The Appalling Living Conditions of the Catalan Political Prisoners Limits their Right to Defense in the Ongoing Independence Trial

After nearly a month of the Independence Trial of the Catalan political prisoners, the bias in favor of the accusation shown by the court and the extreme living conditions of the prisoners is worrying the international community and the prisoners’ families, who believe their right to a proper defense has been violated. 

The longest session so far was when Josep Rull, Dolors Bassa, Meritxell Borràs, and Carles Mundó declared before the Spanish Supreme Court. It began at 10am and ended at 9.30pm, a long marathon of a session that seriously affected the prisoners, who ended it exhausted, which could violate their right to a defense.

The prisoners have a strict schedule; they are woken up at 6am by prison officials. On their days of trial, they are directly transferred by Spanish Civil Guard officers to the Spanish Supreme Court – without shower or breakfast time – in a trip that usually takes 45 minutes. Then the Spanish National police take custody of them, and the prisoners are sent to a room where they have to wait for over 30 minutes until the trial session begins. After the day-long trial session, they are sent back to their respective prisons in Madrid.

According to the families of the Catalan political prisoners and their lawyers, the worst part is the return to prison. When they get back their dinner is already cold, and they don’t have the means of warming it. After a quick dinner, they go straight to bed because it is already late and the next day they will have to wake up at six and face another long trial session, which tends to end in the evening.

This exhausting rhythm after nearly a month of trial is severely affecting the political prisoners, who on occasions only get 4 four hours sleep per night. In addition, they don’t have the possibility to prepare their defense with their lawyers after each session because they are directly transferred to prison, have dinner, go to their cells and prepare for the next day, get some sleep, and then face a new trial session.

At weekends however, they do have the possibility of meeting with their lawyers and receiving some visits. On some occasions, their families can also have communication with them at the Supreme Court for 10 minutes at the end of the session. 

Last week Jordi Cuixart’s defense team filed a formal protest before the court to be told in advance the complete calendar of sessions, to be able to prepare for the interrogations. In addition, the defense highlighted that the isolation of the prisoners also limits their freedom of communication with their clients and impedes their ability to prepare for the trial properly.

Upcoming Protests against the Ongoing Trial of the Catalan Political Prisoners and Leaders over the 2017 Independence Referendum

February 16: Unitary Mass Demonstration in Barcelona

The first major event will be held in Barcelona on Wednesday, February 16,  four days after the start of the trial. The march will start at 5 pm at Spain Square and will follow the Gran Via to University Square. The organizers expect massive attendance, with numbers reaching historic levels. In order to guarantee a massive attendance, the ANC, Òmnium and other organizations will offer bus trips across Catalonia to anyone who wants to attend the demonstration.

February 21: General Strike

The organizers expect to be able to paralyze the whole country and this could also be the beginning of major permanent protests, which could paralyze the country indefinitely until the Catalan Republic is implemented and the Catalan political prisoners are released. The Catalan trade Union Intersindical -CSC has officially called for this strike, though it has the support of all pro-independence and some federal parties and organizations. According to the law, strikes for political purposes are illegal. For this reason, the Intersindical -CSC maintains that the strike is strictly for reasons related to labor: to protest against the labor reform of 2012, which will have its seventh anniversary on February 10; to claim a minimum salary of 1,200 euros per month; and to recover the social laws of the Parliament of Catalonia suspended by the Spanish Constitutional Court.

March 16: Unitary Demonstration in Madrid

 One month after the unitary demonstration in Barcelona, another will take place in Madrid. So, on March 16, independentists and some federalists will be mobilized in the same city where the former Catalan government is going to be judged over the 2017 independence referendum. The demonstration will start at 6 pm; the route has not yet been announced.

 Around the world

 These are just the main rallies in Spain. The pro-independence organization ANC’s international branches are also planning almost 30 protests in different European countries and even one in the US on February 12th, the day the trial against the Catalan political prisoners and leaders will begin.

 

 

 

Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez’s Budget For Catalonia Violates the Third Additional Provision of the Statute of Catalonia

Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez won’t fulfill his promise to invest in Catalonia in proportion to its economic importance,  a clear violation of the current legislation. His need to get the support of pro-independence parties for the approval of the Spanish Budget has not been sufficient for him to comply with the current law.

The Sánchez administration’s budget includes 2,051.38 million euros for Catalonia,  representing 16.8 % of investments throughout the State, far from the 19.2% of Catalan GDP. This comes after the Minister for Finance María Jesús Montero had announced that the Spanish government would comply with the third additional provision of the Statute of Catalonia, which states that Spanish investments in infrastructure must be equivalent to the size of the Catalan economy.

The Spanish Constitutional Court ruled out the obligation to comply with the aforementioned provision in 2010. Nevertheless, the Spanish government had vowed to comply with it in an attempt to get the support of Catalan pro-independence parties for the approval of the 2019 Spanish State General Budget. A goal that now seems to be impossible.

According to the Spanish government, their budget “complies with the Statute of Catalonia.” In fact, at 2 million euros – 90% for infrastructure – it is necessary to add an additional 200 million that is also allocated to Catalonia in compliance with a ruling of the Supreme Court of 2017 referring to the 2008 budget.  The high court considered that the money should have been included in the accounts of that year because they were already committed and forced the State to pay them.

ERC and PDeCAT made clear earlier last week their absolute opposition to the budget presented by the Spanish government last Friday, although both parties are still open to negotiating it. Apart from an increase on the budget for Catalonia, PDeCAT and ERC also demand a political solution for the right to self-determination of Catalonia and the release of the Catalan political prisoners in exchange for supporting the Spanish Budget.

Last week, exiled President Puigdemont set his own conditions for the approval of the budget: the creation of a dialogue table on the right to self-determination supervised by independent observers. Puigdemont announced his proposal publically after proposing it to the senior leadership of his PDeCAT party, which met with him in Waterloo, Belgium.”There are not today the conditions either for processing or for passing it,” he warned.

President Puigdemont: “In the current circumstances, the budget cannot be approved. We’ve enabled Mr. Sánchez to talk about a budget, but despite the calls and constant gestures, today, Pedro Sánchez’s government, with regard to the political conflict in Catalonia, has exactly the same policy as Rajoy’s government.”

Earlier last week, the “Socialist” government refused President Puigdemont’s proposal on the creation of a dialogue table on self-determination with international observers as well as a solution for the Catalan political prisoners.

Unless there are last-minute changes in the negotiations between the Spanish government and pro-independence parties, the 2019 Spanish General State Budget will be rejected by the Congress, leading to a more than probable snap election, which could radically change the current political panorama.

 

 

Over a Million Demonstrators Demand the Implementation of the Catalan Republic

Over a million demonstrators have flooded Barcelona’s streets to demand the implementation of the Catalan Republic and the immediate release of all Catalan political prisoners, according to figures provided by the police.

People of all ages were seen in the protest, many of whom were wearing flags for independence, banners calling for the freedom of political prisoners, and T-shirts with the slogan: “We make a republic.” 

The atmosphere was festive. This is the seventh consecutive mass pro-independence demonstration held in Catalonia on September 11th, becoming the only country in the world that has been able to mobilize such a large number of people year after year. 

VIDEO: https://www.patreon.com/posts/21357281

 

The Leader of the Spanish Ultra Nationalist Ciudadanos Party in Catalonia, Ines Arrimadas, Justifies and Promotes Attacks against pro-Independence Supporters

The leader of the Spanish ultra nationalist Ciudadanos party in Catalonia, Ines Arrimadas, accused the Catalan government on Sunday of being responsible for recent aggressions against people who wear yellow ribbons.

“The Catalan government should accept that yellow ribbons don’t represent all the Catalans,” Arrimadas said.

Arrimadas avoided condemning such aggressions, and instead, called on the Catalan government to maintain institutional neutrality by removing yellow ribbons from governmental buildings. She believes that everybody is free to wear yellow ribbons on their jackets or use other types of symbology at home, but never in institutions because according to her, yellow ribbons are comparable to symbols like the “swastika” used by the Nazis.

“We’re worried about the social fracture and these acts of ‘violence’ can happen. We have been the first party to say that we must discuss how to recover peaceful coexistence and reconciliation among Catalans.” Asked if the Catalan political parties should do self-criticism, she said that C’s has proposed a plenary session to discuss the Catalan conflict and the return to Spanish constitutional legality. “We want everyone to participate, it will mean that the social fracture worries the rest of political parties.

In this way, Arrimadas avoided condemning the recent fascist attacks against peaceful pro-independence supporters. In the last few weeks, Arrimadas and her political party have been accused of endorsing these kinds of violent attacks against innocents and some of their members have been seen in nocturnal squads removing yellow ribbons from the streets in numerous cities across Catalonia.

Since Pedro Sánchez (PSOE) became the new Spanish prime minister, following a successful motion of no-confidence against the then Prime Minister Rajoy on June 2nd, C’s appears to have hardened its position against pro-independence supporters, probably expecting to recover the big social support that they once had, and have lost in hardly a week.

A few days before the motion took place, C’s was leading all the polls for new Spanish elections, reaching 28,6% of the votes against 20% for the PSOE. However, with Pedro Sánchez (PSOE) as prime minister, the tables have been turned with C’s losing nearly 8% of their support, becoming the third party in Parliament with only 21,1% of votes, behind the PP and the PSOE who went on to win the elections with 28,8% of the votes.

With those “awful” projections, C’s appears to have launched an anti-Catalan campaign aimed at getting support from traditional PP supporters. In past elections, an anti-Catalan discourse gained millions of new voters and the victory to the PP.

Hence, it is expected that C’s will continue making attacks against pro-independence supporters until the next elections take place in 2020. Chaos and an escalation in the conflict between Spain and Catalonia may give them a chance of winning the elections and becoming the leading party in Spain.

Talks to Form a New Government in Catalonia Restart

The negotiations halted on Wednesday due to disagreements about Puigdemont’s role in the new executive. While JxCat contends that Puigdemont must be able to control the Catalan government from Brussels, ERC argues that it would lead to a confrontation with the Spanish government that they want to prevent by any means. The rest of the negotiation topics are already very advanced.

Both parties agree on the creation of two governments: a provisional one in Belgium led by Puigdemont that is aimed at internationalizing the Catalan cause, and the another one in Barcelona led by someone else and aimed at starting a constituent process to create the new Catalan Constitution. In addition, ERC has proposed to implement measures to grow social support for independence, which would allow the new administration to take unilateral steps to confront Spain in the future.

 

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Catalonia Faces its most Important Democratic Elections

Tomorrow, Catalonia will hold crucial general elections in the form of a binding referendum on independence. Two antagonistic blocks will face off; the unionists and the independentists. The unionists who sacked all the members of the prior Catalan government, jailed some of them, and imposed a direct rule over Catalonia, expect to win an absolute majority in order to “eradicate” the Catalan pro-independence movement. This may be accomplished by changing the educational system and exerting an absolute control over the Catalan police and public media agencies. On the other hand, the independentists, who unilaterally proclaimed the independence of Catalonia in the aftermath of the independence referendum held last October, also expect to get an absolute majority to restore the prior legitimate government and immediately implement the independence of Catalonia.

Given that the two blocks are irreconcilable, the results of these elections will have an enormous impact on people’s lives. And whatever the results may be, the tension mounted over the past few years will heighten to levels never seen before in a “democracy.”

According to the latest polls, the key to these elections will be the turnout. A turnout higher than 80% would benefit unionists parties since their voters tend to be demobilized. And a lower turnout could give independentists a clear absolute majority which would allow them to unilaterally take further actions towards the factual independence of Catalonia.

Most polls suggest that the turnout will be historical, around 85%. However, they obviate the fact that these elections will be held on a working day (Thursday) for the first time in Catalonia’s history. While some pundits believe that holding elections on a working day will encourage people to vote, others contend that there are tens of thousands of workers who aren’t living in their hometowns. And that the 4 hours work-permission to vote could be insufficient for most of them, which may lower the final turnout. All the doubts will be allayed in only one day, when the final results of the elections will be announced.

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Sixena Art Piece Removed from Museum of Lleida, Catalonia

On Monday, Spain’s militarized police looted 44 art pieces from the Museum of Lleida, where the latest chapter of a long legal dispute over the works between Aragón and Catalonia has been playing out.

The operation, which was orchestrated by the Spanish government, began in the dead of the night and ended at 2 pm. Hundreds of Spanish and Catalan police officers cordoned off numerous streets to prevent large protests in the area. Officers and art specialists from Spain loaded the 44 pieces of art onto a moving van. The Director of the Museum said that the specialists could have damaged some of the pieces due to the speed of the packing. A crowd of hundreds of peaceful protesters unsuccessfully attempted to halt the operation on numerous occasions. A few incidents were reported in nearby streets when the protesters tried to break the police barrage. The Catalan police responded by hitting all of them indiscriminately with their batons.

Last week, Spanish Culture Minister, Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, ordered the pieces to be moved from Catalonia to Aragón while Spain still controls the Catalan administration. A few days later, a Spanish judge, presumably one close to Spain’s Culture Minister, ruled that the art pieces could be removed beginning this Monday. He also authorized the use of force if it was necessary.

An official from the Catalan government, Àngels Solé, said: “This is pure-plundering. They have the brute force, there are a lot of police officers, the people are afraid. According to Solé, “These works were legally bought.”

 

 

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Poor Media Coverage of the Barcelona Terror Attack

On Thursday, CNN, Fox News, ABC News, BBC, CBS, The Guardian, and Telecinco’ coverage of the terror attack in Barcelona, in which fourteen people died and a hundred were injured after a van plowed into crowds of tourists in Las Ramblas, appeared to be inaccurate and harmful to the victims.

CBS News, CNN, and FOX News were the first to broadcast videos of the victims bleeding to death, causing trauma for families who discovered through TV that their loved ones had died. These networks also spread falsehoods such as that there was a hostage situation in a restaurant and that numerous fugitive terrorists were carrying long-range weapons through Barcelona’s streets, which caused terror and endangered the ongoing police operation.

Sadly, the same media had already misreported previous terror attacks such as the latest in London and Manchester. This time, however, thousands of people complained about what they saw as a ratings grab. However, the aforementioned media justified their misreporting, suggesting that in the aftermath of a terror attack it is normal that witnesses give them false information because they are confused.

All of this despite the fact that the Catalonian government had enabled numerous communication lines with the press from where it was giving regular updates about the ongoing investigation and the police operation in order to prevent the media misreporting. The government asserted that the only reliable information was what they were providing through the aforementioned channels.

It is also important to highlight that part of the media did a great job by verifying all the information before broadcasting it. The lack of seriousness of some ‘prestigious’ media has as its ultimate goal to grow their audiences regardless of the veracity and the possible negative consequences that their actions may have in the aftermath of a terror attack.

This sort of coverage has raised many questions about the implementation of new restraints on the media; for example, to pixel the faces of victims of terrorism in the aftermath of terror attacks in order to respect their families and prevent these episodes from happening again.

Indeed, if implemented a new regulation should always respect the freedom of the press in all cases. This would only be to protect the victims of terrorism and their families because they deserve to be the first to know how their loved ones are without watching their mutilated bodies on TV.

 

Is the UN a Useless Organization?

WWII was the real reason that the US, the UK, and the Soviet Union formed the original UN declaration. The document was signed by 26 countries in January 1942 and lead to the creation of the official UN in 1945, as a formal act of opposition to Germany, Italy, and Japan, the Axis Powers.

The United Nations, an international organization, was officially founded at the UN Conference on international organization in San Francisco, California in June 1945, replacing the failing League of Nations as an organization able to maintain international cooperation, peace, and security. However, regular disputes between its members with veto power such as the US and Russia, which have always been butting heads with one another, has led the UN to fail in solving most of the global conflicts, resulting in the deaths of millions of innocent people, including children worldwide.

SOME OF THE UN’S FAILURES SINCE ITS CREATION:

SYRIA

The UN has failed in solving the Syrian conflict due to the regular confrontation between the US and Russia which defend different solutions for the Syrian war. According to the UN, the war has already caused more than 500.000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of casualties and refugees. Last year, more than 200 civil society organizations from around the world issued a statement demanding a real solution for the Syrian conflict from the UN. However, it has not formally responded yet. Sherine Tadros, Head of Amnesty International’s UN Office, said:

“It is becoming clearer every day that the UN Security Council has failed the Syrian people. There have been almost half a million deaths, and each one is a stark rebuke of the Security Council, the supposed guardian of international peace and security, which has allowed a political deadlock to stand in the way of saving lives.”

“This is why we, along with 224 civil society organizations, are urgently calling on UN member states to take action and request an Emergency Special Session of the UN General Assembly to demand an end to all unlawful attacks in Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria. They must call for immediate and unhindered humanitarian access so that life-saving aid can reach all those in need.”

“UN member states can and should use all the diplomatic tools at their disposal to take action towards ending the atrocities in Syria – the inaction we have seen over the past five years is a shameful chapter in the history of the Security Council.”

YEMEN

The civil war in Yemen has already killed more than 12.000, mainly by the Saudi-led coalition, displacing millions and destroying most of the nation’s infrastructure. It has also left some 21 million people dependent on foreign aid to survive. Out of 27 million people in Yemen, 20 million are starving, including 400,000 children, and some 2.2 million are in need of urgent care.

The Saudi blockade of drinking water across the country has caused an outbreak of cholera that has already infected more than 300,000 Yemenis and killed 1,500 people, 55% of which were children. More than 600,000 people are expected to contract the disease before the end of the year. 

The UN is led by the US, which is a fierce ally of Saudi Arabia. This has blocked any agreement on solving the Yemeni conflict, stopping Saudi Arabia’s war crimes across the country and solving the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

RAPE AND CHILD SEX ABUSE

UN Peacekeepers were accused of raping and paying young girls for sex in Cambodia in 2005, Since then similar cases have also been found in Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and other places. The UN has yet to condemn these criminal acts in order to preserves its “high reputation” worldwide.

SREBRENICA

The war in Bosnia began in 1992 in an effort to separate Serbs from other ethnicities. In 1993, the UN named Srebrenica a safe zone and sent 400 soldiers from the Dutch United Nations Protect Force in order to protect civilians and refugees living in the city. In 1995, however, some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men were slaughtered by Serb forces. The UN Dutch commander did not order his troops to defend the innocent people against the Serbs. Instead, he was later pictured with the leader of the massacre, the Serb commander, Ratio Mladic in a celebration.

RWANDA GENOCIDE

In 1994, the UN which was on a mission in Rwanda failed to prevent the Hutus from killing almost a million people of the Tutsi minority. The conflict began in the capital Kigali when the Hutu power government and officials incited civilians to take up arms against the Tutsis. The conflict rapidly spread throughout the country and resulted in the slaughter of a million and caused more than 2 million refugees.

IRAQ OIL FOR FOOD PROGRAM

The UN began the Oil-for-Food program in 1996 to allow Iraq to sell oil to pay for food and other necessities for its population. However, numerous corrupt UN employees mismanaged the program for their own benefit. Saddam Hussein also earned some $1.7 billion through kickbacks and surcharges.

There is no doubt that the UN has sometimes succeeded, but it has always been useless as a peace-keeper due to the diversity of positions between its members. The UN was founded to maintain international cooperation, peace, and security. However, it has become a slow, ineffective, and corrupt organization unable to bring peace, cooperation, and assist millions of people and refugees suffering from wars worldwide. The UN has failed as the old League of Nations did, so the questions now are: Should the UN be reformed to become an effective organization able to bring peace worldwide? or should the UN disappear instead?