Batasuna

Batasuna (Basque for 'unity', pronunciation [bata'ɕuna]) was the successor to the left-wing party Herri Batasuna (Popular Union, HB), founded in 1978 in the Spanish Basque Country. Batasuna was founded on 23 May 2001 and banned in Spain in 2003. It remained active in the Basque Country and Navarre despite the ban, including in the public sphere, and investigating judge Fernando Grande-Marlaska again temporarily banned Batasuna's activities in February 2006. In France, the party continued to exist until its self-dissolution on 3 January 2013.

Shortly after its founding, Batasuna was suspected of acting as the political arm of the Basque underground organization ETA. After an organizational or financial link to ETA could not be sufficiently proven, the party was banned by the courts on 17 March 2003 on the basis of the Political Parties Act of 2002 (Ley de Partidos of 2002). The EU lists Batasuna as a terrorist organisation and part of ETA.

Since ETA was largely crushed by the Spanish and French authorities in 2007, Batasuna has lost all significance. Its political legacy is the electoral alliance Bildu.

History

HB, the predecessor of Batasuna, was founded in Pamplona in 1978. Herri Batasuna was an amalgamation of several socialist and separatist organizations that were also united by their rejection of the Spanish Constitution of 1978.

Joseba Permach and Arnaldo Otegi act as spokespersons for the banned party. Otegi was an active ETA member until 1981; he belonged to the disbanded breakaway ETA-pm (political-military).

Batasuna and its predecessor denied links to ETA. Several attempts to ban the party failed during the 1980s and 1990s because organic links could not be proven. In alliance with other parties, Batasuna also supported the Basque regional government for some time in the Euskal Herritarrok (Basque Citizens, EH) coalition, which depended on it as a minority government.

The conservative Spanish government under José María Aznar had always tried to ban HB and later Batasuna. Already before, the chairman and senate deputy of HB, Santiago Brouard, had fallen victim in November 1984 in Bilbao to an assassination attempt by the so-called Antiterrorist Liberation Groups (GAL), financed and covered by high officials of the socialist government under Felipe González. Starting in 1998, the investigating judge at the National Court of Justice, Baltasar Garzón, took legal action against Batasuna. Several newspapers, magazines, organizations, parties and electoral lists have since been temporarily banned by him. In a case concluded in 2005 against the youth organizations Jarrai, Haika and Segi, the judges at the National Court of Justice, a special court in Madrid, saw no subordination to ETA.

On October 5, 2007, the Spanish police arrested 22 high-ranking members of Batasuna, practically the entire leadership of the organization, in their most serious raid to date. The raid took place in the Basque town of Segura, where Batasuna's executive committee was holding a secret meeting, according to media reports. Those arrested, including Joseba Permach, were accused of supporting a terrorist organization. The Interior Minister of the Basque Country, Javier Balza, described the police action as counterproductive, as the party still has a lot of support among the population and political dialogue is being undermined in this way.

Batasuna mural in Pasaia (on the left an ETA graffiti sprayed with a stencil)

Status and elections

On August 26, 2002, the parliament passed the new party law, whereby Garzón also temporarily suspended Batasuna's party rights for an initial period of three years. The law had been passed by summary procedure and was heavily criticized by human rights groups such as Amnesty International. The party-banning procedure was officially initiated when Batasuna only deplored but did not explicitly condemn an attack by ETA on August 4, 2002, as required by the new law. The party was officially banned in March 2003. The ban was retroactively extended to the dissolved parties HB and EH.

Supporters of the left-wing independence movement then set up the Autodeterminaziorako Bilgunea (Collection for Self-Determination, AuB) in order to be able to participate in the elections. Since people who had often run for Batasuna or EH many years before the party ban ran for AuB, AuB was also banned by the Supreme Court. A special chamber for party banning proceedings had been established at the Supreme Court under the new Law on Political Parties. Batasuna called on its voters to vote invalidly. (That same month, the U.S. government included Batasuna in its list of terrorist organizations). Batasuna was added to the EU list of terrorist organizations at the request of the Spanish government.

The banning process was repeated in the 2004 European Parliament elections, when a list called Herritarren Zerrenda ("Citizens' List") was banned in Spain before the elections, but ran in France. However, due to the small population in the French Basque Country, this list did not enter the EU Parliament. The list had called for invalid voting in the Spanish Basque Country and celebrated the 12% of invalid ballots cast as a political success. (In previous European elections, the invalid percentage was always less than one percent). As there were no former Batasuna or EH candidates among the "Citizens' List" candidates, the Special Chamber had to justify the ban otherwise. It was argued that the list was aimed at the same electorate as Batasuna and that its candidates were members of the left-wing independence movement.

The same reasoning is behind the current party line of the conservative Partido Popular (PP), which since May 2007 has been calling for an automatic ban on all lists of candidates representing Basque left-wing nationalist positions (izquierda abertzale) in elections.

For the regional elections in the Autonomous Basque Country on 17 April 2005, Batasuna issued an electoral recommendation for the PCTV-EHAK, the Communist Party of the Basque Territories. The party had been registered and approved under the Aznar government before Batasuna was banned in 2002. The party adopted the minimal program of Aukera Guztiak (All Options). The previously newly founded Citizens' List wanted to guarantee that all sectors of society would be represented in the new regional parliament. Aukera Guztiak had been banned because candidates had been in contact with the head of the legal left-wing nationalist trade union LAB, which is close to Batasuna. EHAK entered the Basque parliament with 12.5% of the vote and won nine seats, two more than Batasuna had previously won. Critics claim EHAK is infiltrated by Batasuna. Aralar won 2.3% of the vote and entered the Basque parliament with one deputy. On February 8, 2008, EHAK, like the traditional left-wing nationalist party ANV (Acción Nacionalista Vasca), was banned by judge Baltasar Garzón for a period of three years, thus preventing it from standing in the 2008 elections.

Batasuna had made a proposal to the Socialists for a peaceful solution after the Conservatives lost the election. Under the title Orain Herria - Orain Bakea (Now the Land - Now the Peace), the party had gathered more than 15,000 people in the cycling stadium of Donostia-San Sebastián in November 2004. The Spanish socialist head of government José Luis Zapatero (PSOE) tentatively accepted the proposal. He was given permission by the Spanish parliament in May 2005 to negotiate a peaceful settlement of the conflict with ETA. However, parts of ETA took advantage of the ceasefire to reorganize their logistics. In December 2006, a series of large-scale attacks began with an explosive device at Madrid's Barajas airport. In October 2007, after negotiations had failed in such a way, almost all of Batasuna's senior representatives were arrested for violating the law on political parties. They were accused of having continued their "illegal activity" in the banned party.