|
PM: This is
People’s March calling. We want to know of the movement in the Basque country.
We would like to know of the past and present of the national movement of the
Basque people. What is its origin, what is the history of the Basque people so
that our people, who are unacquainted with this national movement in the heart
of Europe, might get a glimpse? Most of the people here think that the national
question is resolved in Europe. But time to time some reports of the Basque
national liberation struggle and that of the Irish national movement do come,
but we see that as far as the national liberation struggle of the Basque people
is concerned the people know very little. So, please let our readers understand
about your people and appreciate their struggle.
Comrade Walter:
Well! The first thing we have to say every time is that the people of the Basque
country, the Basque people, we call them Euskalerrio, the Basque land.
Euskalerria, is a land where the people speak the Basque language. And this is
important. It exists. It is important to say this, because all the media,
especially the French and Spanish mass media, insist in ignoring the existence
of the Basque people. The Spanish say you are Spanish people and the French say
you are French people. Yes. That is why they can accept all the documents, for
example of the United Nations, which speak of the self determination of the
people. Yes. Also the Spanish government and also the French Government accept
these documents of the UN and of the entire world because they simply say that
we don’t have any problem with the people inside their lands. We don’t exist for
them. We simply don’t exist. So, we insist and are saying that we do exist. And
we are a people. We live in a territory which is split up between two states,
the French republic and the Spanish monarchy. The northern part of our country
is in the French republic and the bigger part is in the Spanish monarchy. Also
the southern part is split off in two different administrative areas of the
Spanish government with different laws and different local governments. One of
our big problems is that we don’t have one territory. So, we insist every time
that we exist and we have a right to self-determination. Yes, this is the first
point, which is not negotiable. We will not negotiate on this right. When we
speak of the self-determination of the Basque people we speak of all the people
who live in the territory where the Basque language is spoken. Our language has
been repressed for very very long years; especially during the forty years of
the dictatorship of Franco it was absolutely forbidden to speak our language.
PM: That must
have been the worst period for you!
W: The worst
period for us, yes. It was forbidden the language to speak everywhere. It was
the young people, the students who spoke our language and were imprisoned. It is
almost like the Kurds in Kurdistan. It is the period of the dictatorship of
Franco when it was also forbidden to organize trade unions, to organize social
organization, sports. Everything was forbidden for us. All things were imposed
on us. When the dictator died and there was what they called the democratic
transition; we call it a democratic lie and the democratic lie of especially the
Spanish left. They failed because they accepted the monarchy, and the new
‘democratic’ consti-tution of the Spanish government, where one of the six
articles says that the Spanish military must guarantee the unity of Spain.
PM: The most
undemocratic thing in a democracy.
W: Yes. And this
makes it absolutely impossible only to think about self-determination.
PM: Right.
W: We insist on
two things: the right to self-determination and territoriality. Territoriality
means that all the people who live there must have this right to decide by
themselves. And it applies to all the French people and all the Spanish people
who have immigrated here since all these years. There were forced immigrations
under Franco, for example. And then more subtle immigration because of certain
laws and certain possibilities to have jobs there by the Spanish administration
and the French administration. In the French part, for example they reversed the
process to root out a lot of Basque people form our country; because of economic
reasons they were forced to troop outward so that more than, I think, sixty
percent of the Basque people that live in the north are outside of our country.
They sold a lot of land to tourists in the north part of our country in the
tourist areas. Yes. In spite of this in the south part, especially under the
so-called socialist government of Felipe Gonzales, they made a law of counter
insurgency because they made an alliance especially with the oligarchy. Then
they destroyed all the industrial network of our heavy industry which was
working very well in the Basque land. They destroyed it and shifted it to Madrid
and Valencia and other towns. So this resulted in a lot of people being without
work. Yet they are unable to extinguish the Basque liberation movement, the
Basque national social liberation movement. They used, what we call, the dirty
war of state terrorism. They killed about thirty-nine of our persons, either
directly by policemen, or by certain criminals with money to carry out this
task.
PM: Contract
killings?
W: Yes. About
thirty nine persons were murdered in this way by the state, by the Spanish
socialist government. We must say it is social democratic and, I think, in
certain ways worse than the rightist parties. Because of its failure their in
this task, and in other things as well, and also their failure in controlling
the Basque land, the socialist party failed in gaining in the elections of ’97.
And power went to the party of Aznar. Now, in Spain, since ’97 the government is
run by Aznar. Now there is more repression, a little bit different repression.
PM: What sort
of?
W: Different
because they do some things that the socialist party was afraid to do. They have
destroyed absolutely the basic principles of democracy in Spain; that is the
separation of legal power, the executive power, and the legislative and the
judicial power. Now there is no difference between the church, the police and
the politician. They make common cause, common strategies so that the oppression
is very legal. For example, they made a law to illegalise a lot of the Basque
social organisations and the Basque parties. The Akatasuna party which
takes up institutional struggles, was illegalized about one and a half years ago
with this law. This law was made exclusively for that. That does not mean the
government will not use this law against other parties when they make them
angry, especially the left parties, the small left parties will be illegalised
with this law also. But it was made especially to illegalise the Basque left
parties. So, we have a situation in the Basque land where almost, I can say, the
whole movement is illegal and there is a lot of struggle. There are seven
hundred political prisoners. This is a lot. The whole population of Basque land
is less than three millions. So, seven hundred political prisoners is very high.
PM: If you
compare this with the Indian population you get 2,80,000 political prisoners
here. That is a very high figure definitely.
W: Yes. These
prisoners are tortured and hidden. In Spanish and French constitutions there is
dispersion politics. The Spanish and French constitutions say a prisoner must be
in a jail which is nearest to his family so that the family can regularly visit
him. The social relations of the prisoner with the family are not to be broken
down completely. But they violate their own laws. And they disperse all the
Basque prisoners in about ninety different jails all over the Spanish and French
territory, so that the families and the friends are forced to travel more than
seven hundred kilometers to visit a prisoner.
PM: Why are
they distributed so thinly?
W: They
distribute them to extinguish their identities, so that they cannot have
discussions. Seventy percent of all Basque prisoners are isolated. They cannot
speak to anybody but the jail walls and jail employees. This policy began when
the socialist party was in the government. Then the Basque nationalist right
hand party approved this. And well, it began in ’82-83. We are now in two
thousand and four. So, for over twenty years they have this policy; yet they
have not gained anything. Today the collective spirit of Basque political
prisoners is stronger than ever. They now have made it, don’t ask me how they
did it, but they did it. Really did it. They conducted discussions with all the
Basque prisoners and made it manifest with a new organization inside all these
jails.
PM: Fantastic!
Very good.
W: Yes. (Laughs).
And now we have this organization in jails. These prisoners, a lot of these
prisoners, are from armed organisations. Not all. A lot of them are from the
youth organisations. A lot are from our other social organisations. The media
that was closed, the directors of newspapers, the radios, that are inside the
jails and are a part of this collective of political prisoners. So not only the
[people from] armed organisations are in prison but also a lot of other people
are working in this liberation movement. They have not done anything violent.
Even we can say some people were against this armed strategy because they
thought, "well we have to try another strategy". And even these people
who had publicly for years opposed armed struggle — saying that, I think we
should do this in another way, that armed organisations should have ceasefire,
an absolute ceasefire, they should disappear etc. — even [They] are [now] in
jail, accused of being part of the armed organisations even though through years
they have opposed this strategy.
PM: Yes.
W: This is now
the situation in the jails. I must say that there are a lot of women also and
the women everywhere in the jails have more problems than the men, because, they
have, well, …sexual tortures and they have very very big problems to r[a]ise
their children. Yes.
PM: Does the
majority of the Basque people feel that without armed struggle and armed
revolution they cannot succeed in…
W: No. that is
not true. The majority… well, I think it will be better to make a little map, a
social map, of what we have in the Basque land, in Basque society. It is
important to say that in the Basque society all the people that live there,
except the Spanish and French policemen and the Spanish and French military and
the high [officials of] the governments of Spain and France, are not locals.
Basque society is a society that has even more than 40% immigration. 40% of the
people of this society have come from outside, especially from Spain and France.
The problem is that the Spanish people and the French people who come into the
Basque land don’t feel that they are immigrants because they say it is our
country. It is Spain or it is France, we are not immigrants. They think the
immigrants are the black people and the Latin American people from Columbia and
from Nicaragua. They say that these are the immigrants, we are not. But we say:
you are immigrants like the others. There is no difference. You have the same
rights. But we want them because they are mostly from the working class. So,we
want to have a good politics relations withthem; with all the immigrants. They
can be Chinese or they can be from Andalusia, from Spain, or from Madrid. It
does not matter. We can make a good politics with them and find solutions to the
problems of immigration. We want to have immigration with the integration into
the Basque society but not assimilation. Because we don’t want that you forget
your roots. You must have your culture, you must have your language, you must
have all what is yours. But you must integrate this with the Basque society. You
must also be Basque and you can be Basque. You can learn the Basque
language and you can mingle with us, with our culture and you must not forget
your’s. It does not matter if you are from Spain, if you are French, if you are
from Columbia, from China, from Morocco, from Algeria, from anywhere. We know it
is a problem, it is very difficult all over the whole world to integrate without
assimilation without extinguishing the other part, but it is possible. It is for
this that we have to recite our politics, our immigration politics. But we
can’t, because the decision of all these politics is either in Madrid or Paris.
So we ask them too, help us to get independence, to get our right to decide
things and toge-ther we will decide how we can solve it best.
And I think that is
an example, the only example that demonstrates that the Basque people are not
racial. There is, however, a campaign that the Basque are involved in ethnic
cleansing.
PM: There is a
campaign going on?
W: There is a
campaign in the Spanish newspapers and radio. The Spanish intellectuals say
this. That is absolutely not true. The thing we cannot understand, I can’t
understand, why the lefts in Spain, the lefts in France, will make a common
cause to support the politics of the right, of the so-called socialists of
Spain, with their politics against the Basque land. So, we do know that the left
in Spain, the left in France is not our enemy. Our enemy is capitalism,
imperialism, also the imperialism we call it from Spain, from Madrid and from
Paris. We know that. But our problem, our real problem is the left of Spain, the
left of France that supports the right’s politics, when Basque politics is
concerned.
They support the
right’s politics. They speak about self-determination but, in practice they go
against it.
PM: We too
have such kind of people who say: right to self determination is okay, we
support that right but as far as the North-Eastern peoples and the Kashmiri
people are concerned we won’t give them independence. They too call themselves
Socialists and Marxists!
W: Yes. A similar
problem.
PM: Of course.
W: That is one
thing. I think it is a good example. We can also speak of the economic and
financial campaign in the last years that the media in Spain, all the great
intellectuals of the Spanish left and right are writing and saying — that an
independent Basque country is not viable economically. This is absolutely false.
And I will state it very simply and clearly.
The Basque economy is
over and above the average of Europe. So we have a good functioning economy, the
capitalistic economy, I must say this. In their own terms it is a good
functioning industry and economy. The average Basque financial income is over
the average of Europe, and even Spain. So, Spain cannot be European without the
Basque and Catalonian industry and economy. That is the first thing. The second
thing is, with taxes and others, I don’t know how it is in English, the Basques
pay, every year, six thousand millions of Euro, more or less dollars, to Madrid
which doesn’t come back. If we are independent with this money we can do
miracles.
PM: Given that
there is no capitalism!
W: Yes. All the
negotiations with Brussels regarding the Basque, that is with the European
Union, is done by the Spaniards at Madrid and the Frenchmen at Paris. We cannot
speak directly; we cannot negotiate directly, with Europe. They will do all
negotiations, concentrating every time more and more richness in Madrid, and
making all the negotiations with Europe to get the Basque people and also
Catalonians poorer and poorer and poorer. Only for their own interests in
Madrid. If we are indepe-ndent we will be making our own negotia-tions with
Europe and we will be, I think much better off. I know that these negotiat-ions
are capitalistic because Europe is capitalist. We don’t need to give away six
thousand millions of Euros every year and especially we can regain all the
industries that have been extinguished and transpor-ted to other towns. We can
regain this because this was not so extensive in the last years; yet it all goes
to the big money making industries and banks of Madrid.
What they have done
is the absolute destruction of Basque industry and they did not totally succeed
in it. More than a hundred years ago the Basque people were mainly fishermen.
But with the industrial revolution we built up heavy industry to make especially
ships and other things with metals. And the industries were destroyed by the
socialist party of Spain. Now, the Basque oligarch tries to build up industry of
technology, the vanguard technology. In spite of all this, the industry of
Basque is continues.
PM: Let us get
back to the point of armed struggle once again. Would you please tell us as to
how the Basque people can achieve their liberation? Whether it will be through
the armed struggle or by only putting pressure on the Madrid government through
peaceful struggles?
W: We have to say
something. We had to change our strategy in 1995. We have changed it basically
because until 95 our strategy was of national and social liberation and the main
effort we did for the society and for the movement of the people was to press
the Spanish and French governments, especially the Spanish government, to make
negotiations between the armed organisations and themselves, to gain the right
of self determination. But we saw there were a lot of problems with this
strategy. The people would get tired in this. This was one reason. The other
reason was that all the processes in Latin America failed. Because there, a lot
of Guerra got into the democratic processes and peace processes like in
Guatemala, like in El Salvador, like in Columbia and we saw the results of these
negotiations and the results were very bad. Really very very bad. We analysed
why. We saw that it is not possible that a Guerra, that an armed organisation,
makes its negotiation because the governments and oligarchies; the capitalists
never will respect the results of these negotiations. They violate every time
all the agreements. In the case of Spain and France it will be the same. So, we
said there is no other power in the world anymore that can obligate the Spanish
Government not to violate the agreements. Because, earlier there was a power,
because the Soviet Union, we can say, that could obligate the government not to
violate the agreements. The Soviet Union broke down and that is not anymore
possible. And we also saw that we must give our people something more than only
the illusions to succeed in these negotiations and only afterwards build our
political projects. This will be too far away and we will lose our people in
this struggle when we say first the negotiations and then construction. So, we
changed the strategy. Okay! national social liberation is good, and continued,
the struggle against repression continued the struggle against imperialism and
colonialism continued — but also build from now our own independent and our own
projects. That means we build up new national institution from the basis from
now itself.
PM: What kind
of national institution?
W: An institution
that has not borders imposed from France and from Spain. It is an institution
not legal but an institution that is also not illegal because that has not any
borders inside, for all people in the Basque land. And this will be the basis of
a beginning of a new Basque Parliament. We call it an assembly of the city
councillors. We say all the city councillors that were democratically elected,
voted in different elections, Spanish and French elections. We don’t accept
these elections, but well, as you were elected in these elections you are
accepted in this assembly, form part of this assembly and this is the beginning
of this new institution. If we consider all the elected city councillors we are
the second force. We are not the first force. We cannot do many things but we
can do a lot. And we said, "Good! we build our base." We also built up
our organisations in the same way. Our organisations from all over the country
must come together and unify so that there are not two international solidarity
organisations; one in the north and one in the south. Not two but one. We made
only one. And then a project of a new university, a Basque university, our own
laws, a form of functioning. And so on, de facto we build up our own society. If
we build up such a society the people themselves would see what they are
struggling for. Not for negotiations, not for something nobody knows what it is;
something abstract. No, you see, tactically, you are struggling to get the right
to self determination. To get realized all these things really, you are
progressing in that direction. That we want self determination. Not for
something utopia, but for what we are already building. So the people see this,
and they continue struggling. And on the other hand, the Spanish and the French
governments see inside their states the reality and must destroy the reality
that is developing. Now, they not only say that the Basque people want to
destroy Spain and they are terrorists. No, if they must all be the terrorists
they must destroy this project, this assembly, this university, these unified
organisations. And they did that. They destroyed and illegalized the assembly of
councillors, they illegalized the party and they illegalized the youth
organisation, several organisations of social movements, they closed newspapers,
radios, all because of this. That is total repression. With the same
justification they say, ‘well, you want to build up a new country as organized
armed organisations’. The terrorists too want to build up a new country. You
have the same aim. You are the same and so you are a part of it. And that is the
legal reason to put all these people in jail. That is Spanish legality!! Yes, it
is legally absolutely absurd.
PM: In fact,
that was a peaceful method to achieve independence that failed.
W: I don’t think
it failed.
PM: then what?
W: We are not
finished. We are continuing. We are continuing, no doubt, with a lot of
problems, which are much harder to work to deal with. But we think this is the
right way. And the Spanish repression proved that this is the right way. If it
was not right, if it would fail, there would not be so much repression. Because
the repression in Europe is something a little bit foolish. Like, all over, it
is not look good that a government has seven hundred political prisoners that
are struggling against repression and so on. And torture and illegalization of a
party is not very acceptable. They don’t see it but they must do it because we
must not regain independence and if we regain independence then the Basque
oligarchy will no more get the support of the Spanish oligarchy. And then we are
not the second force in the country, we are the first force. And then we can
make our socialist project legally and democratically and peacefully.
PM: In your
whole of presentation you have talked about the socialist or the traditional
left of Spanish society that have betrayed the national question in Europe as
well as in the whole world as such. And in the Basque country we could not have
expected better from them. The right to self-determination which these forces
used to claim and uphold have now abandoned that principle practically and even
theoretically. Let us approached this point in a different way. Let us suppose
that the socialist party had not gone that way. Had it remained a revolutionary
organisation and really had granted right to self determination to the Basque
people the struggling people of Basque country and the working class of Spain
and France would have united in a single struggle for the liberations of the
nationalities and for the nations and the working class. That would have been
the best solution and I think that would have been the only solution. Presently
it is not there now. So, I think that one task is left for the Spanish and
French working class to re-establish their revolutionary credentials and to
aggress upon a path that leads to this type of liberation.
W: Yes, I think,
as I have said earlier, our great problem is the Spanish and French left. We
know that we must continue to struggle along with them but we cannot. They are
not ready for this. And so, we will continue our efforts on this side, we will
try to work more internationally to find allies in the left in Europe, of the
European peoples and of the world to clear this hurdle. The Spanish and the
French left need to be pressured from the outside. We cannot pressurise them
because what we say is absolutely blocked by the argument, "you are little
bourgeois nationalist and all nationalism is bad, is fascism, we are the real
left, you are not left, you are making a bad thing because you want a state".
We can say that yes, we actually want a state, we are concerned with ourselves,
so that we are a state in Europe so that we can negotiate, decide by ourselves,
have our own decisions in our own country. This is only possible in the actual
situation of a state but that does not mean that we want to be a state. That
only means that it is necessary until we get this left alliance with the working
class in Spain and with the working class in France, and with other countries,
with other peoples. And all the big powers of Europe and the people must have
this self-determination and use this right, respect this right to decide their
own things. Then we will have a Europe of the peoples. The unity of the peoples
must have people who decide their own things and it would be very different of
the Europe of the states that we have now. And it is also very different of the
Europe of economic regions. That is the other model for Europe from especially
the progressive capitalists, that is, from the so-called socialists and of the
rightwing Basque nationalists. They want a Europe of the economic regions and
economic region means they will destroy the cultural tradi-tions but only keep
the economics. And different oligarchies will dominate different regions. This
we don’t want but we have now. We want a Europe of the Peoples.
PM: That means
that the left has to be revolutionary. It is not there but it should be. That is
a big problem in the whole of Europe. Going by the Yugoslavian experience their
liberation struggle did not lead to the emancipation of the people. There is no
change in the system.
W: That is a
problem with nationalism. The right uses nationalism as an instrument for their
own interests. So, the Germans have used their nationalism to create a situation
in Yugoslavia that we know was war and suffering all-over, on the one hand. On
the other they created this. It was much easier and without so much suffering
but without gaining money from this, without destroying all this part when the
people themselves struggle to get their right of self-determination inside
Yugoslavia as they decide — without Germany, without France, without all these
other imperialistic or super-imperialists… I think a lot of people, a lot of
organisations, a lot of the people of the left in Europe does not understand
exactly this that you cannot be internationalist without being nationalist. This
is the thing that very very many people of the left do not understand or they
understand wrong because they have other experiences. We have the experience and
we are absolutely convinced that you cannot be internationalist without being
nationalist. But being nationalist does not mean to be right, it means in
reality if you are real nationalist and real internationalist to be left you
cannot be right. It is impossible to be nationalist and internationalist and
being on the right. It is impossible. You cannot be nationalist and on the
right. It causes a lot of suffering.
PM: This is
sufficient to introduce the Basque national struggle to our people. I hope that
in future whenever you launch a big struggle against reactionary Spanish
bourgeoisie, the French and Spanish imperialist bourgeoisie please just bring
that to our notice or you just send the material to our paper and we will be
happy to publish that in our paper.
W: I will send
you information and what happens in our country.
PM: Through our
paper we send you warm revolutionary greetings to the struggling people of your
country that the Basque people will achieve the liberation of their country and
advance towards their emancipation.
W: We will. I
don’t know how much time it will take.
PM: We support
you and we are in solidarity with you.
W: I hope to
learn a lot of this staying here in India. I think we will bring back to our
Basque country a lot of information, the problems, the proposals and the
projects you have here in India to solve the conflict and to make a real new
society and a new revolution.
PM: We, on behalf
of the revolutionary people of India, greet the people of Basque country with
revolutionary greetings and wish them success.
W: We will have a
beautiful bridge between India and Euskalerria. Thank you.
|
