Jon Anza- Irish Article -- Stormont Watch

[ Show ]

Support VoyForums

[ Shrink ]

VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, [4], 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: Sat, Jan 30 2010, 16:41:58 PST
Author: freespirit1916
Subject: Jon Anza- Irish Article

Jon Anza- Irish Article
Posted on January 29, 2010 at 06:19:41 AM by freespirit1916

Evil might not shoot, kill, maim, torture, mutilate, disfigure or
strangle. Evil might not even call openly for these things to happen
to opponents. Evil can be the simple act of staying silent.

Spain has, this month, taken on the presidency of the European Union
for six months. The fact is that the Spanish Civil Guard, police and
military are shooting, torturing, mutilating and kidnapping political
opponents of the Spanish government, while the courts, in turn,
imprison youth group members, politicians, journalists and language
activists. Nothing is ever heard in �mainstream� society about these
attacks on democracy. It seems that the media throughout Europe think
that it would be impolite to highlight these daily echoes of Franco�s
dictatorship.

To reveal the lack of democracy at the heart of the Spanish state
might threaten the illusion that the European Union has any democratic
credentials itself.

Probably the most shocking case to have emerged inside the last year
of Spain�s Dirty War against Basque citizens is the disappearance of
Jon Anza.

Anza is originally from Donostia [San Sebasti�n] in the Spanish
occupied part of the Basque Country. For his involvement in the
national independence struggle, he was imprisoned in 1982 and remained
incarcerated for over 12 years. After his release and, with mounting
harassment from Spanish state forces, Anza decided to move to the
French occupied part of the Basque Country � to live in exile in order
to have some quality of life for himself and his family.

In Baiona on April 18 2009 at 7am Jon was boarding a train for
Toulouse. He was waved off on his journey by his partner, having told
her that he was travelling to meet up with friends. She had no contact
with Jon in the days that followed but this didn�t immediately worry
her. It wasn�t until April 24 when Jon missed an appointment with his
doctor that his partner became concerned.

Jon has an illness which impairs his sight, he is almost blind, and he
needs regular medical treatment. In the weeks that followed, his
relatives and friends waited for news but, when nothing happened, they
decided to act. On May 16 relatives of Jon, his lawyer and a member of
Askatasuna, the Basque organisation for political prisoners, held a
press conference in Baiona. They told of how they feared for Jon�s
safety. They recounted the stories from the 1970s and �80s when
Spanish state forces had kidnapped, tortured and killed Basques living
in the French occupied zone. They told of how they now feared that Jon
may have met a similar fate. They were asking for help.

People from all over the Basque Country responded. In less than a
week, over 1,000 people took to the streets of Baiona to protest. Days
later, 500 people gathered in Biarritz demanding to know the
whereabouts of Jon.

Two weeks after the press conference, hundreds of protests that are
held around the Basque Country every month to remember Basque
political prisoners were focused on the plight of Jon Anza and banners
and placards asked the simple question �Non da Jon?� [Where is Jon?].
More protests followed, over 4,000 turned out in Donostia; banners,
stickers, posters and graffiti showed a simple picture of Jon and all
asked the same question; his girlfriend gave an emotional interview to
the Basque media, but still no news.

The months passed quickly and, despite efforts to mark each month of
Jon�s absence, the campaign seemed to be getting nowhere. The Spanish
and French governments said nothing.

Soon after the initial press conference, ETA acknowledged that Jon was
still an active member, despite his illness, and that the friends he
had being travelling to meet were, in fact, other ETA activists. Jon
had never arrived at the meeting and ETA announced that they too were
very concerned about his whereabouts. In contrast to the silence of
the authorities, ETA publicly called for information on Jon�s
location.

It wasn�t until early October that the Basque newspaper Gara revealed
that they had information which confirmed that the train Jon had been
travelling on had been boarded by Spanish police officers. They
dragged Jon off the train and took him away for interrogation, where
he met his death. His body was then removed to a secret location and
buried. Both the interrogation and the burial site are located in
France, although it is unclear from the information available to Gara
as to what role, if any, the French state had in this sordid series of
events.

The claims by Gara should not be dismissed as paranoia or propaganda.
The treatment of Jon Anza isn�t isolated. It is part of a pattern of
events, which could be described as the re-emergence of a dirty war by
Spain against the Basque nationalist left.

Throughout 2009, a number of incidents have pointed towards this. In
January last year, a political activist was kidnapped by a mixed group
of Spanish and French men. He was held for a number of hours while
they tried to persuade him to become an informer. He refused and, the
next day, he was approached by the same men in the street and suffered
a violent assault which resulted in his hospitalisation. At least
three other activists have also been kidnapped, threatened and
tortured. Attacks on nationalist bars and graffiti threatening the
lives of Basque nationalists have also begun to appear.

The reason that Basque nationalists are aware of the implications of a
dirty war isn�t because they have learned of these things by reading
about Chile or Argentina but because, three decades ago, they were
living through the original Spanish Dirty War.

Some of the incidents from this period are frighteningly familiar when
Jon Anza�s case is considered. For example, Eduardo Moreno Bergaretxe
has been missing since July 23 1976. He disappeared on his way to a
meeting with ETA-Politico Militar [an organisation that would disband
in the early 1980s]. 33 years later, certain Italian neo-fascists, who
had been working for the Spanish state, gave statements to the Spanish
National Court to the effect that, at that time, they kidnapped a
Basque, whom they tortured and disappeared. Another case with strong
similarities is that of Jos� Miguel Echeverr�a Alvarez, �Naparra�, an
activist with the Autonomous Anticapitalist Comandos [an organisation
that was disbanded in the early 1980s] has been missing since June 11
1980. There are still no clues as to his whereabouts.

The case of ETA volunteers Joxi Zabala and Joxan Lasa may give an idea
of the terrible fate of those missing, including Jon Anza. They were
missing for years. They were eventually both found in a grave in
Alicante, thanks to the perseverance of an undertaker, who looked
after the unidentified bodies. The bodies showed signs of terrible
torture and had been buried in caustic lime. Eventually, several
high-ranking members of the PSOE-led Spanish Government of the time
were convicted of their kidnap, torture and murder.

Evil must have accomplices if it is to succeed and the evil that the
Spanish government has unleashed on the Basque Country has a plentiful
supply of accomplices. European media, governments and many NGOs are
complicit in the disappearance of Jon Anza because they looked away
and are allowing evil a free reign.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]