Basques want to decide their own future

[Bill O. Rights]

August 11, 2000

Fear Spreads as Spanish and Basque Blood Flows

By SUZANNE DALEY


D URANGO, Spain -- It is not hard to find the spot on the sidewalk
here where Jesús María Pedrosa was gunned down in June as he walked
home on a quiet Sunday after watching a basketball game with
friends.

Scrawled on the wall behind the spot where Mr. Pedrosa fell when a
single bullet tore through the back of his skull is blood-red
graffiti in Basque saying: "E.T.A., we are behind you."

Europe's longest-running guerrilla rebellion has exploded back into
life since last December, when the Basque separatists, angry at
what they saw as a lack of progress in negotiations with Spain,
ended a 14-month truce.

Since then the shadowy organization, E.T.A., whose full name means
Basque Homeland and Liberty, has taken responsibility for a
widening wave of death and destruction, with more than a dozen
attacks in July alone.

Spaniards are angry at the new wave of violence and frustrated at
the failure to solve a conflict that -- unlike Northern Ireland's
-- attracts almost no interest in the outside world. Vigils have
been held across the country, and more than half a million people
marched in Madrid to protest E.T.A.'s resort to more assassinations
and car bombings.

Juanjo Gastaniazatorre, like Mr. Pedrosa a councilor in this small
Basque town for the center-right Popular Party, which governs in
Madrid, sighed at the graffiti marking the place of his colleague's
death. Sometimes efforts are made to take it away, he said. "But it
just comes back."

The latest wave of terrorism has crisscrossed the country, seeming
to prove that E.T.A. can strike at almost any target, anywhere it
likes: explosions have gone off in a rich Basque suburb and outside
a shopping mall in downtown Madrid.

The dead include local politicians like Mr. Pedrosa, and José María
Martín Carpena, who was gunned down in front of his wife and
daughter in Málaga, in the south, apparently just because he was a
member of the Popular Party.

In other cases, the victims were outspoken Basques. One was a
Basque journalist who had increasingly criticized the more moderate
nationalists for not taking a more active stance against violence.
He was shot four times in the head and throat as he went to buy a
newspaper in Andoain.

And just two weeks ago, Juan María Jáuregui, a retired Socialist
Party governor of a Basque province who had repeatedly pressed for
peace talks, was assassinated while home on vacation from his job
in Chile. A bullet hole is still visible in the yellow wall of his
restaurant, the Cafe Frontón, where he died.

A waitress who witnessed the killing cannot sleep at night and does
not come to work these days. The owner, J. L. Izaguirre, said the
two assassins sat at the bar for a while drinking coffee. One wore
a hat and dark glasses, which seemed odd to everyone. But not odd
enough, he said, because no one reacted.

Mr. Izaguirre, who was reluctant to give his full name, said that
all he feels about the latest rash of violence is weariness --
though he could not seem to stop glancing at the white pock mark in
his wall. "We are all tired of this," he said. "First terrorism,
then a cease-fire, then terrorism again. It goes on and on."

[On Thursday, the ninth victim of the recent killings, a Spanish
Army lieutenant, was buried. And near the Basque mountain village
of Markina, Agence France-Presse reported, about 100 separatists,
carrying Basque flags of green and white crosses on a red
background, decorated with black ribbons, mourned an E.T.A.
commander and three suspected accomplices who died on Monday when
the car in which they were carrying explosives blew up.]

Fear is growing among the five million residents in the rich and
industrialized Basque region, an area of rugged hills that
stretches across the French and Spanish border at the Atlantic end
of the Pyrénées and includes Bilbao and San Sebastián.

Three years ago, by one survey, 50 percent said they were afraid to
talk politics with at least some of the people they knew. Today,
about 70 percent say they are afraid.

"One can wonder if democracy can even function there," said Emilio
Lamo de Espinosa, the director of a prestigious Madrid research
group, Instituto Universitario Ortega y Gasset.

In Durango, Mr. Gastaniazatorre said the Popular Party sometimes
cannot get people to run in local elections. He himself has
survived one assassination attempt, and his country house was
burned to the ground last year. He hardly leaves his Durango
residence, and takes two bodyguards whenever he does.

"I can't go to restaurants or anything like that," he said.

The Basques are one of the most ancient people of Europe,
identified even in the Roman times as fiercely dominant of this
area. During the Middle Ages, Spanish rulers accorded them special
liberties in acknowledgement of their customs and traditions. The
Basque language appears to be related to no other.

In more modern times, the Basques suffered heavy repression under
the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco. Angry at Basque support
of the leftists in the Civil War, Franco sought to stamp out any
vestige of Basque identity.

After Franco's death in 1975 and Spain's return to democracy, huge
changes were introduced. In the hopes of diffusing various
separatist movements, the new order gave all the country's regions
a great deal of autonomy.

Basque voters never ratified Spain's new constitution. The killing
had begun in 1968, and even in democracy, the bloodshed continued.
By now, E.T.A. has been blamed for more than 800 deaths.

Surveys continue to show that maybe 30 percent of Basques still
hope for sovereignty. Only 10 percent of the population identifies
itself as Spanish, about 60 percent say they are both Spanish and
Basque, and about 30 percent say they are Basque only.

Arnaldo Otegi, the spokesman for Euskal Herritarok, the radical
nationalists seen as ETA's political wing, says that violence will
not end until the Basques have an independent state. Autonomy, he
said, is not what anyone cares about.

"In this time of globalization, why is it hard to understand we
need our own country?" Mr. Otegi asked. "We are an industrialized
country with a $16,000-a-year average income. Why can't we decide
our own future? Why is it different for us than for the
Palestinians? Is the difference between them and us that we don't
wear the scarf?"

Mr. Otegi makes no apologies about the loss of life. "You have to
have the dead," he said, "or else people will say there is no
conflict."

Since the end of the cease-fire, Prime Minister José María Aznar
has continued to take a hard line with the separatists, declaring
simply that he will not deal with terrorists. "They are not going
to see us blink," he said at Governor Jáuregui's funeral on July
30.

Some analysts say the problem is that the government gave too much
away when Spain became a democracy. "The regions in Spain are the
most autonomous and independent in all of Europe," said Felipe
Sahagun, a columinist for the newspaper El Mundo. "They gave away
all the cards 20 years ago. How can they negotiate now? They have
nothing to give."

Others are critical of the government's actions during the 14-month
truce, noting that only one meeting took place between the two
sides. E.T.A. was not satisfied with what it calls a halfhearted
gesture to bring Basque prisoners closer to home, rather than have
them scattered as far away as the Canary Islands.

In addition, a top Basque negotiator was arrested during the truce,
infuriating the separatists.

Some argue that E.T.A. agreed to the truce only because it was
weakened by arrests in the late 1990's and needed to regroup.
During the truce, police officials say, E.T.A. agents stole eight
tons of explosives from a French Army barracks. Some of that
matériel was recovered, but some was used this year in attacks, the
police say.

There is also widespread speculation that E.T.A. is now in the
hands of younger, more hot-headed leaders less well-known to the
police.

Right now, optimism is in short supply. Jonan Fernández, general
coordinator of Elkarri, a nonprofit pro-separatist peace group
based in San Sebastián, is a lonely voice in seeing the conflict in
its final stages, hoping that E.T.A will again abandon violence and
make new overtures for a negotiated solution.

But he bemoans the lack of international interest. "Why," he asked,
"is there no Camp David for us?"

New York Times

[Bill O. Rights]

[Bill O. Rights]

[Bill O. Rights]

[Bill O. Rights]

[flight ofthe phoenix]

What about the right of *Chechens* to be free of Russian
control?

You forget about your Russian imperialistic stance on that,
because you are a Russian communist.... right?

AC
====================================
Bill O. Rights <billr...@free.net> wrote in message
news:9659749...@free.net...

>
> August 11, 2000
>
> Fear Spreads as Spanish and Basque Blood Flows
>
> By SUZANNE DALEY
>

rest of male impersonator's communist hypocracy deleted..