The Basque country under the PSOE THE FOLLOWING interview with "Bikila," a leader of the Liga Kommunista Iraultzailea (LKI - Revolutionary Communist League, the Fourth Internationalist organization in southern Euzkadi, the part of the Basque nation incorporated into the Spanish state) was given to Gerry Foley in Paris on December 18, 1985.
it has to hang on to its nationalist voters.
The formula it has adopted to resolve this contradiction is the following. The PNV leaves the implementation of pacts and compromises with the centralists to the Basque government. As a party, it strives to maintain its formal independence. It is left to the heads of the party to raise criticisms and nationalist demands.
This game is not a new one for the PNV. It does this as a provision for the future, so that if it is obliged to make a political turn, it can dump the present lehendakari and team of managers and opt for another policy.
But the PNV is getting caught up in the trammels of the pact, and will find itself in a difficult position in particular with regard to the European elections. Both the Catalan nationalists elections. Both the Catalan nationalists and the Basque bourgeois nationalists are demanding that the autonomous regions be taken into consideration when the districts are drawn up. The central government, however, insists that they will be drawn up in a uniform way throughout the Spanish state.
Moreover, the European tax could undermine the conciertos economicos that exist now. These amount to a sort of economic pact allowing the autonomous community to collect taxes and then later pay a percentage to the Spanish state. This tax-collecting power gives the nationalist bourgeoisie an important margin for maneuver.
Q. To what extent has the repres sion worsened under the pact between the PNV and the PSOE?
•A. For example, at a conference of Latin American police officials, the Guardia Civil lieutenant general Cassinello said that the Spanish government had developed an imaginative police operation. On the one hand, it had gotten the French government to agree to extradite Basque nationalists and deport others out of the French Basque country, that is north Euzkadi. It had also extended its means for repression, achieving the elimination of outstanding leaders of ETA and the Comandos Autonomos. He referred to the GAL, the Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberacion, that is, parallel police forces that have murdered many ETA activists in north Euzkadi.
It seems that this was a slip by the lieutenant general. But it is something well known in the Basque country. It shows that the police and the central government are involved in waging a "dirty war," that they are ready to use any and all means to repress the radical nationalists.
Besides this threefold operation, combining French backing, intensified
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Question. About a year ago the bourgeois Basque Nationalist Party, the PNV, made a parliamentary pact with the Spanish Social Democratic party, the PSOE, which opposes national rights for the Basque people. What has this agreement entailed and how has it held up?
Answer. The PNV found itself obliged to make a major political turn for it that provoked a very big internal crisis. They had to get rid of the lehendakari, that is, the president of the Basque autonomous government, and replace him with a bureaucratic nonentity.
The policy that had been pursued by the lehendakari who was purged, Garaikoetxea, was to try to work with the centralist forces to develop the autonomy statute granted by the central government. However, the centralists, then represented by the PSOE, engaged on a course of cutting back the operation of the statute. And at the same time, they followed a repressive policy against the radicalized nationalists, who did not support the statute and were conducting a frontal struggle against the state apparatus.
So, the PNV drew the conclusion that it could not continue on the road. The transfer of powers to the Basque autonomous government was being blocked by a deadlock in the Basque parliament between the PNV, the majority party, and the opposition -the PSOE, the Spanish right, and the Basque moderate left.
The political turn the PNV took involved dropping some features of its nationalist policy, moderating its opposition to the central government, and a more bureaucratic and administrative approach to the statute of autonomy itself. That is, it turned away from the potential uses of the statute to expand the national rights of the Basque people.
International Viewpoint 13 January 1986
In exchange for this accomodating attitude, the PNV got the central government to open up the way for the transfer of some administrative powers to the Basque autonomous government and it got the support of the PSOE in the autonomous parliament, enabling it to pass budgets and laws that it otherwise could not have gotten through the Basque legislature.
The consequence of all this is that the central government has gained a freer hand, with the support of the moderate nationalists, to repress and isolate the radical nationalists.
Obviously, this did not come off without hitches. The crisis is continuing in the PNV. Moreover, the source of conflict is not just opposition to this line but the fact that the PNV is attempting to solve its internal problems in more and more authoritarian and undemocratic ways.
There continue to be tensions in the relations between the PNV and the PSOE in the Basque parliament because whenever the centralists get concessions from the nationalists they try to tighten the screw further, both by stepping up repression and their fight against the nationalists on the ideological level. At various points, the nationalists have found it necessary to take some distance from the PSOE.
But, fundamentally, and that is the unfortunate thing, the legislative pact is being maintained. And that indicates that the PNV's willingness to stay tied to the centralists for the sake of some small concessions in the autonomous administration is greater than it seemed at the beginning. So, we are seeing a major tactical turn.
Moreover, the PNV thinks ahead. It is a party that historically has to play a double game. It has to make accomodations with the centralists, coexist with them. At the same time, it cannot get away from the fact that
police repression, and the use of parallel police forces in a "dirty war," the government has begun in the most recent period using political tactics to wear out the resistance of the radical nationalist forces. It is trying the method of getting political prisoners to "repent" that has been used in Italy.
This involves getting certain political prisoners or political refugees to accept a course of reintegration into society, in which they renounce their political past, not just the method of armed struggle but also their radical nationalist ideas. That is, they agree to accept the Spanish constitutional framework, whether this is specifically the Spanish constitution or the statute of autonomy, which is an extension of the Spanish constitution.
For the time being, this method of repentence has not produced much. Mainly, those who have seen the light have been members of ETA-Politico Militar, who had already departed from the armed struggle road and that of radical resistance and had lined up with the policy of Euzkadiko Ezkerra (EE). The latter represents a moderate left nationalist that accepts the Spanish constitutional framework.
However, the government has achieved some successes that it can play on. One such case was the capitulation of a former leader of ETAMilitar, who had left the organiachieved some successes that it side the country. Both the Basque government and the central one allowed him to enter the Basque country so that they could use this case to project the idea that already in ETA-Militar cases of desertion are occurring.
So, you can see that in this political operation, for the first time, the autonomous government and the central government have collaborated, although in a semi-official way. So far, there have been different forms of applying the policy of repentence to suit the political advantage of the autonomous government and the central one. The central government has followed a very rigid policy, demanding virtually total capitulation. It has gotten practically no results. On the other hand, EE has encouraged its supporters to follow a third way that involves negotiating the reinsertion of certain legal activists into society with the Basque government.
In any event, these courses have brought very little results, because of all those who have declared their repentence, only a fourth have managed to get out of jail or to be able to return from exile.
Q. What about the accusations that torture of Basque political pris10
"SPANISH DEMOCRACY'S" BLOODY HANDS The mysterious appearance of Mikel Zabalza's body in the Bidasoa river near San Sebastian in mid-December not only provoked very broad protests in the Basque country but focused international attention on the "dirty war" that the Spanish repressive forces have continued to wage against revolutionary Basque nationalism.
"Is Spain's Guardia Civil still torturing confessions out of prisoners," the West German magazine Der Spiegel asked in a headline over a major story in its January 6 issue. It quoted his sister, Arantza, as saying, "They beat our Mikel to death and then threw his body into the river."
Zabalza had been arrested on November 26, charged with membership in the Basque guerrilla organization, ETA. He was seen bound and hooded in the San Sebastian headquarters of the Guardia Civil. Witnesses, according to Der Spiegel, saw him carried on a stretcher and heard screams. The body was bound. The police claimed that they had lost him when he made a dash for the nearby French border while he was taking them to an ETA arms cache.
In connection with Zabalza's death, Der Spiegel noted the case of Joseba Arregui, who, as it put it, "did not survive an eight-day interrogation in Madrid's central police headquarters."
In its December 21 issue, Zutik, the paper of the Liga Communista Irautzailea, the Fourth Internationalist organisation in the part of the Basque country under the Spanish state, commented:
"Mikel is dead because the guardians of 'democracy' are the same ones who defended the dictatorship. This is a crime of the state, as was the death of Joseba Arregui.
"Mikel is dead because the Antiterrorist Law allows the Guardia Civil to act with total impunity, because this law passed by the PSOE [the Spanish state Social Democratic Party ] encourages torture. The responsibility for this crime falls on the government and a Socialist parliamentary majority that has sponsored legislation to repress freedom.
"Basing themselves on the PSOE's laws, the civil governors have prohibited the Basque people from demanding clarification and identification of those responsible. Given cover by the Socialist civil governors, the police have savagly repressed those who were trying to voice these demands.
"All this is consistent - a state maintained by the repressive forces of the previous political system, a legislation designed to preserve the state, the need to shut the mouths demanding an end to torture, an end to repression, and an end to the servitude of the Basque people."
On December 18, a general strike was called in the four Basque provinces (supported by some forces only in Navarra and Guipuzcoa). Mass demonstrations were called in San Sebastian and Pamplona [Irunea] on the 21 and 22 respectively. The peace demonstrators in Madrid on December 17 observed a minute's silence for Zabalza, in Zaragoza they shouted, "We are not all here,
Zabalza is missing." In Barcelona, they
Guardia Civil. oners has continued under the PSOE government?
A. This collaboration in the area of repression is complicated by the factor of torture and other illegal actions by the police. This came out in an explosive way with the death of the ETA-Militar activist Mikil Zabalza. Some of the gravest aspects of this case also have to do with the antiterrorist law. This legislation was adopted with the support of the Spanish right and the PSOE. Even the moderate nationalists, the Communist Party, and EE opposed it, as did, of course, all the revolutionary and radical groups.
While this law has not yet been applied to its full extent, because this would involve a virtual state of siege, it is being applied in certain respects. For example, activists are being constantly arrested on charges of membership of specific ETA commando groups. They are then held incommunicado for ten days. They cannot see lawyers. They cannot have visitors. The police have a comdenounced the Antiterrorist Law and pletely free hand.
When such detainees are finally brought before a judge, 80 to 90 percent of them are released. Thus, the law is being applied in an indiscriminate way, against political supporters of radical nationalism, not just against the armed militants. In this way, the authorities are trying to break the resistance of the political activists and generate an atmosphere of intimidation.
In the Basque country today -as Amnesty International says, and even the PNV and the EE and their representatives in parliament recognize - torture is a fact of life. This is attested by many denunciations both by people released immediately after their arrest and those imprisoned. It has been highlighted by outrageous and tragic cases, such as that of Arregui, a Basque militant who died in the Direccion General de Seguridad in Madrid as a result of torture.
Of course, another example is the case of Mikel Zabalza. But in this case there was another dimension. International Viewpoint 13 January 1986
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Zabalza died in the course of being "disappeared." He was taken to the Guardia Civil barracks at Inchaurrondo in San Sebastian, a notorious place today. He was interrogated for several hours. His fiancee and other activists could see him hooded, and then, suddenly, he disappeared. About three weeks later, he was found dead, supposedly drowned, in a place where the Guardia Civil said he had escaped while going to point out an arms dump.
Anyone familiar with this part of the river knows that it is a very well defined and small area where the current is blocked by a dike. The divers worked for three or four days in an area of 300 or 400 meters without being able to find anything. Then, after two weeks, the body turned up, although bodies normally come to the surface after nine days.
Q. What role has the Spanish press played in the case?
A. After being on the defensive for several days, now, of course, the press and the government have taken the side of the Guardia Civil. But no one who knows anything about the matter is going to be convinced by what they say. This special pleading in the press for us is just additional confirmation that in fact Zabalza was murdered in the Guardia Civil barracks itself.
Not only is torture systematic in Inchaurrondo but also ill-treatment. For example, we know of cases of anti-war activists being held for some hours in this barracks and kept hooded with plastic hoods. People who have been arrested in demonstrations in a lot of places end up in this barracks and are all put in plastic hoods so that they will not see the installations nor recognize the interrogators.
What is more, on the first inspection the judge found out that there was no record book of arrests. This is either because they arranged for it to go missing so that it would not come to light that Zabalza was held there, or in fact no such book has been kept. If the second is true, it means that there was a deliberate policy of keeping no record of the repressive activity of the Guardia Civil in this barracks.
On the other hand, this entire business shows how repressive a Social Democratic government can be, as does the record of the last British Labour government in Ireland. In the last. analysis, in adopting the Spanish constitution, which denies the right.of self-determination of the Basque people, the PSOE regime is ready to use any and all means of police repression against the conscious struggles of the revolutionary nationalists and revolutionary Marxists who defend the right of self-determination of the Basque country.
Q. In your opinion, how effective has the response been to Zabalza's murder?
A. It is still too early to tell. But the indications are encouraging. One important aspect is the response of
Zabalza's fellow workers. He was a bus driver for the San Sebastian municipal transport company. He belonged to the union ELA [Eusko Langileen Alkartasuna — Basque Workers Alliance], which is the moderate nationalist union [close to the PNV]. So, all the bus drivers protested against his murder by driving a caravan of buses around the city. And the majority union in the bus company is the PSOE-dominated confederation, the UGT.
On top of this, there have been a lot of student demonstrations that were effective in drawing people's attention to this case, since for about five days it went more or less unnoticed. So, demonstrations have been snowballing, and all of them have run into repression. Not just the radical forces but also the moderate ones - ELA and the Comisiones Obreras del Pais Vasco - have found themselves obliged to support the call for a protest general strike in the provinces of Navarra, from which Zabalza came, and Guipuzcoa, where he lived.
Q. What has the LKI done so far on this case?
A. Besides raising the biggest outery we could about it and supporting all the mobilizations, we managed to get the Comisiones Obreras Guipuzcoa, to adopt a resolution calling for an inquiry into this case and identification of those responsible. The motion was presented by our comrades.
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