A WORLD OF HUMAN RIGHTS
  • Home
  • Migration & Trafficking
    • Refugees, Asylum seekers & Migrants
    • Human Trafficking & Slavery
  • Security, Peace & Justice
    • Death Penalty, Arbitrary Detention and Torture
    • International Criminal Justice
    • Rule of Law
    • Humanitarian crises
    • Human Rights Defenders
  • Children's rights
  • Civil Rights & Liberties
  • Economic, social & cultural rights
    • Food & Water
    • Sanitation
    • Adequate housing
    • Health
  • Sexual and reproductive health
  • Discrimination
    • Women, Girls & Gender equality
    • Race and national origin
    • Religion
    • Indigenous People
    • LGBTQ
    • Health & Disability
  • Environment
  • Business & Tax
    • Tax Justice & illicit financial flows
    • Business & Human Rights
  • Take action!
  • Free courses
  • About us
    • About our press review
    • Privacy Policy
  • Bibliography
  • Home
  • Migration & Trafficking
    • Refugees, Asylum seekers & Migrants
    • Human Trafficking & Slavery
  • Security, Peace & Justice
    • Death Penalty, Arbitrary Detention and Torture
    • International Criminal Justice
    • Rule of Law
    • Humanitarian crises
    • Human Rights Defenders
  • Children's rights
  • Civil Rights & Liberties
  • Economic, social & cultural rights
    • Food & Water
    • Sanitation
    • Adequate housing
    • Health
  • Sexual and reproductive health
  • Discrimination
    • Women, Girls & Gender equality
    • Race and national origin
    • Religion
    • Indigenous People
    • LGBTQ
    • Health & Disability
  • Environment
  • Business & Tax
    • Tax Justice & illicit financial flows
    • Business & Human Rights
  • Take action!
  • Free courses
  • About us
    • About our press review
    • Privacy Policy
  • Bibliography
A WORLD OF HUMAN RIGHTS
International Criminal Justice
Photo Credit: Philstar

Basque militants ETA surrender arms in end to decades of conflict

4/10/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
By Claude Canellas, Sonya Dowsett and Isla Binnie 


Basque militant group ETA effectively ended an armed separatist campaign after almost half a century on Saturday, leading French authorities to the sites where it says its caches of weapons, explosives and ammunition are hidden.

ETA, which killed more than 850 people in its attempt to carve out an independent state in northern Spain and southwest France, declared a ceasefire in 2011 but did not disarm.

Founded in 1959 out of anger among Basques at political and cultural repression under General Francisco Franco, ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna - Basque Country and Freedom) gained notoriety as one of Europe's most intractable separatist groups.

The Spanish government said ETA's handover of weapons in the French city of Bayonne was positive but insufficient and called on the group to formally dissolve and apologize to its victims.
ETA's disarmament ends an era of political violence in Western Europe, but comes as nationalism is stirring across the continent, with Scotland and the Spanish region of Catalonia seeking independence referendums, while Sinn Fein has urged a vote on taking Northern Ireland out of Britain. 

ETA said in a letter to the BBC earlier this week it had handed over its weapons and explosives to civilian go-betweens who would deliver them to authorities.

The mediators - known as "The Artisans of Peace" - passed authorities a list with the coordinates for eight sites where ETA had stored its weapons arsenal, their representative, Michel Tubiana, told reporters in Bayonne.

The caches contain 120 firearms, about 3 tonnes of explosives and several thousand rounds of ammunition, he said.

Security forces were now searching the sites to neutralize the explosives and secure the weapons, French Interior Minister Matthias Fekl said at a news conference in Paris. Police were photographed carrying out bags from sites around Bayonne.

A Spanish government source said Madrid did not believe the group would hand over all its arms, while Spain's state prosecutor has asked the High Court to examine those surrendered as possible murder weapons used in hundreds of unresolved cases.

ETA's disarmament entailed no impunity for their crimes and they should not expect any favorable treatment, the government said in a statement.

"The actions carried out today by the terrorist group are nothing more than the result of their definitive defeat," Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido told reporters in Madrid.

Arnaldo Otegi, leader of Basque pro-independence party EH Bildu who has served time in jail for his links with ETA, said in Bayonne that it was a day that would be welcomed by the great majority of Basques, although work was not finished.

"From today we will put on the table all the problems we still have as a society and a nation," he said, adding that the biggest issues were the around 300 ETA members still in Spanish and French prisons and the group's victims.

VIOLENT PAST 
ETA's first known victim was a secret police chief in San Sebastian in 1968 and its last a French policemen shot in 2010.

It chose not to disarm when it called its truce, but has been weakened in the past decade after hundreds of its members were arrested and weapons seized in joint Spanish and French operations.

Popular revulsion at the scale of violent attacks carried out by Islamic militants had also played a part, Paddy Woodworth, who has written in depth about ETA, said.

"It had ceased to be an attractive organization to join."

The group's first revolutionary gesture was to fly the banned 'ikurrina', the red and green Basque flag, before the campaign escalated in the 1960s into violence that was brutally reciprocated by the Franco regime.

In 1973, ETA targeted Franco's heir apparent Luis Carrero Blanco by digging a tunnel under the road that he drove down daily to attend Mass. They packed the tunnel with explosives and blasted Blanco's car over a five-storey building.

The assassination changed the course of Spanish history, as the removal of Franco's successor led to the exiled king reclaiming the throne and a shift to a constitutional monarchy.

Attacks including a 1987 car bomb at a Barcelona supermarket, which killed 21 including a pregnant woman and two children, horrified Spaniards and drew international outrage.

Gorka Landaburu, who lost his thumb and was left blind in one eye after an ETA letter bomb detonated in his home in 2001, welcomed the disarmament and said lessons had been learned.
"This must never happen again in our country," he said, standing by the sea in the Basque resort of San Sebastian. "I hope no one ever picks up pistols and bombs to defend an ideology ever again."

Published on Reuters on April 8, 2017.

0 Comments
    Picture

    Tweets by aworldofhr

    RSS Feed


    Categories

    All
    Accountability
    Afghanistan
    Aid Workers
    Arms Laydown
    Arms Sale
    Bahrain
    Balkan
    Boko Haram
    Britain
    Burundi
    Central African Republic
    Children
    Child Soldiers
    China
    Colombia
    Conflict-related Sexual Violence
    Crime Against Humanity
    Crimes Against Humanity
    Cultural Cleansing
    Cultural Heritage
    Darfur
    Democratic Republic Of Congo
    El Salvador
    ETA
    Extrajudicial Executions
    Extrajudicial Killings
    FARC
    Forced Displacement
    France
    Gaza
    Gender-based Violence
    Genocide
    Germain Katanga
    Germany
    Gun Control
    Humanitarian Aid Agencies
    Humanitarian Crisis
    Humanitarian Drones
    Human Rights Watch
    Impartiality Of The Judiciary
    Impunity
    Inter-American Commission On Human Rights (IACHR)
    International Bar Association
    International Criminal Court
    International Criminal Justice
    International Criminal Tribunal For The Former Yugoslavia
    ISIL
    Israel
    Ivory Coast
    Jean-Pierre Bemba
    Jordan
    Libya
    Mali
    Médecins Sans Frontières
    Myanmar
    Nigeria
    North Korea
    Omar Al-Bashir
    Palestine
    Persons With Disabilities
    Philippines
    Refugees
    Rodrigo Duterte
    Rohingya
    Rule Of Law
    Rwanda
    Save The Children
    Sexual Violence
    Simone Gbagbo
    South Africa
    Spain
    Sri Lanka
    Sudan
    Sweden
    Syria
    Thomas Lubanga
    UNESCO
    U.N. High Commissioner For Human Rights
    U.N. Human Rights Council
    U.N.I.C.E.F.
    Unlawful Killings
    Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)
    U.N. Security Council
    U.S.A
    Vaccines
    War Crimes
    War On Drugs
    Wartime Sexual Crimes
    World Health Organization
    Yemen


    Archives

    July 2018
    June 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    February 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014

Proudly powered by Weebly