Study director PACO EtxeBarria in the search and excavation of mass gratons of the Franco dictatorship. Image: R. Stretch
A first official study shows the massive use of torture in Spain against Basque, also since the end of the Franco dictatorship
The Basque Criminological Institute of the Basque University and the Basque Government presented the study on torture and maltreatment to Burgers of the Basque Autonomous Community (CAV), which has covered the period until 2014. The published study was created by a team under the direction of Paco Etxeberria. Etxberria is an internationally recognized forensic and forensic anthropologist. Professor of Legal Medicine teaches at the Basque University and has participated in many forensic exhumers as a forensic exhumation, among others at the exhumation of the during the coup murdered Chilean head of state Salvador Allende. He also examined the Volkermord in the West Sahara occupied by Morocco and the murders of the state-organized death charges in Spain.
Already a good year ago, a preliminary report had been presented for the torture since 1960 until today. In the now published report, a total of 4.113 confirmed trap, but in almost 500 cases the analysis is not yet completed. It makes it clear that there was a massive use of torture, because neither does he contain the torture trap in the adjacent Navarre still the trap in the rest of the Spanish state. One was limited to the burgers of the three baskan provinces, which form the CAV. But the big number can not represent the experienced horror of the victims. "There are no words in languages and word of words to describe the suffering of a person who is tortured", said Paco Etxeberria at the presentation.
Many people have come to the Rooms of the Institute, which had also created the microphone to record their statement. But then it was impossible to take a testimony and to serve the experienced torture again. For this reason, but above all from the fact that in some cases a very long period of time has passed, it is amed that the number of torture traps are not reflected by far the real number and the real number is significantly higher. In addition, victims, such as the Baskin Nekane Txapartegi, could not be asked about the institute. She has been living in Switzerland for seven years in Switzerland.
Despite everything, it is a first recognition of torture on institutional level. It is one of one "step", explained Jonan Fernandez explained on behalf of the Basque Government. The secretary for peace and coexistence of the Basque government also said that surveys have been a very important source of information. In addition to the payment of 4.113 fall with a total of 3.415 sacrifices, some people have multiply victims of torture, thousands of testimonies were recorded by audio or video and confirmed credibility after the Istanbul protocol.
The Istanbul Protocol is the manual for the effective examination and documentation of torture and other cruel, inhumane or dewurious treatment or punishment. It is the standard of the United Nations for training in the assessment of persons who raise the accusation, tortured, tortured or abused.
If you look at the digestion of the trap, falls on that 73% in the time of "Spanish democracy" fall, so the time span after the adoption of the catch in 1978. However, it must also be suggested that many cases could no longer be absorbed from the time of dictatorship because they are usually too far back. In the dictatorship, however, the torture was still much widespread.
The anxious number of torture trap can be attributed to the paramilitarian Guardia Civil and the Spanish National Police. Fernandez called on the Spanish state, one "independent examination" to take through and to take pravention measures so that there is no torture anymore. In the study, it is determined that further torture practice is negated in Spain. The study will address the demands of human rights organizations to the special rapporteur for torture of the UN and demands the abolition of the considerable contact lock, while the torture takes place. Contact Letter means the complete isolation of those affected, in which these up to ten days neither contact with their lawyer nor family.
Self-critical also started in the report 336 torture trap of the Basque Regional Police Ertzaintza. However, Fernandez referred to that in the Basque Country a model for pravention, but the thirst is not too "a self-evident reading" The study drove. From the Supreme Court in Spain, a total of 20 judgments were confirmed against torture. Of the 49 convicted, 28 from the Guardia Civil and 21 by the National Police. Mostly the convicts were pardoned very quickly. Spain is always convicted by the European Court of Justice for Human Rights because torture does not investigate, not even in the case of journalists.
Tortopers had to finally have to be recognized by the Basque government, is also required. The obligations that the government has placed in this framework also lake the sacrificing law adopted in 2016, which is blocked by the Spanish Festival Court. About this law, the torture victims of the death squadons or by police should be recognized, whereas the Spanish government has something.
"Between horrors and incubality"
The antifolter committee of the Council of Europe (CPT), which reveals torture trap again and again in spontaneous visits and sometimes publishes against the will Spain’s reports, has buried the efforts in the Basque Country. Jeroen Schokkenbroek, CPT Executive Secretar, speaks of one "serious work", which had been made in the Basque Country. "It is important to investigate what happened to accept the happened things to get back."
The now again in Germany Basque torture victim Tomas Elgorriaga explains opposite Telepolis that it "already amazing enough" be that a European bourgeois government has commissioned a report on torture in its own country – current and nearby past -". That this scientific study could actually be carried out and was allowed to be published, had almost suspicious him. "If you are reading the very factual and Uno-recognized investigation report as a serios recognized, you change between horrors and incubality: 54 years is in just three out of four Basque provinces with 2.7 million. Inhabitants on average every 4.7 days a person has been tortured. 54 years, uninterrupted!"
These numbers only presented the stringent retrievable trap. "The real numbers succeed the researchers for funf times as high. Because from the Franco time, only a few data has been incorporated. Which also means that the gross majority of the detected torture trap go to the account of the Spanish ‘democracy’. On the Federal Republic, the daily 6 were hardened, for 50 years. In the middle of Europe."
The report reads like a compromise in which the scientists strictly avoid any potential doubt about their creditancy by taking considerably documented torture trap considerable. "However, this may act insulting offensive, but provides an important progress both on the path of the upgraded clearance of repression experiencies in the fight against the Basque endeavor after self-determination, as well as to support the demands for a democratization of political and social conditions in Spanish State and throughout Europe."
He hopes that this report excludes a policy debate on the state and democracy in Europe "Only then will those tortured in the Basque Country as well as all other and art victims of state violence be satisfied."