The Basque History of the World - Mark Kurlansky [121]
The Spanish government has always seemed to be either unwilling or unable to distinguish among widely diverse Basque groups. But in fact everyone was starting to look alike. Few faces were seen. ETA commandos wore knitted ski masks to conceal their identity. Then, in the 1990s, pro-ETA demonstrators began wearing them too—perhaps to show solidarity with the commandos, perhaps because the police started videotaping demonstrations, perhaps because the rebels in the Chiapas region of Mexico had popularized ski masks as a revolutionary symbol. Guardia Civil and National Police also began wearing masks to protect themselves from being singled out for reprisals. The Ertzantza’s antiterrorist units adopted the same practice. Judges and court officials started wearing them too, for especially controversial sentencing.
An ETA commando. Ertzantza officers on the street. (Both courtesy of the photography archives of Egin, Hernani)
IN MARCH 1996, Felipe González’s Socialist Workers Party was defeated. Manuel Fraga’s Popular Alliance, originally an alliance of Francoist politicians, had changed its name to the Popular Party, the PP, and came to power with José María Aznar as prime minister. The PP, with its Francoist roots, had promised to take a harder line with the Basques than had the Socialists. In spite of muzzling the press, imprisoning thousands, and engaging in torture, kidnapping, and murder, the González government was still vulnerable to the accusation of being “soft on Basques.” To demonstrate the sincerity of its stance, the new government decided to have the entire twenty-three-person directorate of Herri Batasuna arrested.
During the election, in which each party had an allotted television airtime, Herri Batasuna had used its time to run a video from ETA. This party again won its usual 12-15 percent of the Basque vote and two seats in the Madrid legislature, which it again refused to fill, along with hundreds of offices in the Basque legislature and municipalities. The video had shown three men, faces concealed in ski masks, who, having been identified as ETA members, explained the demands of the organization for an independent Euskadi. This tape was a response to the Spanish government’s often-stated view that “nobody knows what ETA wants.”
Aznar’s camp was divided on the impending arrests. Some thought that it would be a mistake to isolate Herri Batasuna, which represented almost 200,000 people; and it would be more useful, they thought, to try to win over its supporters. They also worried that other European countries would strongly criticize the new government for attempting to silence a legal political party that had the backing of voters.
Nevertheless, the twenty-three were arrested by masked men in front of press cameras. On December 1, 1997, the Supreme Court of Spain, also with masks on, sentenced the twenty-three politicians to seven years each.
Successive Spanish governments have learned that it is easy to ignore criticism from human rights groups. Numerous human rights groups have regularly protested the practice of torture in Spanish prisons, but they have also, often in the same reports, protested the violence and intimidation of ETA. The Spanish government does not deny the existence of torture, which is frequently corroborated by prison doctors. It has prosecuted and convicted officers and then sentenced them to two or three months in prison. A 1997 United Nations Human Rights Committee report on Spanish torture noted that when the Spanish government was confronted with allegations of torture, it often did nothing; and in cases where