Catalan Government Sends Reports to the UN, Denouncing the Violation of Fundamental Rights by Spain

The Catalan government’s Directorate-General for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (DGDH), which is integrated into the Ministry for Equality and Feminism, has sent two reports to the UN, denouncing the violation of fundamental rights by Spain.

The reports defend the “need to modify the Court of Auditors and the law on sedition in Spain to protect the right to protest, and preserve the freedom of expression, political participation, and the principle of effective judicial protection.”

One document states that the Court of Auditors is extremely limited in its functions and that “its members’ election system is biased and its jurisdictional function, detached from ordinary justice.” The other document argues that the current concept of sedition in the Penal Code opens the door to criminalizing the exercise of fundamental rights and, after comparing sedition regulations in 17 countries, concludes that “the Spanish definition has no counterparts in the European context and obeys criteria of criminalization and punishment out of date with respect to European standards.”

Both documents have been delivered to the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Clément Nyaletsossi Voule, with the aim of incorporating the report into the one she will present to the Human Rights Council to address the need to increase protection of peaceful protests during crisis situations.