FUNDACIÓN FERNANDO BAKEAZ BUESA BLANCO FUNDAZIOA
Sociological report on the testimonies of victims
By Izaskun Sáez de la Fuente Aldama
Abstract
The Observatory of Human Rights Violations by Terrorist Violence (zoomrights.com) emerged in a scenario where ETA had not yet announced a permanent ceasefire and, consequently, in a scenario where violence in its multiple versions as well as speeches justifying violence persisted. Such is the background in which the compilation of different victimisation experiences was conducted through interviews with the victims based on a previously established general thematic script. This first sociological approach to the testimonies collected during 2011 is trying to fulfil, at least in part, the Observatory's fourth Specific Objective which is the preparation of "required analyses on verified realities". Responding to a narrative logic, this report focusses on victimisation experiences from two angles: 1/ The study of the historical and socio-political scenario in which they occur, and 2/ In-depth studies of the effects suffered in psycho-physical, family, work and social fields. It does so by presenting testimonies where the allegations are contrasted with quotes from the interviews, which provide social plausibility.
About the Author
Izaskun Sáez de la Fuente Aldama holds a PhD in Political Science and a BA in Political Sociology. She is a member of the Diocesan Institute of Theology and Pastoral Studies of Bilbao, an associate professor of graduate studies at the University of Deusto and professor at the Higher Institute of Religious Sciences of Barcelona (ISCREB) . Her analyses display the convergence between the sociology of religion and political science through three lines of research: social and political ethics, intercultural and interfaith dialogue, and gender perspectives. Her publications include the following: El Movimiento de Liberación Nacional Vasco, una religión de sustitución (Bilbao, DDB, 2002); Conflictos, violencia y diálogo. El caso vasco [con Galo Bilbao, Xabier Etxeberria y F. Javier Vitoria] (Bilbao, Universidad de Deusto,
1 2004); La laicidad en los nuevos contextos sociales. Un estudio interdisciplinar [con Galo Bilbao, Juan José Etxeberria y Xabier Etxeberria] (Santander, Sal Terrae, 2007); Inmigración, identidades religiosas y diálogo intercultural [con Joaquín Perea] (Bilbao, DDB, 2008); Género e inmigración. Encuesta de Ikuspegi a la población extranjera 2007 (Vitoria- Gasteiz, Gobierno Vasco, 2008), and La opinión pública vasca ante la violencia de ETA. Una mirada retrospectiva (Bilbao, Bakeaz, 2011).
2
Index
Page
Abstract 1
Index 3
1. I ntroduction: people under threat, dominant profile 4
2. Or igins and context of the experiences of vulnerability 5
3. Conse quence s 13
3.1 . Physical and psychological effects 13
3.2. Impacto n the family: generalisation of a feeling of guilt 15
3.3. Impact in the labour/ profes sional field 17
3.4. Social reactions and tendencies towards (self)isolation 19
4. Brief notes for r eflection 24
5. Bibliogra phy 26
3 1. Introduction: people under threat, dominant profile
The Observatory of Human Rights Violations by Terrorist Violence (zoomrights.com) emerged in a scenario where ETA had not yet announced a permanent ceasefire and, consequently, in a scenario where violence in its multiple versions (for example, economic extortion, intimidation, social fear, murder..) as well as speeches justifying violence persisted. Founded in order to report the violation of the fundamental rights of Basque citizens and to provide those reports with an international outlook and a pre- partisan pedagogical dimension with a view to generating a memory that will substantially contribute to the ethical, political and social de- legitimization of terrorism. This, ultimately, implies considering the victims as privileged hermeneutic sources, faithful to the principles of non- neutrality in relation to violence and of impartiality-objectivity regarding legitimate political options.
Such is the background in which the compilation of different victimisation experiences was conducted through interviews with the victims based on a previously established general thematic script. This first sociological approach to the testimonies collected during 2011 is trying to fulfil, at least in part, the Observatory's fourth Specific Objective which is the preparation of "required analyses on verified realities". Responding to a narrative logic, this report focusses on victimisation experiences from two angles:
• The study of the historical and socio-political scenario in which they occur. • In-depth studies of the effects suffered in psycho-physical, family, work and social fields.
It does so by presenting testimonies where the allegations are contrasted with quotes from the interviews, which provide social plausibility.
The number of testimonies studied totalled 22. Two in three respondents were male and one third were women. Half of the group was aged between 41 and 60 and only 10% belonged to the youth cohort (<30 years). About 50% of victims are married and, of these, most have two children.
Almost 40% declared they were council members for non-nationalist parties, but there are also, although in isolation, the voices of teachers, business executives and small and medium entrepreneurs, journalists, judges and members of the Ertzaintza (Regional Police) and the Municipal Police. In line with this group characterization, about 80% of the interviews involved people who were persecuted or threatened. Only five are relatives of murder victims and, in addition, three of them have also been persecuted 1 either because of their status as public political representatives or journalists.
1 Concept coined by Gesto por la Paz de Euskal Herria in 2000 to identify, without euphemisms, "the systematic use of street violence, harassment, threats, aggression or other means, including murder, to identify, pursue, harass, isolate certain people because they publicly defend their ideological preferences, in their capacity as representatives of the citizens or in the free exercise of their profession [...]. The possibility that this
4 2. Origins and context of the experiences of rights violations
The first half of the eighties is known in the Basque Country as "years of lead", the bloodiest period since the death of Franco due to the terrorist attacks of the "polimilis" (ETA), the Anti-capitalist Autonomous Commandos and, above all, of the "milis" (ETA). Day after day, society witnessed, with fear and impassively, the systematic murder of members of the State Security Forces which were considered occupation forces. 2 But a true ideological cleansing process also took place, a fact that was perhaps unnoticed, with selective attacks against members of the political party, Union de Centro Democratico (UCD); a deadly strategy that led this party, which had spearheaded the fledgling political change, to disappear from the Basque political scene before it disappeared from the rest of Spain, while the public attributed much of the responsibility of the violence to centralist attitudes of the government and the far right. We have the testimony of relatives of two UCD victims, both killed in 1980: Ramón Baglietto in spring and Jose Ignacio Ustaran in September.
Pilar Elías - widow of Baglietto and subsequently Councillor for the Partido Popular (PP) - tells us that the person who murdered her husband was the child whose life he had saved eighteen years earlier, when he was a baby: "The day they killed my husband, someone commented in the company where Kandido Aspiazu's father worked: "Have you heard that they've killed Baglietto?" And he said: "But he saved my son's life. It can't be, it can't be. Who could have done such a thing?" Two days later he found out that his own son had done it. A few years later he died of cancer, without being able to understand what his son had done. This is a very small town where all the families knew each other […]” (E13). In the statement with which the Autonomous Commandos claimed responsibility for the murder, they insisted that the reason was that he was a "close friend Marcelino Oreja", the Foreign Minister in the first Adolfo Suarez government and the Government's Delegate in the Basque Country from the end of 1980 until the elections in 1982.
Always interested in politics, Elias decided to become actively involved after her husband's death with the idea of continuing with his legacy, a step that made her a target of a bitter campaign of persecution. In the mid-1990s, Herri Batasuna entered one of the murderers of Baglietto as a candidate for the local elections to the Town Council of Azkoitia and his widow -also a councillor- had to put up with his presence and that of a multitude of people who came to support him:
persecution may culminate in the murder of the person being harassed, as has happened on certain occasions, adds an extra level, the maximum, of horror to the situation of distress experienced by these people […]” (GESTO POR LA PAZ , 2000: 3-4). 2 With impeccable prose, Fernando Aramburu retold the threatening dialogue between the mother of a young man killed in a bizarre encounter with the Guardia Civil and the future widow of a local policeman: "'Tell your husband to give up his job and leave. If not, you will have to start preparing his wake and I won't repeat this. You have been warned, scoundrels' [...]. "Hey [...] have we done something against you? Because if we have, I will apologize right now'. 'Your husband is Spanish shit. Isn't that enough? […]. Get out of our land if you don't want to see your husband carried away feet first’” (ARAMBURU , 2009: 36).
5 “No-one came to support me, I was alone because those who could have supported me were afraid to go. I was alone, all alone. […] He was saluted and honoured in an absolutely disgraceful manner. […] He had murdered my husband and they were paying homage to him and insulting me. It is one of the saddest things I've experienced […]. They received a hero's welcome in the town and the Town Council appointed them citizens of honour. No tribute or any other form of recognition was ever paid to my husband.” (E13).
Then, a genuine victimization process took place with the return of the offenders to their places of origin. Because, more than once, they are presented socio-politically as heroes and, furthermore, this requires the family members of the victims to see the faces of the murderers on a daily basis: "How can they force me to continually meet my husband's murderers in my town? [...] not only do I have to see him, I also have him on the ground floor of the block of flats where I live" (E13). Azpiazu's decision to open in a glassware shop on the ground floor of the block of flats where the Baglietto family lived caused intense media controversy that led to legal consequences: the High Court took up the matter and ordered the business to be auctioned so that Azpiazu, who at the time had been declared insolvent, could pay the compensation due. 3
Towards the end of 1970, José Ignacio Ustaran Ramírez belonged to the Executive Committee of UCD in Alava. He was kidnapped while accompanied by his wife - also a UCD councillor in the city council of Vitoria - and their three children: “They drove him out of Vitoria in his own car and shot him twice in the back of the head. They left him inside the car, parked opposite the UCD headquarters at the time” (E14). This last fact, with a strong symbolic value, has led many to establish a parallel between the murder of Ustaran and what the Red Brigades had done in Italy two earlier when they left the body of Aldo Moro at an equidistant point between his party's headquarters, the Christian Democrats, and the headquarters of the Communist Party (PCI) in Rome (Alonso, Domínguez & García Rey, 2010: 317). In this case the re-victimization exists because, twenty-eight year later, the family's demand for justice, in a strictly criminal sense, have not been met: "[...] The people who murdered my father are still free [...] sometimes it seems incorrect and it makes you wonder how it can be possible that, living in a state of law, justice has not been done in our case." (E14).
It is also on the threshold of political change in Spain, when the trade unions were legalized and Manoli Uranga joined Comisiones Obreras (CC. OO.), when she personally suffered the first attacks from the radical world, which denied her Basque identity, branding her as "pro-Spanish". This was a campaign of harassment that became chronic over time, when she became a councillor for the Socialist Party: "[...] They said I wasn't Basque. I told them I had been born here. I don't understand why they can decide who is Basque and who isn't. Until the first attack happened (graffiti, Molotov cocktails...), I had been expecting it because I knew it would
3 However, during the auction, which was held in 2008, Azpiazu's wife bought the business for a price that was insufficient to cover the compensation.
6 happen. You see how they look at you, how they insult you. It's much more convenient to pretend you have seen nothing and look the other way” (E3). 4
Representing a non-nationalist party in the Basque Country - political parties that had to place their electioneering posters at night -5 is synonymous with treason and leads to the alienation and stigmatization of the subject: "being born Basque and speaking Basque, you should feel those Basque roots, yet you are a traitor to your country, you're not a nationalist, you're worse than anybody else" (E7). Based on such ideas, one can be blamed for anything even, for example, the imprisonment of ETA members by means of acts endowed with a strong symbolic element, such as leaving a bottle of water at the door of the person that has been threatened on Christmas Eve, to generate a feeling of guilt, as a bottle of water represents the loneliness and hardships endured by inmates at a time when families get together and enjoy each other's company around a table (E11).
Therefore, although, among the radical underworld the language factor is theoretically a critical element when it comes to identifying a sense of belonging to the Basque nation, in practice the criterion is the defence of the country by identifying seamlessly with their philosophy of confrontation. 6 Unable to or perhaps not wanting to realize this fact will sometimes make potential victims think they will not become real victims as they speak the Basque language:
"I have had bodyguards since the murder of my colleague and friend Iruretagoiena 7 in January 1998. Both he and I had refused to have them before. We had both always lived in our town, we always spoke in the Basque Language. We used to say: "you and I can't be more Basque even if we tried, we only speak to each other in Basque - nothing will happen to us". His funeral was the first place I went to with bodyguards. It could have been me” (E13).
Or, for having an impeccable left-wing track record, like Esther Cabezudo, who believes that those who attacked her and her escort in February 2002 represent a segment of a generation born in during a period of democracy that has been dangerously affected by the virus of hatred. "I never thought that someone would attack me. I've always been a person with a left-wing ideology, I fought for freedom and democracy in this country. Those who attacked me, kids who were not even thirty years old, who had lived in a democracy their whole lives, do not know what a dictatorship is... I never thought anybody would try to kill me. But they did. It was a terrible
4 In June 2005, when ETA announced they would no longer attack elected representatives belonging to the PP and PSE-EE, several radicals rang her doorbell and threaten her by saying: “Bitch, you're not going to get away” (E14). 5 "That seemed unfair to me and I began to help the party I preferred in my town [...]" (E15). 6 From this perspective it is impossible to see a human being as a victim, because every person is on one side or the other of the struggle that is seeking to break down the ideological and moral foundations of the old system. 7 Jose Ignacio Iruretagoiena was assassinated in January 1998 with a limpet bomb. He was a wood merchant and a Basque speaker and one of the two councillors the PP had won in Zarautz at the previous local elections. The victim had been appointed the PP representative on the Basque Language Board of the City of San Sebastián. "On hearing the tragic news, Immaculate, one of the victim's sisters said: 'My brother was a son of the Basque Country. He was killed the same people: those who claim to defend the country. He wasn't afraid. He never thought they would go for him. What are they doing to us? I may be the next one, even if I do not belong to the PP’” (Cfr. ALONSO , DOMÍNGUEZ & GARCÍA REY , 2010: 1.026).
7 experience” (E19). 8 And not only have active political representatives been killed, but also those who had retired. 9 Sometimes what happens is an intergenerational repetition of victimization for maintaining the same political affiliation, as in the case of Jose Manuel Lizarraga, son of Charo Dorda, both councillors of the Partido Popular in different periods in the City Council of Hondarribia.
The nineteen-eighties were years when, while the democracy was consolidating - not without difficulties - ETA and the self-termed Basque National Liberation Movement (MLNV) created around it consolidated their commandos and structures. The terrorist organisation discovered a prime source of funding in economic extortion - the so-called "revolutionary tax" -. Those who refused to pay-up placed themselves directly on their radar. This was the case with Sebastian Aizpiri and his friend Patxi Zabaleta. In late May 1988, Aizpiri, after closing his butcher's shop in Elgoibar (Guipuzcoa) and while en route to neighbouring Eibar, where he also owned a restaurant, was assassinated by two ETA members who shot him twice in the head, killing him instantly. His sister - Ana Aizpiri - asked herself: Why did they kill him? And she answered herself, emphasizing that he would not admit blackmail:
“[…] As he did not collaborate with the terrorists in any possible way. If he had sent an envelope with some money, he might be alive. But he didn't (...) in those years, people who were subject to extortion by ETA, spoke with ETA messengers and paid them in one way or another: they were trading in human lives, in short. But my brother and Patxi didn't do that. With the result that they were killed […] I understand those who have yielded to blackmail and paid up, as they have done so because of the fear and dread such a situation causes, and it is understandable and very human. But I think opposing threats and extortion, as my brother did, is brave, especially at that time when ETA was so well established in the Basque Country” (E2).
Before being murdered, victims are objectified by the MLNV who engage in spreading the lie that they were linked to drug trafficking, at a time when drug use was rampant among Basque youths and ETA presented itself as the driving force that had to fight, with its weapons, against a scourge organised by the dominant groups to poison the revolutionary processes. In order to contradict such a lie, Aizpiri had even asked the city councils of Eibar and Elgoibar to investigate him and they (he and Zabaleta) even went to speak with a councillor for Herri Batasuna (HB) in Eibar to explain that it was all a mere fabrication. "She told them she would talk to those in the French Basque Region". 10 After his name appeared in a long list of people - small businessmen, industrialists and professionals - in the Sokoa papers, 11 he was offered protection, but he refused. Shortly after the murder, the same rumours about drugs were used to defame his sister who is convinced that the purpose was to seek revenge because of her remarks on the close
8 It should be remembered that, during the mid-80's, the Anti-Capitalist Autonomous Commandos killed the Socialist Senator Enrique Casas, an attack that represented a quantum leap concerning the gang's targets because it had attacked a representative of a party involved in the resistance against Franco. "I remember the image of Carlos Garcia Cañibano, a lifetime Gipuzkoan socialist [...] trying to say, with raised fist, that the Socialists had fought against the process of Burgos, the court-martial in which six members of ETA were sentenced to death [...] he couldn't understand why ETA had killed a Socialist politician who had participated in the struggle against the dictatorship. It was a time when [...] some still distinguished between good crimes and bad crimes [...]” (CALLEJA , 1997: 91). 9 For example, two days before the general elections in 2008, an ETA activist killed Isaias Carrasco in Mondragon, at the doors of his house. Isaias had given up his escort after retiring from his position on the city council. 10 At that time, it was still a sanctuary for ETA activists. 11 The discovery of the Sokoa hideout in December 1986 placed a huge amount of documentation on the finances of ETA in the hands of the police.
8 links between ETA and Batasuna Herri in a social climate that was not conducive to these statements: "Rumours were the perfect instrument to influence people who had less information or who were biased [...] I said that HB was in charge of do the dirty work for ETA. They were the people who followed the targets, reported on them, extended rumours [...] or provided the terrorist organisation with false data [...] this was clearly in retaliation for my statements on Herri Batasuna's involvement [...] Saying loud and clear that HB are accomplices of ETA, marked a vital point for me. This is why many people hold me in great esteem and many people hate me” (E2).
During the decades of its deadly existence, businesses has remained one of ETA's priorities, as its main means of funding. In August 2000, this terrorist organisation killed Jose Mari Korta, president of the Guipuzcoa Business Association (ADEGI) and a PNV supporter, who had publicly and repeatedly spoken out against paying this type of extortion. His son Ibai described him as "a person with a sober life, very demanding in his daily work, a disciplinarian requiring people to follow in his steps and who is unable to understand how this rigor can be combined with giving in to blackmail. And, of course, he didn't give in” (E20). Therefore, the only benefit the band obtains is terror.
When organisations such as Gesto por la Paz appear, in the second half of the 1980s, murder was regarded as something abnormal, but the lack of freedom or the harassment were not perceived as such. In the words of Imanol Zubero –one of the promoters of Gesto and Professor at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)–, “"The paradox was that other things were abnormal, being murdered; but the fact that they threatened people, that you had to be careful where you went, the loss of freedom was all seen as something normal. […]” (E9). The consolidation of the protests, under the symbol of a blue ribbon after the kidnappings in the mid-90's 12 and of the so-called socialisation of suffering, 13 led to a number of pacifist demonstrations and radical counter-demonstrations that revealed the struggle that MLNV was encouraging in order to reclaim the streets, one of its best assets, using expression aimed at discrediting pacifism, such as "the murderers are wearing blue ribbons"; against the slogan "Aldaya Askatu" ("Free Aldaya") they came up with the slogan Euskal Herria Askatu ("Free the Basque Country"), trying to intimidate verbally and also physically (Aulestia, 1998: 72-73).
The circle of those at risk spread like wild fire especially after the end of the Lizarra truce (1998-1999). In addition to politicians from non-nationalist political parties, ETA and its supporters intimidated or killed members of the judiciary, journalists, university professors committed to new forms of
12 From the businessman Julio Iglesias Zamora in 1993 to the prison officer Jose Antonio Ortega Lara in 1996, who was the person held longest by ETA. The ribbon was designed by the Basque painter and sculptor Agustín Ibarrola and resembles a capital "A", the first letter of the word Askatu ("free" in the Basque Language). 13 The socialisation of suffering is doctrinally legitimate in the Oldartzen (HB 1994) and Karramarro I and II (ETA 1995/96) papers, making significant sectors in their area of influence, especially young people, believe that no-one can ignore the conflict that is affecting the Basque Country. Its leaders are convinced that, as the whole population is more or less satisfied with self-government, ETA is responsible for telling the people who their enemies are; who, apart from the State apparatus, is allowing Spain to maintain its hegemony in the Basque Country. The socialization of suffering will make violence, based on persecution, their main strategic tool.
9 mobilization inaugurated by the Forum of Ermua and Basta Ya movements towards the end of the 1990s after the murder of Miguel Angel Blanco 14 and businessmen connected with the high speed train (TGV) project.
In November 2001, the terrorist organisation assassinated José María Lidón, Judge of the Provincial Court of Vizcaya, who did not have bodyguards and who had not appeared on lists seized from arrested ETA members, but who did take self-protection measures. In a statement issued in the newspaper Gara after the attack, the organisation stressed that it was an action directed against "the Spanish justice system" and that "judges who mercilessly punish Basque fighters will not enjoy any type of impunity in the Basque Country. " Since the death of Lidón, judges received widespread protection even if no threatening documentation or evidence against them had been found: "Given my position (Senior Judge of Bilbao), I am the representative of my colleagues and, therefore, I agreed with the police officials [...] to assign protection to all my colleagues, and to worry about me later [...] We had to resort to private security services” (E4).
In turn, following dozens of attacks against the high speed train works and the murder, in 2008, of Inaxio Uria - member of the board of directors of the building company Altuna y Uria, which was involved in the project - businessmen from the sector decided to provide certain executives with protection: "following his death we began to be afraid. That's when I started to have an escort [...] First, the companies decided to contract bodyguards for certain managers. After two or three months, the Regional Ministry of the Interior of the Basque Government and the Ministry of the Interior contacted us. When they started to warn us and to provide information we became more aware of the danger and the level of fear increased significantly” (E10).
The policeman Jorge Díez, an bodyguard for Fernando Buesa, 15 brought to light, with his death, the severe risk that this group was under when they decided to work protecting threatened politicians. Sometimes, the decision may be taken as a way to advance professionally, but for no reason the unintended consequences are extremely serious: "[...] The city council organised some courses to train the municipal police in bodyguard duties, (...) I signed up [...] That's where it all began. Those of us who had signed up for the course and had been protecting people, in my case, for only eight months, were marked [...] I was not classified as a victim, but as someone who is being persecuted” (E1).
However, the person suffering the intimidation does not even have to belong to a group that has been threatened. All you have to do is oppose the harassment strategies by reporting, for example, posters and graffiti near your business in the heart of the old quarters, will label you as a "snitch" with the connotations that implies:
"The type of graffiti that can be seen along the entire street is seen as normal in this street, but they are my walls, the walls of my business, and I think having walls full
14 "Some radicals brought my colleague, Carlos Martínez Gorriarán, and me some sacks of coal to our office (...) A photograph appeared in GARA of my office, with sacks of coal, and our names. And that is more than giving information. That's giving clues (…)” (E6). 15 Both were killed in Victoria in February 2000.
10 of graffiti on either side of the shop window is bad for my business […] Until one day […] decided to take some pictures while they were doing it (…) they threatened to kill him. (...) some days later, more graffiti appeared on either side of the entrance to the shop with the initials of PSOE in the centre of a target and a threat in Basque: 'Txibatoak, egon adi' ('snitches, beware') [...] that was a direct threat (...) [the owner of the business] is insulted and pointed out as an "aggressor of the popular movement' (...) if someone defaces my walls and I get angry and challenge them, it is I who is in the wrong; I am the one getting into trouble. People have come to believe that I am an undercover cop! [...] Even so, they painted another message the next day: ‘ txibatoa sutara’ (‘burn informers’)” (E8).
There are emblematic places, authentic "fiefdoms of radical nationalism" (E11) seeped in blood and fire by anger and signs of intolerance, in the old quarters of the three Basque capitals and in municipalities of the type of Mondragon, Lazcano, 16 Durango or Hernani. Some of the testimonies collected exemplify this. Between 1999 and 2009, the People's House of Durango was the target of numerous attacks. In 2009, a bomb planted by the terrorist organisation destroyed the new installations, with the inconvenience and the costs involved: “(…) we have thrown away large amounts of money and time in building and re-building the installations and other buildings attacked in the Basque Country” (E11).
Joxean Rekondo - former mayor of Hernani for Eusko Alkartasuna (EA) from 1991 to 1999 - emphasizes that there have been innumerable actions against him, ranging from interrupting the swearing-in of the municipal government to the intervention of a large group of hooded people came to the City Hall shouting "Rekondo Entzun, pim, pam, pum". But the key aspect of his testimony lies in the fact that it reveals how the radicals systematically use intimidation and coercion without any of the leading figures of the MLNV speaking up against such actions or supporting him: "The radicals were emboldened, they thought they owned the village [...] youngsters would wear hoods and build barricades, burn cars and containers, provoke the police [...] They had a tremendous capacity for harassment (...) There were no discordant elements among them. None of the representatives of the nationalist left at that time ever held different points of view, not even in private, on the harassment campaign they had organised in the village. None of them ever showed the slightest bit of solidarity after any of the attacks I suffered. They were against us” (E17). He found the counterpoint in the atmosphere of solidarity that developed among those who were under the threat of the sword of Damocles. His experience led Rekondo to write a book in 1998 entitled Bietan Jarrai: 17 War and peace in the streets of the Basque Country. It proposes an interpretation of the socialization of suffering in terms of a long-term strategic mutation from the defensive to the offensive. With the aim of raising the profile of the MLNV as a revolutionary movement capable of conditioning, from a socio-political point of view, the Basque civil and political fabric, as a preliminary issue creating favourable conditions for the start of any negotiations. Only from such a perspective will deeply antithetical realities acquire a complementary nature:
16 Even at times when their candidates were outlawed, the mayor would allow the left-wing nationalists to participate: "[...] we had very tough plenary sessions where they even said: "this can be solved with a couple of shots" […] At each session, they would stand behind me with threatening posters, insulting me, and they have even attacked me when leaving the City Hall” (E12). 17 Bietan Jarrai (Two in one) is the motto that crowns ETA's logo, consisting of a serpent (symbolizing intelligence) wrapped around an axe (which refers to the inter-generational projection of the armed struggle).
11
"How is it possible to govern, appealing to and using the law, the public affairs of major towns and, at the same time, call for disobedience to the same law, defend the sabotage and destruction of public property and create situations against authority that shape their own standards of legality? [...] How can you combine the demands for dialogue and the practice of imposing fear, extortion and suffering? […]” (Rekondo, 1998: 13).
Exercising freedom of expression has been particularly expensive in the Basque Country and the main victims of this have been intellectuals, 18 journalists and the media who have explicitly spoken out against terrorism. 19 In the last decade of the twentieth century, using the expression "the fourth power, the most dangerous," the MLNV summarized the result of an analysis, the political opportunity of which is closely related to the closure of the newspaper Egin by the courts in the summer of 1998 under the accusation of collaborating with armed groups. 20 In the midst of this debate caused by the closure, the radicals interpreted this as another step in the growing repression of Spanish nationalism which aimed at "minimizing their political influence." They soon launched a campaign aimed at creating a new media project, the result of which was the birth of Gara, which can be found on newsstands today.
In their opinion, the media are "the fourth power, the most dangerous", active agents in the conflict because, especially after the Ajuria Enea Pact, they became direct enemies of Basque independence by collaborating with the State. Based on the idea of the conspiracy of the media under the guidance of others, their responses have included denouncing and intimidating newspapers and media companies that do not belong to its environment. Examples of this are the threats from ETA, the posters from its youth sections identifying specific journalists, by name, as targets and characterising them as "terrorists with a pen" as well as demonstrations and graffiti on the doors of unsympathetic papers. While various groups that have been threatened publish a number of statements demanding freedom of speech, ETA makes its warnings good by sending letter bombs to several journalists and murdering people like Jose Luis Lopez de la Calle, a regular columnist for El Mundo and a founding member of Foro de Ermua, and Santiago Oleaga, chief financial officer of Diario Vasco. For Aurora Intsausti, “Those of us who have been covering current affairs, political information, and have not yielded to the blackmail and demands of Herri Batasuna (HB) have been put in the spotlight. There came a time when the world of HB banned media like mine or Juan's - El Pais and Antena 3, respectively - from
18 In November 2000, ETA murdered Ernest Lluch, a anti-Franco militant, former Minister of Health in the first government of Felipe González, professor, essayist and columnist in several newspapers in which he strongly advocated for dialogue as a mechanism to solve the problem of violence and favoured the option, after the failure of Lizarra, of encouraging closer ties between the Socialist Party and the PNV to stimulate cross- agreements. Regarding his feelings as a person under threat, Lluch stated (1996): "I have been followed; I've gone through all these things. I will not go into details because this is an issue about which those of us who have survived so far should not use to make us look like martyrs. And now, of course, I am afraid at times” (Cfr. ALONSO , DOMÍNGUEZ and GARCÍA REY , 2010: 1.091). During the trial, his murderers tried to discredit his figure by classifying him as the "minister of the GAL". 19 From this point of view, Imanol Zubero recalls his career: "My first public stance against ETA terrorism was in 1979. I wrote a letter to the editor of the newspaper, Deia, which was read at my parents' home, who were nationalists, against the campaign that the nationalist left was orchestrating against the Statute of Gernika. (...) Objectively, I, who had been writing a weekly column in El Pais since 1997, was clearly a candidate for this" (E9). 20 Although the High Court subsequently reduced the classification of the crime, several of the main culprits were sentenced to prison.
12 their press conferences. Every time you asked a question they didn't like, you appeared in their papers [...] Any journalist who says he or she has worked without coercion is lying because the attack against us was a warning for all journalists” (E21). 21
3. Consequences
In this section we shall address some of the major effects that victimising events have had on those who suffer them in various areas of daily life. This is a purely analytical differentiation and, consequently, somewhat fictitious because some have an influence on others and mutually feed each other, making any attempt to dissociation almost impossible.
3.1. Physical and psychological effects
This is an issue to which the victims pay different levels of attention in their testimonies, depending whether they have personally been attacked and on their actual life situation. Given that most of the interviews from 2011 involved people who were persecuted and not victims of failed assassination attempts or relatives of victims, the narrative references to physical and psychological effects are relatively scarce.
Still, one can say that the most generally acknowledge negative feelings include the loss of freedom and privacy and a certain amount of fear or paranoia that are difficult to overcome: "I looked under my car each time I went anywhere. I was living in fear, real fear "(E16)," [...] I was in [...] a small town with my daughter in the park [...] I saw a car arrive. Two young men with long hair and sports bags got out. One was looking at me while the other came up [...] When he was about one metre from me, I got up and was about to punch him in the face. It turned out they were only looking for the town's fronton court. At that moment I thought: this is crazy” (E9).
In specific cases, fear can be difficult to control and may lead to depression that requires psychological counselling and treatment. Logically, this situation is more common among the relatives of murder victims and among those who have been attacked and who also have physical consequences. Esther Cabezudo - a councillor for PSE-EE in Portugalete - was attacked, together with her bodyguard, in February 2002. This event has caused a significant physical decline, preventing her from continuing
21 In November 2000, ETA planted a 2 kg bomb, with explosives and shrapnel, at the door of the house of journalist Aurora Intxausti, but only the detonator exploded when her husband opened the door of the house that morning to take their son to the nursery.
13 with her activities and with permanent discomfort that has significantly affected her quality of life. She tries to avoid recalling those events, but can remember even the smallest detail: "I have a continuous ringing noise in my the ears ... plus some episodes of dizziness for which I am under treatment [...] sometimes it's hard for me to talk about the attack [...] I remember exactly how we left home, how we walked down the street." (E19). José Manuel Lizarraga, councillor for the PP in Hondarribia, did not suffer any physical effects after the attack, but he did have nightmares: I would always dream there was a bomb in the house and I had to protect myself behind the mattress of a double bed that I had to lift up and place against the wall because I thought there was a bomb behind the door [...] That's why, in the end, I had to see a psychologist and I was under treatment for a long time. Now, I'm not sure whether I'm all right or not, because they never tell you that” (E22). 22
Facing the trial of the alleged murderers of a family member or of those who have committed an attack to end one's life causes an added state of stress and anxiety by having to face these terrorists and even having to put up with their gestures and laughter: "I had a very bad time with the trial; I was very nervous [...] I was called as a witness, along with the bodyguard who was protecting me at that time and who was also injured" (E19). When it is seen that justice works and the culprits receive a sentence that is proportionate to the offense committed, a feeling of relief ensues; but also a feeling of certain helplessness and loneliness, no matter how well accompanied: “that irreparable grief you have to learn to live with” (E2).
Some people, for example the Korta family, tend to stress that concentrating on work as soon as possible, in this case in the family business, has enabled them to cope better with difficult moments: "I have to admit that we (his brothers and him) very soon focused on the company. [...] The very need to keep the company going [...] was a refuge, a way out for us, although it was tough having to go back each day to the place where he was murdered" (E20). Another minority opinion is that of changing one's ideological identity, going from a very deep feeling of being Basque to feel some type of animosity towards anything that has any kind of relationship: "I used to feel Basque and other things, which I now hate. I also used to be like that, but being like that damages the lives of a lot of people. You don't realise that one day it may be you and when it happens, you only encounter indifference ” (E5).
That "don't realize that it may be you one day" can provide a plausible meaning to the poem by the Protestant Pastor Martin Niemöller, often attributed to Bertolt Brecht, which provides an explicit denunciation of the consequences of non-resistance against tyrannical regimes from the beginning:
22 Even if there is no attack, being followed can also generate a particular type of tension: "A car, driven by a hooded person who took photographs of us, followed us from the moment we left Lazcano until we reached San Sebastian and the Ertzaintza (Regional Police) stopped him. Those were very distressing moments (...) I was worried they were going to shoot. Once we finally got to safety and I was able to get out of the car, I fainted from the accumulated tension (...) After that I had a very difficult time. I had to leave the Basque Country for a time. I considered giving up (her position as councillor) and leaving because it was very hard. I saw death very closely ” (E12).
14
"First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, I did not speak out, because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew, Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me". 23
Perhaps then the only balm to heal the psychological wounds is feeling that one has not caved in to blackmail and terrorist threats: “we also wanted to show the murderers that they were not going to achieve their goal; that we were here and we were going to continue doing what my father had started and that we were not going to give in” (E20).
3.2. Impact on the family: generalisation of a feeling of guilt
The first reaction to the perception and objectification of a threat is to try to keep it from the family so that they won't worry, while, at the same time, having a certain feeling of guilt for the fact that your situation may affect your loved ones in one way or another: "I don't tell my family everything, I have to be careful so as not to cause them problems with that group" (E13); "Before becoming a police officer, I used to work in a factory and I think I should have stayed there because they could have been killed because of me" (E5). 24
Guilt can be intensified in several ways. It may create problems with your children because they, especially in complicated stages such as their adolescence, do not feel capable of distancing themselves from the sometimes suffocating influence of the environment in which they are living, where certain ideological choices are considered treason and being pointed at in the street: It was difficult for my daughter, when she was 13 or 14, to understand me. It was hard to talk to her. She was born here and since she was little they would insult her by saying that her mother was Spanish. Many things that are difficult to explain have happened, and this is something you have to go through to understand. Today she appreciates what I do” (E3). Another possibility is that, faced with a traumatic experience, children may blame their parents for their victimization status,
23 After initially supporting Hitler's anti-Communist, anti-Semitic and nationalist policies, Neimöller reacted against racial revolution and founded, along with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and in opposition to the German Evangelical Church, the Confessional Church, which emphasizes respect for church autonomy from the State and the denial of the legitimacy of totalitarian regimes. He was detained in various concentration camps from 1937 to 1945. 24 "(When they burned the car) I thought a lot about my wife, my family. I thought a lot about my little daughter's car seat. I saw it had been totally burned inside the car. And it makes you think…” (E11).
15 intensifying, without realising, the inversion of ethical categories between victims and victimizers:
"(...) He had some words with my mother. He said "you've screwed up our lives". We are six brothers and sisters and some of them accused her of putting them at risk and damaging their reputation. They accused her by saying: ‘ you should have thought better when you got into this because now we are all in danger’. From my point of view, this is the cowardly reaction of this society reflected in my family (…) I have messed up my own life" (E22).
One thing that reveals the drama of what has been happening in the Basque Country is that, due to the intergenerational reproduction of the spiral of violence, children and young people have been born and raised in the shadow of their parent's bodyguards. In some cases, the extent to which becoming accustomed to an experience, however terrible it is, causes it to be seen as normal or natural in the mind and in the speech of children. "But you realise that they assume it as normal. I remember one day she said: "Patxi (one of the guards we had at that time) told me that before starting- up you have to look under the car so as not to run over a cat, but I know it's to see if there's a bomb". This is disturbing” (E9). Or, on the other hand, the children call upon the person who has been threatened to change residence so that they can be normal. "I was assigned bodyguards in 2000. My oldest daughter, who was born in 1998, does not know what it is like to live without a bodyguard. The same can be said of my younger daughter, who was born later. My oldest daughter told me: Aita, let's go to La Rioja where we can be normal. These statements affect you a lot […]” (E11). The feeling of guilt is only blurred when the offspring is living outside the Basque Country.
A change of residence is a chance to break the vicious circle of living under threat. Something that always has a great influence on that decision is the anguish over the situation of children; what they will feel if they stay and how they will adapt to a radically new environment. Here are two statements that reflect opposing views. After suffering an attack, the couple decide to leave the Basque Country: "We didn't want our son to grow up in such a rotten society. If we had brought him up here, he would have grown in an environment without freedom and full of hatred and bitterness […] (leaving) also had a good side to it: being able to speak freely knowing that, while other people may not share your views, they will respect you and even be your friend […]” (E18). Meanwhile, our next interlocutor insists that, although at first he was tempted to leave because his family wanted to leave, in the end he decided to stay and continue his active membership in defence of a violence free scenario: "The first reaction was to leave the Basque Country. We had a new-born girl [...] But in the end we decided not to leave. We had been living there all our lives, we are part of this, of the struggle for peace and we had to stay here”. What we did do was look for a place of respite to go at the weekends […]” (E9).
Placed in the position of having to leave their position, there are statements that display the negative reaction of the victims: "My kids asked me to drop everything when I got a parcel bomb during the first truce [...] my children were frightened and they said: 'Mum, please leave all this', but I said: 'I can't leave. Your father gave his life and I am going to carry on with what
16 he did. Don't worry, I am going to continue’[…]” (E13). But sometimes, family pressure is such that people decide to leave their jobs, even if only temporarily. This occurred with a significant number of mayors of various Basque municipalities, which meant that in the second half of the 1990s and the first half of 2000s, non-nationalist parties had difficulties in completing their electoral lists or achieving institutional presence in line with their weight in the polls. This situation led to some significant figures in the academic, social intelligentsia and media world and from the Church to join the lists of these parties as a symbolic ethical and civic act to display their support for the political forces that were directly and indirectly threatened by terrorism.
"At one point, around 2001, my wife told me she couldn't take it anymore [...]. In the end I resigned from my position as council member. By the way, they were unable to appoint a replacement because at that time none of my colleagues on the list wanted to join the city council. We spent two years without a council seat in that term” (E11).
From the perspective of violence, the reality of Basque families affected by it is not monolithic. There are homes that include several victims, either people who have been killed or threatened, while in other cases the situation is such where victims and perpetrators coexist in the same environment, reaching extremes of cruelty, such as "it was the very cousin of my husband [Ramón Baglietto], Eugenio Etxebeste - Antxon - who ordered his assassination [...] there are others who belong to that environment [...]" (E13). From the testimonies, one of the most dramatic cases is that in which the main character in a family highlights how the ideological divide makes some of its members begin to harass and threaten: "we are seven brothers and sisters of all ideologies in my family. But I only have trouble with my two sisters. They feel that I am a disgrace to my family for representing the Partido Popular. I have brought a lawsuit against one of them because she has said she will kill me if ETA doesn't do it first [...] The other one told me that ETA should kill me" (E15).
3.3. Impact in the labour/professional field
Several of those interviewed indicated the serious difficulties encountered in finding a job when they had bodyguards 25 and, in certain places, because their ideological affiliation could stigmatize the contracting company: "(employers) do not want problems and having someone like us working can mark the company and harm it" (E15). By being repeatedly rejected, one of the informants ends up publishing the following in a local newspaper: "Councillor-victim of terrorism is seeking a job consistent with the presence of bodyguards" (E22). In some cases, the victims find employment within the very circle of the party to which they belong.
25 "I have tried everything, I have accepted any job that came my way. Not being able to work and take money home because I am a council member is very unpleasant. For example, I asked my council for a job as a car park supervisor and they said: "Not if you have an escort, when you no longer have one, we'll talk it over". But I am still a target for ETA, I still appear in their papers, what am I supposed to do?" (E22).
17 On the other hand, when one suffers an attack related to the position or work performed, the psychological consequences can be so great that the person is forced to apply for sick leave - afraid and uncertain of whether they will be able to return and in what conditions -,26 request a change in the type of job or a change of location to reduce the feeling of vulnerability and, in extreme situations, apply for total disability. The following statements illustrate the variability of the casuistry stated.
“I was given a medical certificate stating that I could not work with motorbikes, traffic duties, because I felt very insecure” (E1).
"I couldn't work, my blood pressure was too high due to PTSD [...] I had to see psychologists and psychiatrists because I wasn't well [...] I went on sick leave [...] and, finally, I was classified as permanently disabled" (E19) .
Those who denounce the lack of support in their jobs do so underlining their perception of a certain level of complicity in the institution where they work or among some of their peers or the lack of courage and commitment in delegitimising terrorism influenced by ideological issues. A local policewoman stresses how the enemy is within, at times: "people's indifference really hurts. I can't talk about it with anybody at work because it's just not done. There are many people who support the terrorists [...] That list belonging to ETA only included those of us from the first group of bodyguards [...] only someone from inside could have got that information, it wasn't public” (E1).
Among the testimonies, there are also some of particular significance given their impact on the professional-labour aspects of university professors, the three journalists, a judge and the manager of a construction company building the High Speed Railway. In the first case two significantly different views can be detected: a) that of someone who believes that, despite the discomfort that the presence of guards on campus might raise a priori , the situation has been quite normal and a lot of support has been given ("when we go to the faculty's refectory I join several other teachers and my escorts come along too and there's no problem" [E9]), b) that of those who, on the other hand, are convinced of the lack of empathy by an institution dedicated to knowledge and research and the existence of a real fracture within the faculty that encourages the isolation of the people exposed to threats.
"[...] it seems that the wrongs committed against the nationalist left are more serious than offences committed against college professors who are threatened, who require bodyguards and replacement teachers [...] The best that can happen in relation to us is that we stop coming, because if you don't come you stop being a problem. You can have the feeling that for some the threat situation is nothing but mere fiction [...] and as one colleague told me, the teachers who have been threatened are a privileged group because we don't have to teach [...]” (E6).
The attacks on the media, reported by international organisations that defend freedom of expression, have led, as we have outlined above, to some journalists, intensely involved in political issues, to leave the region to continue with their work.
26 "If I came across those that support them, I don't think I would be able to control myself. I think that what they have made me go through would make me behave with hatred” (E5).
18 "It was a time when I wanted to leave [...] The told me to think about it; two years passed and they asked me whether I still wanted to leave. I had already made a decision, and I decided to leave” (E18).
But they have also created an impression that some television and mass media companies could have done more to delegitimise terrorism (E2), an issue that has periodically been under intense political scrutiny.
Those who perform functions of a judicial nature have often suffered the pressures of the MLNV environment when making judgments against suspected members of ETA or against youths involved in street violence. The respondent claims that the threat has not influenced his professional career, "I could stand the pressure" and is convinced that "whoever was afraid or influenced, when exercising their responsibilities, would have to go" (E4); some of his colleagues left after the widespread introduction of bodyguards after the murder of Lidón.
The events surrounding the High Speed Train project bring to mind other experiences from the past, such as those that took place in relation to Lemóniz in the second half of the 1970s or the Leizarán Motorway, in the late 1980s, where claims, based on instrumentalizing the green cause and assimilating national sovereignty and territory, were seriously marred by acts of sabotage and even mortal attacks on certain executives (for example, José María Ryan and Angel Pascual in Lemóniz and Inaxio Uría in the case of the high speed train). In a situation like the current economic downturn, companies cannot afford to give up major infrastructure projects, despite the psychological strain that such a decision entails: "It involved a very significant investment and we depend on this type of investment to survive. For a local business it's a matter of necessity. There were companies that didn't want to get involved because of the terrorist threat but they were from outside the region. Some people here have been psychologically affected by this” (E10). In addition, be under the spotlight of violent groups involves heavy spending on extraordinary security measures and having to live within a hostile environment, especially in certain municipalities where pressure was exercised on landowners to state their disagreement and thus delay or even halt the works:
“Not only in the payment of escorts, but also [...] to shield the work against all types of attack and sabotage [...] It is an exaggerated situation that had never arisen before [...] we have seen how the owners of the land that was expropriated have been threatened [...] even regular suppliers were afraid to get involved [...]” (E10).
3.4. Social reactions and tendencies towards (self)isolation
Although the first demonstrations against the violence of ETA dates back to 1978, a series of circumstances related to the ethical and political weakness
19 of democracy 27 attenuated the reaction of Basque society because they have encouraged an anti-repression mentality that is deeply installed in the Basque Country and nourish the victimization of the radical groups. The silence and indifference began to be eroded with the appearance of certain groups, a slow and difficult process that culminated with the consolidation of Gesto por la Paz and its mobilisation strategy in the context of the creation, based on the Ajuria Enea Pact (1988), of a common basic position among the various political forces on violence.
The demonstration against the killing of Aizpiri brought together, on June 2, 1988, about three thousand people in the square of Unzaga in Eibar under the slogan Elgoibar against ETA. “The reaction to [...] two murders, Sebastian Aizpiri and Patxi Zabaleta (...) confirmed the existence of a new attitude among ordinary citizens (...) The neighbours of the two victims took to the streets in mass and openly clashed with HB supporters in town council meetings, actions for which there were not many precedents” (Domínguez, 2000: 351). His sister remembers the impact the murder of Sebastian had on people with different political sensitivities and the degree of pressure to which HB was subjected, 28 but also the fear felt by people who were close to her brother and who could become subjects of economic extortion, some of whom quietly left, increasing a "Basque diaspora" that is very difficult to quantify.
Over the years, the visible level of social solidarity with victims' families and, indeed, with people who had been threatened was very different depending on factors such as the way in which the victim had been classified, the nearness of the relationship and the place where the events occur. In general, the greatest support comes from those closest and more intimate, especially the family, while fear, indifference (and even a certain feeling of complicity by act or omission with the perpetrators) appears more easily in different groups, such as residents, groups of friends, municipality, etc.
Consciously or unconsciously, social discourse can degenerate to a degree of ethical perversion, to the point that people think or even say that the problem is somehow generated by the people who have been threatened, perhaps because the violent groups have tended to blackmail citizens based on their fear and, perhaps, sometimes due to the saturation of the police. Here are two witnesses who argue such conclusions:
"So, it's your problem because you got into this mess. It's surprising. But it is a fairly widespread opinion; if you don't want anything to happen to you, don't get into trouble […]” (E6).
"They think that somehow you have caused your situation. There is one neighbour who told us that he had already gone through this same situation. That he could not even go outside. They say that things were much worse in the past. That things are rather quiet now, that it's only graffiti. But, now what? Do they have to burn the
27 As centralising and standardising effort of the Organic Law of the Harmonization of the Autonomy Process (LOAPA) after the failed coup of 23-Feb, we have the implementation of the ZEN Plan (Special Zone North) and the operations of the Antiterrorist Liberation Groups (GAL). 28 “They even paid for an advertisement in a newspaper to say they regretted the murder [...] journalists from Egin , a newspaper that defended and gave voice to the terrorist organisation, came to town to ask people to see if someone said something that linked my brother in any way with drugs; anything to give credence to that slanderous campaign they had orchestrated against him in the months before his assassination.” (E2).
20 place down for it to be taken seriously? [...] The police have treated us very badly. They have even told us that if we didn't like the street, we should leave” (E8).
For decades, the people supporting the MLNV have controlled the streets. This means, especially in certain municipalities governed by their electoral brands, that the threat exists on a daily basis: “yes, there are people at the plenary sessions who, without saying anything, make gestures with their hands like a gun, pull faces or stare at me during my speeches to try to make me nervous. Furthermore, after some plenary sessions, when I come out, people milling around the door have pushed me or insulted me” (E7). Then, living under escort passes from normal - because many people do not even realise -, a fact that represents a major ethical flaw, to being trivialised by using expressions such as "Look at him, he's taken everywhere in the car!" (E6).
People who have been threatened are aware that their life is not normal, because their freedom has been severely restricted; a limitation that affect society as a whole even if society is not aware of it. "When I left the office, first all the exits had to be checked. I had to call a person to perform any normal activity of my daily life” (E10). Many of the respondents feel the closeness and affection of family and friends and even the proximity of people with which they had no previous contact - "I can say that I have not felt that loneliness that other people who have gone through violent situations may have felt. Quite the contrary. My inner circle showed me great affection […]” (E17)–, however, in certain cases, indifference and even rejection are more difficult to accept because they can come from lifelong friends. This is what a regional policeman said: “The group of friends I used to go out with for a drink to the bar, with whom I used to watch football matches, don't want to see me after what happened. They look the other way so as not to have to greet me or they simply cross to the other side of the street. That indifference displayed by the people hurts [...] the people around us are terrible; they hurt me more than those who planted the bomb” (E5). 29 In other words, social isolation is promote by the bodyguards in order to provide a better protection service, but it is also promoted by society and the groups with which the victim used to go out: "there are people I used to go out with who have stopped going out with me because they were afraid something would happen to them if they were with me. And also, when I go to places I realise that people look at me as if I were a pariah because I have bodyguards. They look down on you [...] I have been through the situation of telling someone who I am and seeing that person turn round and leave. I hope it's due to fear, not rejection” (E12).
Sometimes, isolation also feeds on itself. You decide it is not worthwhile having bodyguards 30 or you do not want someone else to be stigmatized because of their relationship with you: "[...] I am to blame, because, in many cases, so as not to place your friends and family at risk, you stay
29 "It's very hard to see how people who studied with me up to the end of Secondary School, colleagues and classmates of a lifetime, have stopped talking to me. They keep out of the way because they know that any kind of relationship with me could be damaging for them […]” (E7). 30 “In the end, the conclusion I reached after all these years, because I can't go out without the protection, is that I stay at home more and go out less […] I find ways of doing things at home […]” (E4).
21 away. And that is counterproductive for those living under threat” (E7). An alternative way is for people under threat to develop inbred social practices, being confined in their own ideological spaces, especially when they are persecuted because of their political responsibilities in non-nationalist political parties: "[...] You can only be with people who belong to the party and party colleagues if you want to socialise, go out for a drink. That's the worst part for me because it limits your personal and family relationships […]” (E7).
To feel that they have their own life, victims need to escape from their escorts at times - for example, to a second home outside the Basque Country, although there is a tendency to get used to their company even if that requires a certain amount of resignation, especially if we refer to young people: "I believe human beings get used to everything (even people who have been kidnapped come up with a way of surviving). We are survivors [...] A few years ago, when the truce was announced, I bought a motorbike. I thought we would be able to get rid of the escorts and that would be my new way of getting about. I never used it again” (E22).
In the most intense times of the street violence and the persecution violence, the response by residents to the burning of premises, for example, Community Centres (remember that the PP does not have offices at street level in the Basque Country for this reason) have in some cases been negative. The community has even come to demand they leave the area and move somewhere else where they do not endanger the life or physical safety of residents. This, however terrible as it may seem, makes the victims of the attacks feel a certain sense of guilt; turning victims into perpetrators and condemning them to ostracism: "After the 2009 bomb, they put up posters asking us to leave [...] They offered to purchase the premises. They didn't want to live above the PSE-EE headquarters. Some, with good manners, other with bad manners, told us that we had to find a place on the outskirts of town "where we wouldn't place other people at risk" [...]. They didn't blame the perpetrators of the attacks for what had happened. For them, we were to blame for their discomfort, we were putting them in danger […]” (E11). These are experiences that confirm certain social perceptions on these issues described in opinion polls. According to the Youth Portraits survey. Democratic culture, half of Basque youths aged 15 to 29 would not want a member of ETA for a neighbour, but they would not want a person threatened by the terrorist group either (Sociological Studies Office, 2011: 7). 31
In municipalities that have become iconic symbols for the MLNV, the social response to terrorism has been minimal and even some store owners have decided to leave. "Public opinion in general has certainly changed, but there have been no changes that have been expressed by means of demonstrations in the street." (E17) and any reaction (e.g, Hernani Allkartasunean-Living in Freedom in Hernani or protests against kidnappings during the 1990s) is somewhat phagocytized in an atmosphere of obsession
31 In fact, those who are under threat are in third place in the ranking of least desirable neighbours, just behind neo-Nazis or extreme right wing groups and ETA activists.
22 in establishing free spaces, i.e. areas where the radical struggle approaches and strategies are dominant and without opposition (Jarrai, 1995): "We were few, but we were people who were well-known in the village, people with great courage [...] neighbours wanting to cope with that situation of harassment [...] the radicals would stand opposite us when we were demonstrating. On occasions, when the police were not present, they attacked us.” (E17).
Despite the time elapsed and the socio-political changes, the memories that some respondents have of the social reactions to murders, like in the case of Jesus Maria Pedrosa (Durango) and Isaias Carrasco (Mondragon), exude a degree of outrage at the lack of involvement by their neighbours. In both cases, they highlight that most of the protesters came from other places. Perhaps fear was still a determining force: “I clearly remember how, from the head of the demonstration, I could see people looking on from balconies, hidden behind curtains, people who were afraid to come down” (E7). Beyond the lack of involvement by neighbours, politicians have also been accused, especially those from the nationalist field for not becoming decisively involved in dignifying and enacting the memory of the victims at municipal level, "in this town, hardly anybody remembers the victims", and the MLNV electoral brands for keeping photographs of ETA prisoners in the streets extending the legal limit as far as possible. This is interpreted by the victims as a true " wall of shame” (E7).
Remember that under the Covenant for Civil Liberties and Against Terrorism (2000) and the controversial reform of the Political Parties Law (2002), the Basque Government - headed for the first time in the history of the Autonomous Region by socialist Lehendakari (First Minister) - has applied the so-called "zero tolerance" policy against violence, a strategy that includes the elimination of ETA iconography from the streets. This has taken place after decades during which revealing images of an obscene cult in favour of those supporting violence and death, without any public questioning, abounded (Calleja, 2006: 93). The debate has acquired a profound political and media resonance, uncovering the dialectical opposition between: a) those who, from the nationalist side, consider that the exhibitions of photographs display a desire to denounce a prison policy issue (linked to the dispersion of prisoners) rather than glorifying terrorism, which is an offence, and b) those who feel it exalts crimes and is a moral outrage against the victims. In a resolution applied to this case, the Supreme Court stressed, in June 2011, against a previous ruling by the National Court, that the exhibition of photographs of prisoners is done to "praise terrorist acts or the perpetrators". 32
The counterpoint in the form of affection or solidarity is found in the testimony of Ibai, son of Jose Mari Korta. In his view, after his father's death, the show of support was so intense and sincere that it overwhelmed him. He claims to have had the opportunity to discover the human side of people who were traditionally sympathetic with the violence and who seemed to have realised a certain contradiction on account of this murder:
32 Although it felt the need to exonerate those responsible for the Bilbao festivities as it was unable to prove their implication in placing the said images.
23 "they apologised and situations arose where you almost had to help them because they felt so bad for being close to the terrorists" (E20). The question that immediately arises is about the reasons why, for some people, certain deaths are unacceptable while other are not: It depends on who the victim is and on his ideological affinities? Or, is it related to the time when it occurs and to the situation ETA and its radical environment are going through?
Victims perceive that the feeling of hatred has made those at risk to feel that they are not acknowledge as human beings whose dignity is being violated ("I can't understand why this generation between 20 and 30 years of age still sees us like that. They hate everything that is not theirs, they can't see beyond that” [E3]). But, in more than one case, either through complicity or cowardice, part of society tends to equate the deaths, that of the victim and that of the offender who becomes a victim of his own violence (Bilbao, 2009). So, at a time when ETA has declared a permanent ceasefire and the MLNV has reached electoral levels that will allow it even struggle to become the main political force at the next regional elections, the victims are starting to voice at least two key issues:
• That supporters are not making a critical rereading of their own past, of their historical responsibility in promoting and legitimizing violence. • That the biggest risk is that the population, prey to collective amnesia, has trusted the alliances of Bildu and Amaiur, ultimately considering them authentic defenders and witnesses of peace.
"[The nationalist left] does not want to condemn history, to criticise their past; I am concerned that they do not want to change their political discourse that states that all these years of violence have been a period that had to happen, and that the current situation is not a break with the above but a continuity, a new phase, achieved thanks to the previous stages [...] I understand that if people voted for Bildu in the May elections, it was mainly because they thought that voting for Bildu would bring peace. And this raises a very devilish question. In the end, what this idea implies is that the political strength of the nationalist left is necessary to maintain peace. This is to accept a kind of political blackmail […]” (E17).
4. Brief notes for reflection
This sociological report is only a first approach to the realities of victimization in the Basque Country caused by decades of terrorist violence aimed at achieving certain political objectives. It has been prepared after ETA had declared a permanent ceasefire, but a broad range of the 22 testimonies were collected before that date and therefore display more intense sense of drama, especially in the case of those who have suffered violent persecution.
Reading the interviews allows us to uncover, at least as a hypothesis that will have to be verified and refined in future studies, part of the perverse mechanism that led to the use of violence as a chronic system and that we shall explain in the following paragraphs.
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• The victims, before, during and after the events that made them victims, tend to be subject to alienation or reification processes that rob them of their human dignity. In the wake of such processes, an abusive use is made of stereotypes, such as considering any person who, by act or omission and without possibility of avoiding it, contravenes the objectives of the radical environment, as an informer or as a person in favour of Spain: members of State Security Forces, activists and representatives of non-nationalist parties and trade unions, employers who refuse to pay the economic extortion, bodyguards for public officials, journalists dedicated to political news who have a critical approach and do not promote the MLNV; or citizens who react against their attempt to control society. • This alienation process only occurs if the subjects-agents have been socialized among people who think differently or play certain roles and between enemies with an excluding symbolic ideological universe that is based on a feeling of hatred. • Victimization not only happens when a family member is murdered or in the event of aggressions. It creates a vicious re-victimising circle with unfulfilled claims for reparation and justice, the heroic return offenders to their places of origin and where society - and even the victim's inner circle - looks the other way (often for fear of stigmatization) or falls into a perverse tendency to equalise deaths, that of the victim and of the perpetrators who end up falling prey to the consequences of their choice of embracing violence. In emblematic locations for the radicals, re-victimisation has been particularly cruel. • The daily lives of the victims have been seriously affected at all levels and some personal projects truncated. From an ethical perspective, the most serious is that a feeling of guilt has become their Achilles heel in particular with regard to the consequences that the situation they are living has on their families. Remember how the intergenerational transmission of violence means that some children and young Basques have not known, until now, what it means to interact freely with their parents, without the shadow of an escort. • In spite of the images that some have interestedly tried to generate, most victims do not live from their condition as such and also have difficulties in finding work, either because of their mental and physical limitations, the limited solidarity of the working environment or because they have bodyguards. • Although, in the face of death, the social consciousness of rejection has been gradually in crescendo, the reaction to intimidation and threat has not crossed the line of political correctness. Basque society is not aware of the ethical and civic cost or that, just as freedom has been restricted in certain sectors; it has also been restricted for the entire civil fabric, because it directly affects the exercise of democratic pluralism. In some environments, the underlying logic of the poem by Martin Niemöller may have persisted for too long, not realizing that one can also be affected, or the need to establish a kind of cordon sanitaire to prevent contagion, attitudes that have enhanced the isolation of victims.
25 Bibliography
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Bilbao, December 31, 2011.
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