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From first blood to ceasefire

Feb 12th 2011, 16:30 by The Economist online

IN JANUARY Euskadi Ta Askatasuna ("Basque Homeland and Freedom"), the Basque separatist terror group better known as ETA, announced that a ceasefire it had declared in September was "permanent". The Spanish government responded sceptically; ETA's last "permanent" ceasefire lasted less than a year.

The group's latest declaration was made from a position of weakness. Sophisticated police operations have resulted in a string of arrests in recent years, sapping the group’s manpower and morale; the Spanish government’s decision to ban parties associated with ETA has left violent Basque separatism marginalised politically; and the group has struggled to find younger members to replenish its ranks.

ETA's ceasefire declaration was, in part, the result of pressure from Basque nationalists who have lost faith in the efficacy of the violent struggle. A new Basque-separatist party, Sortu, has explicitly distanced itself from ETA and is hoping that judges will allow it to register.

ETA has been responsible for 58 deaths since 2000; in the late 1970s it regularly killed more than that in a single year. In the course of its 52-year campaign to create an independent Basque homeland, charted in the timeline below, it has taken over 820 lives.

 

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A Basque wrote:
Jan 14th 2011 8:11 GMT

Reading that "ETA's ceasefire declaration was, in part, the result of pressure from Basque nationalists who have lost faith in the efficacy of the violent struggle. It was not always thus." may be misleading for those who do not know the reality of the Basque Country. Misleading for some, and a big insult to the vast majority of Basque nationalists who have always opposed the use of violence in politics. It would have been fairer and more accurate for a media like The Economist to write "pressure from Basque radical left" (or historical left)instead of "pressure from Basque nationalists". It is only the so-called radical or historical left (Batasuna world) the one that appears to slowly have lost faith in the efficiency of the use of terror. For the rest of the Basque nationalist parties (EAJ-PNV, Eusko Alkartasuna, Aralar), the use of violence was never an option. Thank you.

kentiwari wrote:
Jan 14th 2011 9:35 GMT

God Bless all those, fighting for peace and tranquility, in this-

wretched world of our ?

God bless us all :-Ken Tiwari Oxford UK.

Daniel M3 wrote:
Jan 18th 2011 8:30 GMT

Another Basque here. I agree with the article and disagree with what the previous poster said about our region. I am Basque from basque ancestors and my region happily belongs to Spain for over 500 years. The so called "nationalists" are people who enjoyed ETA shaking the tree for them to pick the apples. In other words, they never faced ETA but just "said" they disagreed with violence, but with a double mouth and never taking any social action to face with real determination the bleeding that has taken more than 1000 lives in over 50 years of pure terror and fascism in our region. We, those who want to be part of Spain, never felt safe, and never felt for a second supported or protected by those so-called "nationalists", which is a funny way of saying "I hate Spain but for my own economy I am not sure if it would be a good idea to be independent when being so small and out of the EU, losing the sympathy of the Spanish market for our exports". Meaning, nationalists have enjoyed the +1000 killings of ETA but they think they are better people than them, usually because they are middle class as opposed to the working classes of ETA and the radical left of this region.

Please don't listen and don't believe a word to those so called "nationalists". They benefited from our deaths and terror. From our hundreds of thousands of Spanish-Basques forced to leave the Basque region scaping from constant extortion, daily terror and death.

Again, good article, even a bit too kind to them.

iagoba wrote:
Jan 19th 2011 7:02 GMT

I am against ETA, yet that does not mean I have to change my mind to please people who don´t think like me.Most of the people in the Basque Country don´t feel confortable being part of Spain and the main reason for this is not Spain itself, it is people who try to mix up Basque language, culture and eveything that sounds to Basque with terrorist.I am proud of being Basque, although I am ashamed of some Basque who have killed people in my name, but I also ashamed of other Basque who complain about eveything in this country and they have never done anything to get a better society.

Daniel M3 wrote:
Jan 20th 2011 6:37 GMT

In reply to iagoba, the poster above. It is not true that most basque people are not comfortable being part of Spain. This is the type of "nationalist" I mentioned in my previous post who say are against killing and terror but in a way are happy with it and never did anything to stop it. If most basque people wanted to be independent, the basque region would be independent long ago. The ONLY truth is that the majority of people feel Spanish first and then basque, to the point that the current regional government is non-"nationalist" but purely Spanish and coincidentally, violence has finally lowered.

This the type of false propaganda that the violent separatists that have terrorized and killed us for 50 years will never stop. They will show up everywhere with their lies and propaganda. The Basque region is and has always been Spanish and nothing else. Never independent, never conquered, nothing. The language was totally extinct only spoken by roughly a 3% of the population in very small village sin the mountains until in the last decades of the 1900 century, this false "nationalism" arouse for economic interests of a group of basque industry owners unhappy with the central government of Madrid. That is all. The rest is lies, propaganda, massive lying and then killing for 50 years.

iagoba wrote:
Jan 20th 2011 6:08 GMT

Just to say that the Basque Country comprises the Autonomous Communities of the Basque Country and Navarre in Spain and the Northern Basque Country in France.It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories (665,800 out of 2,589,600). Of these, 614,000 live in the Spanish part of the Basque country and the remaining 51,800 live in the French part.Daniel please , it is too easy to write that peolpe who don´t think like you lie. Your statement writing about nationalists who are acomplices of ETA is so simplet,that I could say the same ,that people who are against Basque culture, language are also acomplices of GAL-(a Spanish death squad active in the 1980s set up to fight ETA) or supporters of Franco. It is malicious to mix everything.

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