Any excuse
Exploiting the war on terror
The most obvious consequence of the ‘war on terror’ has been more wars. First Afghanistan, now Iraq. Proponents of the wars argue forcefully that wars are necessary to protect (and project) Western values of democracy, freedom and the rule of law.
To achieve this, civilians have been killed—in greater numbers than those who died in the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Centre in September 2001. It is increasingly apparent that these ongoing
wars have been used as smokescreens to conceal attacks on those same freedoms within Western countries.
Batasuna is one of the largest Basque political parties in Spain. In August 2002, Batasuna was banned in a joint manoeuvre by judicial authorities and the Spanish Parliament—with 90 per cent of MPs voting in favour of the ban. Batasuna stood accused of links with the terrorist group ETA, which has waged a 30-year struggle for independence. Seven hundred people have been killed in that struggle. All offices of the party, which attracts just 10 per cent of the vote in Basque regions of northern Spain, were declared illegal and forcibly closed in violent police raids. Ordinary Spaniards—a people with a love of street demonstrations, including protests in Madrid by two million opposed to the war in Iraq—scarcely batted an eyelid. The main newspaper, El Pais, a bastion of liberal good sense, strongly supported the move. The right to freedom of association was never mentioned.
In February 2003 Marcelo Otamendi, editor-in-chief of Egunkaria (the largest, if not the only Basque-language newspaper in Spain) was arrested along with nine colleagues. The newspaper was, like Batasuna, outlawed and closed. Upon his release, Otamendi made detailed allegations against the police of torture, including death threats, claiming that ‘they twice forced a plastic bag over my head, made me crouch naked, and pointed an unloaded pistol against my temple, whilst constantly hurling insults about Basque culture and Basque politicians’. With cross-party support, the Spanish Interior Minister, Angel Acebes, pointedly refused to investigate the allegations. Acebes seemed not to have heard of freedom of speech and stated simply: ‘In this country, the only ones who violate basic human rights are ETA, who torture and kill.’
Spain is not alone in winding back the clock on human rights.
In February 2003, it was revealed that the Deputy Commissioner of Police in Frankfurt, Wolfgang Daschner, had signed a written order instructing subordinates to extract information ‘by means of