Segi Arrests

In the early hours of Tuesday 24 November 2009, 34 Basque pro-Independence political activists were arrested and 92 properties were searched in an operation involving 650 Spanish policemen. The police tried to arrest another seven youths but they weren’t in their homes.

Last week the anti-repression organization Askatasuna warned that they believed a police operation was imminent in the Basque Country. Then, in the early hours of Tuesday 24, 34 well known social, political and cultural young activists were arrested in what was the largest police operation in decades. They were held incommunicado despite the recent recommendations of the United Nations Committee Against Torture.

All of them have been accused of being members of the national and county-level leadership of the pro-independence left-wing youth organization Segi which was banned in 2005.

Just ten days ago the Basque pro-Independence Left held a press conference where 110 prominent members launched new proposals to resolve the conflict. In a historical move they committed to a "peaceful and democratic political process" (full declaration in English here: ). The declaration was welcomed by Basque nationalist and progressive forces and criminalized by the pro-Spanish parties and media. The pro-Independence Left has said these attacks only confirm the Spanish state's weakness and its fear of politics. According to the pro-Independence Left it's in the political arena where the state is weakest and that's where the confrontation has to be moved to. At the same time the Spanish state, with these arrests and others which might follow, intends on the one hand to prevent any change of strategy by the pro-Independence Left and, on the other, to weaken the engine of change.