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
, if need be, to read the text
