Solidarity With Basque Political Prisoners!

dublin | rights and freedoms | event notice Monday March 11, 2013 16:07 by Dublin Basque Solidarity - Dublin Irish Basque Solidarity Committee basquedublin at gmail dot com

NO TO LIFE SENTENCES FOR POLITICAL PRISONERS!

The week after the picket, the Court of Human rights in Strasbourg will hear the Spanish state's appeal against Strasbourg's judgement that Basque political prisoner Ines del Rio be released and that the Spanish state should pay her €30,000 in damages and foot the bill for her case. Ines Del Río was jailed in 1988 and should have been paroled in 2008 but is still in jail, the Spanish state wishing to extend her sentence until 2017.. The Spanish state changed their laws to extend the maximum prison time permitted and also made the law retroactive. It is being applied to many Basque political prisoners to turn their sentences into practically life sentences. Despite the unanimous Strasbourg ruling, she remains in jail awaiting the outcome of the Spanish state appeal.

The groups campaigning for the prisoners have called for solidarity demonstrations across Europe in the run-up to the case.

IN FEBRUARY THERE WERE 603 MALES AND FEMALES IN THE BASQUE POLITICAL PRISONERS' COLLECTIVE, disperse in prisons across the Spanish and French states, with some in foreign jails (mostly fighting extradition). This would be an amazing number in any society but for a nation of less than three million in population, it is astounding. It speaks of two things: the level of repression and the level of resistance.

The high number of prisoners ensures that there is hardly a Basque citizen who does not have personal knowledge of a political prisoners, whether he or she be in a relationship with the prisoner, a family member, a neighbour, a former workmate or co-student, a friend ... That, as well no doubt as the high politicisation of Basque society, is what ensures the huge numbers attending the annual prisoner solidarity demonstrations (such as the one each January in Bilbao, which this year saw more than 110,000 pack the streets).

SOLIDARITY! PICKET EU BUILDING, DAWSON STREET, D2, 2pm SATURDAY 16th March!