.

The highest profile case of the application of universal justice by the Spanish courts led to the 1999 arrest of former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) in London on the basis of a warrant issued by Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón.

Although the British government eventually decided against the extradition of Pinochet to Spain on health grounds, he was held under house arrest for 503 days.

Under the proposed legal reform, “victims will see their access to justice further limited and the perpetrators will gain total impunity, an extremely serious setback that would demonstrate that political and economic interests are stronger than respect for the law,” Spanish lawyer Gonzalo Boyé told IPS.

Boyé is heading a lawsuit accusing six Israeli officials of war crimes in connection with a 2002 Israeli air force bombing in the Gaza Strip that killed 15 civilians.

The Spanish national court, the country’s highest criminal court, issued arrest warrants for the Israeli politicians and senior military officials.

Garcés told IPS that Spain put itself in the vanguard of the defence of human rights when it thumbed its nose at “the world’s leading power” (the United States) by going after Pinochet.

Mónica Cavagna, head of the Asociación Argentina Pro Derechos Humanos de Madrid (Argentine human rights association of Madrid), asked “Why are the majority of legislators in the Spanish parliament disregarding the views and wishes of their colleagues and judges who at the time joined efforts to live up to international norms on crimes against humanity?”

Cavagna remarked to IPS that it is not Spain that must limit the scope of universal justice, but on the contrary, it is the rest of the world’s “civilised nations that should assume their international obligations, enforce the laws and thus investigate, try and convict those who violate universal rights.”

For that reason, she said – referring to the proposed modification of the cross-border justice law – “it is a shame, truly a shame, that instead of protecting human rights, reasons of state are being invoked in an effort to merge the interests of the people with the interests of their governments.”

Former Supreme Court justice José Antonio Martín Pallín, a member of the International Commission of Jurists, told IPS that 68 cases of crimes committed outside of Spain are currently being prosecuted here, including those investigated by the internationally renowned Garzón.

Thus, if the current law were left untouched, it would be possible to issue warrants, for example, for the arrest of Israeli military officers who travelled to London, and to request their extradition to Spain to face charges of war crimes.

But “unfortunately, that legislation is not being enforced,” he added.

He also said that if the law is modified so that perpetrators of serious human rights abuses can only be tried here if the victims are Spanish, “it would be tantamount to a return to the 19th century.”

And in regard to the proposed new restricted law’s stipulation that the victims or perpetrators could also be people who are “well-loved and well-known” in Spain, Martín Pallín laughingly asked whether one of them could be Brazilian football star Ronaldo, “who is definitely loved and widely known in Spain.”

If the lower house of Congress approves the reform, as expected, it would amount to “political interference with an independent judiciary,” said Eisa Alsoweis, president of the Asociación de Amigos del Pueblo Palestino (Association of Friends of the Palestinian People).

Martín Pallín pointed out that the proposed reform is being given fast-track treatment – “too fast to reach useful, carefully debated agreements.” He was referring to the intention to approve it in parliamentary sessions this week.

Besides Cavagna, Garcés and Martín Pallín, participants in the debate organised by human rights groups included José Antonio Gimbernat, the president of the Federación de Asociaciones de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos (Federation of Associations of Defence and Promotion of Human Rights); Raji Sourani, head of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights; lawyers Antonio Segura and Gonzalo Boyé, who are handling the case against Israel; and lawyer Antonio García of the Comisiones Obreras trade union confederation.

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Jun 17 2009 (IPS)

Laws stipulating a minimum number of women in public posts are essential for achieving gender equality, according to a meeting of women legislators from Latin America and the Caribbean, held this week in Madrid.

The meeting, “Towards a Political Agenda for Gender Equality in Latin America and the Caribbean”, was organised by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), with support from the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).

More than 60 women parliamentarians from 20 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, and a further 20 from Spain, attended the two-day conference, which ended Tuesday.

Eleven of the 20 Latin American and Caribbean nations represented at the meeting already have quota laws, whose effectiveness can be seen in the proportion of women lawmakers, who held 20.5 percent of total seats in 2008, compared to just 14 percent in the other nine countries.

Argentina adopted the world’s first national gender quota law in 1991, and this country and others in the region such as Chile, Nicaragua and Panama have or have had women presidents.

Without these laws, it would take until 2052 for women to gain 40 percent of parliamentary seats, said Rebeca Grynspan, UNDP regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean.

But none of these countries has reached the degree of equality that prevails in Spain, which has equal numbers of men and women in the cabinet presided by socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and where political parties are required to include at least 40 percent female candidates on electoral lists.

Latin America has made some progress in the composition of cabinets: in the 1990s only nine percent of ministers were women, a proportion that has climbed to nearly 22 percent this year. A particularly positive sign is that women are increasingly being appointed to ministries traditionally seen as male preserves, such as the ministries of defence, interior, economy, industry, science and technology.

Spain’s First Vice President María Teresa Fernández de la Vega told the meeting it must never be forgotten that exercising and showing the value of political freedom is a contribution to the values of equality throughout Ibero-America – the community of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries on both sides of the Atlantic.

“There are still many doors to be opened and many seats in parliament to be occupied” by women, who should have “at least half, fifty percent, in all the world’s governments,” she said.

Fernández de la Vega called on participants to conquer a public space in which women can be part of the solutions to the global economic crisis. “Today, women are part of politics, we are a central element and we continue to claim the public space that we should always have occupied,” she said.

UNIFEM executive director Inés Alberdi stressed the need for “accountability from a gender perspective” in politics, the justice system, public services and the markets, “to ensure that policies on women’s rights do not remain empty rhetoric.”

This accountability, she went on, should be structured in such a way that “women themselves can demand and get answers from the decision-makers, at the national and international levels.”

Although women do not yet have equal participation at the legislative level in Latin America and the Caribbean, significant progress has been made in the proportion of women lawmakers in lower (or single) chambers, currently an average of nearly 21 percent.

The highest proportion of women in such posts is found in Cuba (49 percent), followed by Argentina (40 percent) and Costa Rica (nearly 37 percent), while the lowest participation is found in Colombia (8.4 percent), Panama (8.5 percent), Brazil (nine percent) and Guatemala (12 percent). However, in local governments women’s presence is much lower. Only six percent of mayors are women.

The women parliamentarians gathered in Madrid laid the foundations for a legislative agenda on gender equality issues for the region, and strategies to make it effective.

They emphasised that women’s leadership is a key to development with a view to overcoming the global economic crisis. Proposals were also made focusing on employment, social protection, and shared responsibility for personal and family life and work outside the home, as well as for sexual and reproductive health.

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Feb 20 2009 (IPS)

Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón, known for prosecuting alleged tyrants, terrorists and perpetrators of corruption, believes that progress toward a global justice system began in 1996, with the trials in Madrid of Argentine and Chilean torturers, and especially with the arrest of Augusto Pinochet in October 1998.

Baltasar Garzón, during a visit to Argentina. Credit: Presidencia de Argentina

Former Chilean dictator Pinochet (1973-1990) was arrested in London when Garzón requested his extradition to Spain to face charges of crimes against humanity. Although extradition was denied on health grounds, the case was a watershed. It had profound repercussions in Chile, where several investigations against Pinochet were subsequently opened.

IPS: What should be done to make global justice a reality in the short term? BG: We should continue to move along the same road with increasing vigour, laying aside economic and political interests and blowing the whistle on attempts to reverse direction, because if we allow that to happen the victims will suffer and impunity will triumph all over again. We have the instruments for every democratic country to do this, and to require others to do it.

IPS: What is the biggest challenge to justice from the present global financial crisis? BG: Achieving a dynamic, modern, scientifically trained justice system that is ethically above reproach and committed to fighting organised crime, drug trafficking, corruption and terrorism.

These scourges of globalised society represent the dark side of our times. The roots of the world economic and financial situation must be studied in depth. Why are giant companies going bankrupt, dragging the hopes of millions of people down with them? Who is responsible for this?

The law must be particularly diligent in investigating this, while remembering always that judges have a fundamental role to play in the defence of basic human rights and in guaranteeing that the rule of law prevails against any other approach.

IPS: Is corruption really a global problem? BG: It has been for a long time, but in recent years awareness has increased. The fight against corruption is taking on a new dimension now, precisely because no one was concerned with dealing with it before. But to carry on the struggle seriously and efficiently, ethical values must be consolidated. Democratic systems must be perfected, and institutions and national and international laws must be strengthened.

Combating corruption, which is the negative side of economic globalisation, is essential. Look at the recent scandals in the United States and the reports of Transparency International, and you will see that we are facing a universal phenomenon.

To this end, countries must provide themselves with a coordinated response system and legal systems that converge towards the guidelines set out in the international conventions against corruption. Those who engage in crimes of corruption, and take advantage of the gaps between different legal systems, should no longer have access to the loopholes of tax havens, other non-cooperating territories, or failures to ratify the international conventions.

IPS: Another problem that appears to be on the rise is international arms dealing. What is your opinion on this? BG: Effective international coordination should be established to control the brokers in the triangulation (covert indirect sales) of weapons through companies who simply lend their names to the transactions, because if this traffic continues it will exacerbate violence and affect, in particular, the civilian population.

Uncontrolled trading in weapons often becomes a public security problem, as the arms tend to end up in the hands of organised crime and terrorist groups.

On other occasions, weapons leave one country legally but arrive in other countries where there are serious human rights violations, as is happening at the moment in (the Democratic Republic of) the Congo, and the international community is not reacting. Regulation by the United Nations and punishment of offenders have been gravely deficient.

I think it is immoral that such a large proportion of many countries' gross domestic product is derived from the manufacture and sale of weapons of war. There should be a binding clause in contracts for each and every country buying arms, obliging them to respect human rights.

IPS: How would you define terrorism? BG: Terrorism is, increasingly, a form of organised crime. It uses the same techniques, and is financed by the same sources. Think of the FARC (Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia), the Taliban in Afghanistan, or al Qaeda.

The political gains that terrorists also seek sometimes become an excuse not to renounce violence as a means of achieving political ends.

Terrorist groups are criminal organisations, and as such they have their own structures, some hierarchical, others less so, which operate in their own interests.

It would be a great mistake to focus only on the armed structures, without investigating their funding sources, their support, their institutional presence and their strategies to take over the very apparatus of the state by a process of discrediting them.

Terrorism, too, can be regarded as a crime against humanity when it manifests itself in systematic attacks against specific sectors of the civilian population. Even where there is an ongoing armed conflict, such as in Iraq, terrorist activities are and should remain clearly differentiated. Thus, sending mujahideen into a conflict situation as suicide bombers cannot be regarded as an act of insurgency: it is terrorism.

IPS: Would you call bombing a civilian population "terrorism," even if it happens in the middle of a war? BG: Any attack on a non-combatant population, whatever the circumstances, can be described as terrorist action, and attacks on civilian populations can be described as crimes against humanity. In my view there is no excuse whatsoever and no doubt about this, nor should there be.

This is within the purview of the International Criminal Court. Perhaps it should come up with a ruling on some conflicts which are on everyone's minds.

IPS: You wrote a book in 2005, "Un mundo sin miedo" (A World Without Fear). Why did you write it? BG: I felt the need to move ahead toward a world without fear, in the positive sense, because conflicts should be solved by means of the weapons of the law, rather than by force.

And, I would underline, without ever resorting to violence. If in the last resort force is necessary, it should be used within the limits stipulated by international law, which protects all peoples. And international law applies to actions of any kind, be they military, political or legal.

IPS: Is there more fear in the world now, or less, four years after you wrote your book? BG: Perhaps people have fewer illusions, because the situation is more complicated, but there have been some very positive developments that give us grounds for hope.

I was very encouraged by the electoral triumph of U.S. President Barack Obama. At last, the (George W. Bush) administration which confused security with arbitrariness, and lack of due process with effectiveness, is at an end.

Human rights and the law were trampled on, and we have suffered the consequences. Now the best thing to do is to make up for lost time and get rid of the "Guantánamos" of this world.

IPS: You encountered opposition when you decided to investigate people like Pinochet or Argentine ex-naval officer Adolfo Scilingo for crimes committed in their own countries. One of the arguments raised was that you had no authority to put them on trial, because the crimes were not committed in Spain… BG: When the crimes in question are genocide, crimes against humanity or terrorism, according to Spanish law and international law the principle of universal criminal jurisdiction applies, independently of where the crimes were committed.

The point is to prevent impunity. The human dignity of the victims demands that we never forget these crimes, and that we refuse to be cowed by those who do not wish them to come to trial. It is not an option; it is a duty.

*Not for publication in Italy

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By Tito Drago
MADRID, Jan 27 2009 (IPS)

A “High Level Meeting on Food Security for All” convened by the United Nations and the Spanish government ended Tuesday without approving concrete measures but with a commitment to redoubling efforts to bolster official development aid (ODA).

Representatives of national governments, civil society, trade unions, the private sector, academia, multilateral organisations and donor agencies from around 100 countries took part in the two-day meeting, in which the closing speeches were given by Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The problem of hunger suffered by one billion people around the world – nearly all of them in the developing South – was discussed in-depth throughout the meeting, and the progress achieved since the June 2008 high level conference in Rome was reviewed, in order to establish mechanisms for better coordination.

Although concrete resolutions were not adopted, the conference issued strong statements on the need to act with respect to questions like funding. The final declaration urges governments and international institutions to make good on their previous pledges of aid.

The participants also expressed “the urgent need to strive even harder to achieve international commitments of increasing substantially financial resources and ODA, particularly in relation to nutrition, food, agriculture and hunger-related programmes and policies.”

One positive aspect, according to non-governmental organisations (NGOs), was the conference’s call to “eliminat(e) all forms of competition-distorting subsidies, in order to stimulate and conduct agricultural trade in a fair way.”

Referring to the global food crisis, Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) chief Jacques Diouf, who is vice-chairman of the Secretary-General’s High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis, said “This crisis is not only still with us, but could still worsen.”

To confront the crisis, he said that in his congratulatory message to U.S. President Barack Obama, he “proposed the convening, at the level of Heads of State and Government, of a World Summit on Food Security in 2009 to forge a broad consensus on the final and rapid eradication of hunger in the world.”

He also said that “Proposals have focused on establishing a High-Level Panel of Experts on food and agriculture, charged with conducting scientific analyses and a Global Partnership to enhance dialogue with all partners and thus facilitate coordination and implementation of the action plans.”

“I am convinced, and this has often been said and repeated, that there is no need to create new bodies. The need is to improve, reinforce, coordinate, in other words to reform what exists so as to render our action more effective,” he added.

With respect to compliance with earlier commitments, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos told IPS that Spain would like all governments in the industrialised North to live up to their pledge to earmark 0.7 percent of GDP to ODA, by 2012.

Spain has already committed itself to that goal, and Zapatero announced Tuesday that his administration would increase ODA by one billion euros.

Another 15 countries have joined Spain in that commitment, promising 5.5 billion euros over the next five years, as well as the 1.3 billion euros pledged by the European Union several weeks ago.

“The countries of the North have resources and means, we know what the solutions are, and we can and must apply them,” said Moratinos, who has broad experience in development aid in Spain and the European Union.

At one of the panels in the Madrid meeting, the representative of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), which groups 65 million workers globally, said one solution to increasing ODA is clear: by reducing the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) budget by a mere 10 percent, 100 billion dollars would be raised.

Speaking of funding, representatives of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières and Action against Hunger complained that transnational corporations seek to use the theme of the fight against hunger to their own benefit.

Lidia Senra with Vía Campesina Europa agreed, saying “there is a strong interest in using the money to help address the problem of hunger in such a way that companies can sell their own seeds and fertilisers.”

International meetings on hunger are important, she added, but “food sovereignty must be respected, and each country must be allowed to decide on its own agricultural policies, protecting the production of each country and region and fighting speculation.”

Lennart Båge, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), told IPS that one problem is that although prices have plunged, the food crisis continues.

But, he said, if small and medium farmers, who number around 450 million worldwide, are assisted, their production will be very important to enable them to pull out of poverty and contribute to feeding the rest of the world.

Four NGOs – Caritas, Engineers Without Borders, La Suma de Todos and Prosalud – launched the campaign “The Right to Food: Urgent”.

In a public statement, they argued that the conditions are in place to overcome hunger, and that the fight must be based on respect for human rights, in a context in which states assume their obligations and develop political frameworks on agriculture aimed at guaranteeing the right to food.

The groups also added that agriculture based on the right to food must be at the centre of the public agenda, that civil society as a whole should participate, and that no single formula can be offered, because although the crisis has common underlying causes, it takes on different characteristics in each country.

Furthermore, they said, governments must make it clear that the private sector shares the responsibility to fight hunger by means of the creation of a code of conduct for companies that work with agricultural inputs, which is based on the principle of the right to food.

The campaign congratulated Zapatero for the economic agreements achieved, and expressed hope that his government will assume an effective global leadership role in the effort to come up with new ways of fighting hunger.

In the final declaration approved at the High Level Meeting, participants “reaffirmed the conclusions of the World Food Summit in 1996…to achieve food security for all through an ongoing effort to eradicate hunger in all countries, with an immediate view to reducing by half the number of undernourished people by no later than 2015, as well as their commitment to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).”

The first of the MDGs, which were adopted by the international community in 2000, is to halve the number of hungry people in the world by 2015, from 1990 levels.

They also expressed deep concern over “the unacceptable global food security situation that affects over 960 million undernourished people” and “the negative impact on food access and availability fluctuations exacerbated by the current financial crisis on the livelihoods of the poorest, most vulnerable in the world.”

Excerpt:

By Tito Drago
MADRID, Dec 12 2008 (IPS)

The Spanish government announced a new plan Friday to combat human trafficking, which includes a measure for the immediate seizure of the assets of anyone convicted of involvement in such activities, in particular, those who force foreign women into prostitution.

The General Association in Defence of the Rights of Prostitutes, Hetaira, Spain’s largest association of sex workers, welcomed the government’s announcement, which it sees as a step forward, although it maintains that there are many things that should be done differently to protect the human rights of trafficked persons and prostitutes in general.

The Integral Plan to Combat Human Trafficking for the Purposes of Sexual Exploitation includes 61 measures aimed at raising social awareness and implementing a zero tolerance policy against human trafficking-related crimes.

It also seeks to tackle the causes of these crimes with active cooperation policies involving the countries of origin, transit and destination, and with the participation of non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

The full implementation of the resolution adopted by the Council of Ministers Friday will require legislative reforms and amendments to the criminal code, which means it will take several months to put into effect.

The plan, which has congressional backing, includes the seizure of all assets and goods owned by pimps, managers or owners of any facilities where sexual exploitation activities are detected.

When police action is taken against an alleged pimp or human trafficker involved in the sex trade, authorities will now be able to confiscate all of the suspect’s assets and auction them off if a guilty sentence is handed down. The proceeds will go into a fund to finance the fight against these crimes.

Reforms will also be aimed at amending Spain’s criminal code to enable victims of forced prostitution to testify against their pimps or traffickers during the pre-trial stage, without being forced to testify again at the trial.

The goal of this measure is to convince the victims to cooperate in the legal proceedings, ensuring them that they will not have to face their aggressors again, which is what leads many to withdraw their testimonies after being pressured.

Cristina Garaizabal, a spokeswoman for Hetaira, told IPS that the measures adopted are positive, but that they do not go far enough, as the rights of prostitutes must be defended regardless of whether or not they report their pimps or anyone else who abuses them.

“Anyone who exploits them must be tried and convicted, because whether they are forced into prostitution or voluntarily work as prostitutes, they must all be protected in every aspect, and not just from sexual exploitation, and in particular they must receive assistance, even financial help, to become fully integrated members of society,” she said.

The socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero will also allocate 44 million euros (approximately 58 million dollars) to the fund to finance the plan over the space of three years. The fund will later receive the proceeds from the sale of seized assets.

According to a study by the Federation of Progressive Women, an estimated 40,000 foreign women are forced into prostitution in Spain, although only some 18,000 have been identified.

The report indicates that, even if they have paid off the trafficking rings that brought them to Spain, most of the women are forced to work as prostitutes because they need to send money home to their families.

For that reason, the Federation is calling for all of the victims to be granted permits to stay in the country without having to meet any requirements, and for them to be covered by the law against gender violence, which is currently restricted to married or unmarried couples.

The government resolution describes human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation as “a clear case of gender violence,” as it primarily affects women and girls, often as a result of the feminisation of poverty in the victims’ countries of origin, which is reflected by sexual discrimination, sexual division of labour, lack of education, and unemployment.

Garaizabal said another aspect to be taken into account is that the 30-day reporting period given to human trafficking victims is too short, because “they are very much conditioned by the difficult situation they are placed in, and it could take up to three months for them to react, so at least a three-month period should be granted.”

Under the current legislation, foreign victims who do not report their pimps immediately are thrown out of the country.

While the new plan does not extend the mandatory reporting period, for 30 days the victims will be taken into a shelter where they will receive protection and financial assistance, as well as medical and psychological care to help them overcome their fear of the trafficking mafias and become aware of their own rights.

Other laws that will be amended under the new plan are the Free Legal Counselling Act and the Rights and Freedoms of Foreign Nationals Act, so that all victims receive immediate legal assistance at no cost and in their native language.

The Zapatero administration also plans to expedite the procedures for granting residence papers to immigrants, in cooperation with the countries of origin. Mechanisms will also be put in place to provide protection to the families of victims of trafficking back in their home countries, as victims are often kept from taking legal action by threats against their relatives.

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