Spanish Opposition Party (PP) facing death threat charges.

by iosaf Wed Jun 15, 2005 21:17

This case is more serious than it at first glance seems.
Any group who seek to articulate their political opinion or philosophy in public space are bound by the unseen contracts of civility.-
There are indeed rules, lots of them, and they are common to all civilised nations and states and are a cherished part of the ever expanding liberties of expression and association. As a protester who has "taken" to & "reclaimed" streets in many European cities, and whose advice has been sought on moblisations in non-European cities where the same "rules" do not often apply, I am very concerned at the way in which the PP and those who they represent have behaved, all the more, in the full knowledge that when they were "in power", protesters and demonstraters were often the arbitrary target of police or other state brutality. And in the bitter knowledge that surveliance and monitoring of protesters and those who exercised their rights to freedom of opinion and assembly often infringed the norms of a democratic state.

Today the lawyers of ERC brought the "Salamanca death threats" case to the court where it is being processed, in addition to those individuals who mounted and carried a banner, there is also one old man who carried a poster, there are two front bench politicians listed.
One is Zaplana the valencian PP answer to ZP, and the other is Angel Acebes the politician who more than any held the utterly false line that the March 11th massacre was the responsibility of eta. That was the PP plan, it seems, to place blame where society was used to see blame placed.

Also today saw another incident in the same town of Salamanca re-visited, last January 22nd the current minister of defence José Bono (perhaps the most outspokenly anti-eta of the ZP government if such distinctions may be made) was attacked during a walkabout. The judge has declared that the evidence proves that the members of the AVT (association of victims of terror) who attacked mr Bono did so with intent.

There is an underlying threat of violence it would therefore seem from all "popular" mobilisations of the PP, who perhaps for certain reasons think themselves to be "beyond" the rule of law, the state of rights which guarantees the peace.

It is thus time to reassure all spanish citizens that this is not the case, that if those of the left may not expect to demonstrate with impunity or fear of police retaliation, and if those of the left exercise restraint on the messages given by their banners then those of the right
must be "brought to heel". For very surely if one hair is harmed on the head of any leading figure of the left, be it spanish or catalan or basque, spokeswoman for terror victims or trade unionist, leading "gay" or "straight", we will all know this time -
"where the blame is to be placed".