Letter to the Financial Times about fundamental rights and the Catalans (8 JAN 2021)

 This is the text I have sent as a Letter to the Editor of the Financial Times, with copies to the authors of an article, "EU identity crisis: Poland, Hungary and the fight over Brussels’ values" about the blind eye the European institutions are still turning as regards Spain. 

Click , if need be, to read the text (ewith hyperlinks added here).

To: letters.editor@ft.com
Cc: xxx
Bcc: xxx
Fri, 8 Jan at 14:42
January 8 2021

Financial Times
Bracken House
1 Friday Street
London
EC4M 9BT
United Kingdom


Dear Sir,

I read with interest your in-depth article "EU identity crisis: Poland, Hungary and the fight over Brussels’ values". You perhaps inadvertently, or for lack of space, failed to raise the issue of Spain, particularly in connection to its ham-fisted treatment of the Catalonia-Spain conflict.

We have read elsewhere that the EU says it is committed to applying the same yardstick as regards incompliance with the rule of law in all EU member States.

Given that there is a great deal of subjectivity, and differing points of view, and also that Spain’s diplomacy and high-ranking officials in the EU have managed to powerfully transmit its own, allow me to draw your attention to several recent, unquestionable violations of the rule of law.

The European Union Court of Justice ruled in October 2019 that Oriol Junqueras enjoyed the rights of immunity that his election as an MEP granted him, as soon as his election was officially announced. However, the Spanish authorities neither released him from gaol (for organizing a referendum in Catalonia, which was dropped from Spain’s criminal code in 2005) nor requested that the European Parliament waive his immunity. On the contrary, he was sentenced to 13 years in gaol for "sedition" - along with the members of the 2017 Catalan government who were abroad when the search warrant was issued and chose to stay there - and two social leaders whose immediate release was demanded by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention*, to no avail.

On 6 November 2018 the European Court of Human Rights issued a judgment that declared void a Spanish court judgment that had sent a Basque MP to prison for six years (that he served in full before the ECHR ruling), because one of the judges was not impartial. A review of the judgment, or a retrial, are prerrogatives that can only be legally exercised at the request of the applicant. Notwithstanding this, at the request of a private organization the Spanish Supreme Court has just ordered a retrial.

In 2018 a social activist was arrested near Barcelona and whisked off to Madrid to be charged with terrorism among other offences. She was confined to her own municipality for months, not being able even to visit her aged mother, until finally a Barcelona court dropped all charges against her.

On 14 October 2019 the former Catalan minister of the Interior, along with other members of his government, was sentenced to a ten and a half year prison term, for his handling of the police during the 2017 acts of «sedition» (Amnesty International soon criticed the verdict and called for the release of all the political prisoners). Yet a recent court ruling, not later appealed by the public prosecutor, has acquitted both the police chief and the top ministry officials, who were found not guilty of any illegality during the events of 2017.

And on January 7 2021, the appeal on behalf of Spain against a Brussels court's decision to deny the extradition of Catalonia's former Minister of Culture to face charges in Spain, Lluís Puig, was also rejected by the High Court, given (amnong other reasons) serious doubts about his possibility to enjoy the right to a fair trial.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. It is the lack of assurance of a fair trial, for doings that are not offences in other European countries, that has six Catalan politicians and several activists living in exile in Belgium, Switzerland and Scotland. This is on all accounts a shocking state of affairs, and many in Catalonia – and not just those in favour of the 27 October 2017 declaration of independence being fully implemented – complain of the total passivity of the European institutions. Compared to their public stance on events in, say, Turkey and Byelorussia. Both Antoni Comin MEP and prof. Clara Ponsatí MEP have highlighted their hypocritical situation in the plenary very recently.

Yours sincerely,

* = UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. Opinion 6/2019 concerning Jordi Cuixart i Navarro, Jordi Sànchez i Picanyol and Oriol Junqueras i Vies (English). https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Detention/Opinions/Session84/A_HRC_WGAD_2019_6.pdf

This opinion was extended to include other imprisoned political leaders: Opinion 12/2019 concerning Joaquín Forn i Chiariello, Josep Rull i Andreu, Raúl Romeva i Rueda and Dolores Bassa i Coll (Spanish): https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Detention/Opinions/Session84/A_HRC_WGAD_2019_12%20ADVANCE%20EDITED%20VERSION.pdf

Other relevant documents here on violation of fundamental rights (in Spanish and/or English): https://int.assemblea.cat/es/abuso-de-los-derechos-politicos-y-civiles/documentos-relacionados/

Michael Strubell MA (Oxon) MSc (Lond)