Tens of thousands of people have demonstrated in Bilbao (20,000 according to the municipal police) to demand that ETA prisoners be applied the “ordinary penance law and put an end to all emergency measures”, after acknowledging that “the dispersion is coming to an end”.
The call made every year by the support network for ETA Sare prisoners had a special meaning on this occasion because it has served to take to the streets its new logo designed for “the new stage” that begins this movement, and has had the assistance of politicians from EH Bildu like Arnaldo Otegi and Arkaitz Rodríguez, and CKD such as Joan Tarda and Carme Forcadell, as well as members of the ELA and LAB unions, among others.
From Sare they have valued that, “despite the wind and the rain, the Basques have not missed the appointment” to demand the rights of the prisoners, in a demonstration led by relatives of the inmates in which only the motto has been chanted “euskal presoak, etxera” (Basque prisoners home).
“This is the expression of an important part of Basque society that calls for an end to the violation of rights” of prisoners, said the representative of that group Joseba Azkarraga, who has criticized that the National Court Prosecutor’s Office “blocks “measures approved by the Basque prison administration for some of the inmates of the terrorist organization, such as permits and grade progressions.
According to the organization’s calculations, applying “ordinary prison policy, 64% of the prisoners could be in semi-liberty”
After more than 30 years, the prison policy of removing ETA prisoners from Euskal Herria “is coming to an end but there is still a long way to go to bring them home” and that will be “when the judges and prosecutors stop bend the laws” and that “revenge and hate be banished forever and the law is used to make coexistence possible in this country”, he concluded.
Sare has also denounced that laws are still applied “that make it possible to serve up to 40 years in effective prison, which is as much as saying a covert life sentence or the non-computation of prison sentences served in French prisons.”
According to the calculations of that organization, “with the application of the ordinary penitentiary policy, 64% of these prisoners”, specifically 110, “could be in semi-liberty or even on parole”.
