The Government and the Prosecutor’s Office must do everything in their power to shed sufficient light on the ties between PCTV and BATASUNA which are becoming more apparent each day and, when feasible, call on the Courts to illegalise the PCTV party

Bilbao. 8 April 2005. Following the public announcement this afternoon in San Sebastian by the leader of the illegal Batasuna party, Arnaldo Otegi, of the withdrawal of the illegal candidate lists and ballots of BATASUNA and his appeal for support of the PCTV-EHAK (Communist Party of the Basque Lands), the FORO ERMUA urges the Prosecutor General and the Government to do everything in their power to promote, as expediently as possible, the illegalisation of said political group. 

It would be naïve to imagine that BATASUNA, which according to a Supreme Court Judgement forms part of the ETA network, would freely hand over its votes to a political party with no electoral support whatsoever, one which has never taken part in any election, unless that party were, at least for now, under its direct control.

All of the facts are pointing in the same direction:

1.      The PCTV-EHAK was formed in September 2002, immediately subsequent to the passing of the Party Act in June and Judge Baltasar Garzón’s order issued at the end of August to suspend all BATASUNA activities for three years [1] .

2.      Several of the members forming part of that party actually came directly from the ranks of BATASUNA. This is the case of Luis Barros Martín and David García who, at the end of the year 2000, delivered a speech entitled «Igitaia eta Mailua» (hammer and sickle) defending the reinstitution of Batasuna. There are numerous different sorts of links between members on the PCTV candidate lists and BATASUNA and their satellite organisations (as a number of police reports have shown).

3.      The press secretary for the PCTV is Joseba Zinkunegi who was BATASUNA’s deputy press secretary and later press secretary of the group known as AuB, subsequently illegalised for being the continuation of Batasuna.

4.      PCTV representatives have openly stated that they are taking the baton and upholding the “electoral principles” held by the candidates of AUKERA GUZTIAK (AG), illegalised in March 2005 for being the continuation of BATASUNA.

5.      The PCTV has refused on a number of occasions over these last several days to condemn ETA terrorism.

6.      On 5 April the head of the EHAK-PCTV candidate list for Guipúzcoa, Nekane Erauskin, stated in a press conference in Euskadi that "a vast number of human rights violations are being committed in general" but that “the greatest aggression comes from Madrid” and failed to mention or even allude to ETA in this context.

7.      Representatives from the illegalised BATASUNA have expressly called on their constituents to vote for EHAK-PCTV and withdrew the illegal candidate lists which they had presented.

8.      During the course of these first few days of the campaign, posters urging voters to support the PCTV have appeared all over the Basque Country despite the fact that this group has hardly any organisational structure and had never before launched a street campaign [2] .   

9.      On 1 April 2005 representatives from PCTV met with BATASUNA leaders and others to plan their strategy.

In light of these facts, the FORO ERMUA holds the view that there is enough evidence to arrive at the moral conviction that today, the Communist Party of the Basque Lands (PCTV) is the continuation of BATASUNA. It is now up to the Government and the Public Prosecutor’s Office to transform this moral conviction into a legal one and in order to do so they must urgently and thoroughly carry out the necessary investigations to support already existing evidence in order to launch the process whereby the courts can be in a position to rule on the illegalisation of PCTV-EHAK.