IL EST TEMPS DE DÉFENDRE LES VALEURS DE L'UE (FR)

IL EST TEMPS DE DÉFENDRE LES VALEURS DE L'UE

Nous avons récemment pris connaissance des violations de l'État de droit en Pologne et en Hongrie et de leurs tentatives de réduire le budget de l'UE, ainsi que de l'engagement de l'UE à appliquer les mêmes critères à tous les États membres lorsqu'il s'agit de non-respect de l'État de droit. Cependant, l'Espagne n'a pas été montrée du doigt, ceci pour deux raisons : grâce à la censure du Parlement européen sur le rapport de la députée européenne Clare Daly concernant les droits fondamentaux dans l'Union et aussi grâce à la position des hauts fonctionnaires et diplomates de l'UE qui ont réussi à faire passer avec force narrative la version imposée par l'Espagne sur le conflit avec la Catalogne.

 

Cependant, l'arrêt de la Cour de justice de l'Union européenne selon lequel l'ancien vice-président de la Catalogne Oriol Junqueras bénéficiait de droits d'immunité accordés par son élection en tant que député européen a été totalement ignoré par les autorités espagnoles, et il purge une peine de 13 ans de prison.

En 2018, un activiste social a été arrêté pour avoir appelé à participer à une manifestation et accusé de terrorisme. Cependant, deux ans plus tard, après des mois d'emprisonnement dans sa propre ville, un tribunal de Barcelone a abandonné toutes les accusations.

En 2019, l'ancien ministre de l'intérieur catalan (ainsi que d'autres collègues et dirigeants sociaux) a été condamné à plus de dix ans de prison, pour avoir contrôlé la police catalane lors de la "sédition" de 2017. Cependant, le chef de la police et les hauts fonctionnaires du ministère ont récemment été jugés, par un autre tribunal, non coupables de tout acte répréhensible durant ces événements.

Les appels à la libération immédiate des prisonniers politiques, lancés par le groupe de travail des Nations unies sur la détention arbitraire, Amnesty International et des associations juridiques, ont été ignorés par l'État espagnol.

En 2020, un tribunal espagnol a secoué la politique catalane en destituant le président de la Catalogne pour ne pas avoir immédiatement "obéi" à un avis du conseil électoral lui ordonnant de retirer deux banderoles appelant à la libération des prisonniers politiques catalans et à la liberté d'expression.

Et récemment, une cour d'appel belge a refusé l'extradition vers l'Espagne de l'ancien ministre de la culture de Catalogne, en raison de sérieux doutes quant à la garantie de son droit à un procès équitable.

Tout cela n'est que la partie émergée de l'iceberg. C'est l'absence de garantie d'un procès équitable, pour des actes qui ne sont pas des crimes dans d'autres pays européens, qui fait que six hommes politiques catalans et plusieurs militants vivent en exil en Belgique, en Suisse et en Écosse. C'est une situation choquante, et beaucoup en Catalogne se plaignent de la passivité totale des institutions européennes, par rapport à leur position publique sur les événements qui se déroulent, par exemple, en Russie, en Turquie et en Biélorussie.

C'est dans ce contexte que le Parlement européen se prononcera prochainement sur la demande de l'Espagne de lever l'immunité parlementaire de trois députés : l'ancien président Carles Puigdemont et ses conseillers Antoni Comin et Clara Ponsatí.

Miquel Strubell

TIME TO STAND UP FOR EU VALUES (EN)

TIME TO STAND UP FOR EU VALUES

We recently read about violations of the rule of law in Poland and Hungary and their attempts to hold up the EU budget, and about the EU's commitment to applying the same yardstick as regards non-compliance with the rule of law in all member States. However, Spain has been kept out of the public eye, thanks to EP censorship in the report by Clare Daly MEP on fundamental rights in the Union, and to high-ranking officials in the EU and diplomats who have managed to powerfully transmit Spain’s own narrative.

However, the European Union Court of Justice ruling that Catalonia’s former vice president Oriol Junqueras enjoyed the rights of immunity that his election as an MEP granted him was totally ignored by the Spanish authorities and he is serving a 13-year prison term.

In 2018 a social activist was arrested for calling for participation in a demonstration and charged with terrorism. Yet two years later, after months of confinement to her own town, a Barcelona court dropped all charges.

In 2019 the former Catalan minister of the Interior (along with other colleagues and social leaders) was sentenced to over ten years in prison, for having controlled the Catalan police during the 2017 «sedition». Yet both the police chief and top ministry officials were recently found not guilty of any misdemeanour during those events by another court. The public prosecutor did not appeal 

Calls for the immediate release of the political prisoners, issued by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Amnesty International and a host of legal associations, have been ignored by Spain’s vindictive structures.

In 2020, the Spanish court tossed Catalan politics into turmoil by barring Quim Torra the President of Catalonia from public office, for not immediately “obeying” an election board notification that ordered him to remove two banners calling for the freeing of the Catalan political prisoners and in favour of the freedom of speech.

And recently, a Belgian court of appeal denied the extradition of Catalonia's former Minister of Culture to Spain, given serious doubts about his possibility to enjoy the right to a fair trial.

All this is just the tip of the iceberg. It is the lack of assurance of a fair trial, for deeds 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 a shocking situation, and many in Catalonia complain of the total passivity of the European institutions, compared to their public stance on events in, say, Russia, Turkey and Byelorussia.

This is the context of the European Parliament forthcoming vote on Spain's request for the waiver of three members’ parliamentary immunity: former President Carles Puigdemont and his ministers Antoni Comin and Clara Ponsatí.

Michael Strubell

What Would You Do, Dear MEP?

What would you do? Imagine that the fate of three God-fearing, tax-paying, law-abiding citizens is in your hands. A university lecturer in Social Science, a university professor of Economics and a journalist and former mayor of a provincial capital, to be precise. 

And you have people screaming at you from both sides.

 

A large group on the one hand, all from a large nation with a history of civil wars, coups d'état and dictatorships, and with its media, opinion leaders, politicians almost to a man (and woman) shrieking hysterically that these three have fled justice after a coup d'érat and have to join their political companions and serve long prison sentences for their crimes. And their MEPs swarm around you, drilling instructions into the ears of the leaders of your political group and, maybe, you in person. And in the process, some of them have not respected the confidentiality rule but have made public statements or even, in one case, leaked the rapporteur's report to the Madrid press.  

And on the other side, a much smaller group (largely because their nation is much smaller) who have neen imploring for international mediation to force the bully to sit down and solve a deep political conflict through political negotiation, not by sending its political opponents into court.

Imagine the larger group fails to tell you that it has ignored multiple calls, after an institutionally catastrophic Constitutional court judgment, for the exercise of the smaller people's universal right of self-determination. 

Imagine the larger group fails to tell you that it has incarcerated the smaller people's parliamentary Speaker for allowing a debate on independence.

Imagine the larger group fails to tell you that it has incarcerated two respected social leaders, for standing (with permission) on a battered police vehicle - parked unlocked and with fireaarms left inside it - to call on ten thousand demonstrators to... go home. 

Imagine the larger group says that holding a referendum without government authorisation is illegal, yet fails to tell you that this was dropped ftom the Criminal Code in 2005.

Imagine the larger group fails to tell you that calls for the release of these political and social leaders, issued by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Amnesty International and a host of other humsn rights organizations, have fallen on the deaf ears of a Member state bent on political revenge and on "decapitating" the independence movement and "disinfecting" the smaller people.

Imagine the larger group fails to tell you that attempts to extradite the three MEPs and their colleagues have failed because courts in Belgium, Germany and Scotland have failed to find any evidence of the charges of "rebellion" and "sedition" brought against them, issued, moreover, by a court that, according to the European convention on human rights, was not the competent court to try them and their incarcerated colleagues in the first place. 

Imagine the larger group fails to tell you that the Spanish Supreme Court has ignored an EU Court of Justice ruling (requested by the very same Court!) ensuring another MEP's immunity, by the simple, age-old expedient of not releasing him ftom prison.

Imagine the larger group fails to tell you that it flooded the JURI committee (20% of its members are Spanish!), solely and simply to continue persecuting those who have thd perfectly legitimate aim of a national minority that wishes to continue existing as a free and sovereign people.

Imagine (well, this is no hypothesis) that you, dear MEP, will have to explain, to the hundreds of thousands of Europeans you represent, how you publicly voted in the plenary session to decide whether or not to waive the immunity, inside the European Union, of Carles Puigdemont MEP, Antoni Comin MEP and Clara Ponsatí MEP.  

I am sure you will vote in conscience, so as not to allow the European Parliament to make a fool of itself on the international scene (the Commission has a vice president that does this on his own), and that you will not be bullied in your turn.

See also in Catalan:

https://twitter.com/nstr30/status/1364681312372727817?s=19