Iñaki de Juana Chaos

international | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Friday November 28, 2008 18:01 by Peter

Who is this man?

I find it really fascinating that an individual that not so long ago embraced the cause for spanish patriotism has become a simbol of basque resistance and receives support from Sinn Fein.

Life is a misterious thing. A man who is making the headlines on irish press is walking in the streets of Belfast making everybody believe at home and abroad that he is a basque freedom fighter and little attention or none is given to his background.

I do not doubt that Iñaki de Juana believes the cause he has embraced but I cannot deny that it is amazing how so long ago he used to embrace just the opposite cause.

I will try to explain myself. Imagine a member from a UVF supporter, joins the northern Irish police, then he dissapears and soon he appears again as an IRA activist and becomes the chief of the band as he puts the deadliest bombs at the worst places.

Iñaki de Juana Chaos would be his basque version. Ignacio de Juana Chaos as he was baptised was born in the Basque Country, his father was a spanish doctor born in Burgos and a pro franco military who married a woman born in Tetuan, at the time a Spanish colony in Morroco. His dad joined the franco side, and later on in 1943 he joined the Spanish falange, social fascist group. Falange members used to walk with blue shirts and terrorise population. They took positions as school teachers and imposed their version of history and banned basque language in schools. His mum was a daughter of a spanish military in Spanish occupied territory in Morocco.

In 1977 De Juana 18 years after ETA had been founded, he was recruited for the compulsary Spanish Military Service and then he got awarded a medal as he served as a voluntary to help people from a big fire that happened there.

After the military service he joined the Basque Police and then he dissappeared, went to france and came back with loads of explosives he and other members of ETA placed around killing those they targeted and also those passing by.

Then the rest of the story is well known.

Surprisingly another member of ETA who shared a lot of time with Iñaki de Juana chaos in the same comando, when in prison did the opposite trip, Juan Manuel Soares Gamboa, bettrayed ETA and condemned its' trajectory and then stood as a witness against some of De Juana's trials.

All this makes me think about the moral integrity of ETA and those who join it. Since it seems only necessary to be good at the armed struggle you can just receive support worldwide. And what is worse, at home without checking certain parameters.

De Juana, after so much time has asked in prison for lessons to improve his writting style, and when he has written he has lost no time in calling those who disagree with him fascists, but has taken not one single second to learn basque. Is not that curious? Then he can tell us that when he was at school he was not allowed to speak it, but sorry we already know that his parents' friends were backing the censorship of the language with great enthousiasm.

Believe me if all freedom fighters are like this, I don't really know which kind of freedom will we ever achieve in the Basque Country. Ireland has gone through a long, difficult and delicate process do not let yourselves contaminate.

Basque Left Wing Nationalist