A coalition of pro-independence political parties from the Basque country has presented a “road map” aimed at consolidating peace, more than three years after separatist violence in the region formally ended.
In October 2011, the terrorist group Eta announced the closure of its four-decade campaign of violence against the Spanish state and early last year it made a timid move towards disarmament. However, the Spanish government has not responded with any measures of its own and there has been no official peace process to speak of.
EH Bildu, a coalition of four left-leaning separatist parties, on Sunday unveiled a plan which seeks to seize the peace initiative by focusing on four areas: measures for victims of the violence; the status of imprisoned Eta members; Eta’s disarmament and the role of security forces in the region.
"This is a road map which is viable, enormously pragmatic and which represents the will of our coalition, which thinks it knows how to tackle this situation," Pernando Barrena, a spokesman for Sortu, one of the coalition's parties, told reporters yesterday as he presented the plan in Madrid.
“In no way does this seek to turn the page on the past, no,” he said. “We will only turn the page once we’ve read and reread the previous one.”
Eta killed more than 800 people during its campaign for an independent Basque state and the issue of victims and their relatives is extremely sensitive. The EH Bildu document seeks to address it by proposing the creation of a truth commission and a “memory database” for victims of Eta and the security forces, among other measures.
Another thorny issue in the wake of Eta’s ceasefire has been the status of the 500 or so members of the organisation who are still in prison, most of whom are deliberately kept in jails far from their families.
The road map calls for these prisoners to be returned to Basque jails and for the introduction of an “early conditional release” programme, which Mr Barrena said was based on an Irish model. In addition, EH Bildu calls for the destruction of Eta’s weapons to be overseen by an independent commission, ideally with international involvement. It also proposes the transferral of powers from national security forces to regional ones.
