PRESS FORUM The "permanent ceasefire" ETA is a new deception. ETA can only announce its dissolution and the terrorists surrender to justice
Bilbao. March 22, 2006. A few hours ago the terrorist organization ETA has distributed a statement announcing that from the day after tomorrow, Friday, declared a "permanent ceasefire." It
ETA communique highlighting the following:
1 - At no time announcing the cessation of arms, nor the renunciation of terrorism as an instrument of action politics, or the dissolution of the terrorist group.
2 - No waiver, even temporarily, to extortion, the provision for future terrorist acts, or the street terrorism.
3 .- ETA continues to demand political concessions that are absolutely unassumable for democracy and, in particular, are not fit one in the English Constitution. The statement is worded in mandatory terms to which, with calculated ambiguity, makes the permanence of the ceasefire.
This is the fifth "truce" for some time that ETA has announced since 1988, cuando lo hizo “con objeto de negociar una salida pactada al conflicto vasco”. El último alto el fuego, hecho público en septiembre de 1998, le denominó ETA “tregua indefinida y sin condiciones”, tras la revuelta popular de Ermua en el País Vasco y en toda España contra el asesinato de Miguel Ángel Blanco en julio del año anterior, lo que les colocó en una situación de enorme debilidad y aislamiento. Esta tregua, como las anteriores, terminó con una nueva brutal campaña de asesinatos, que comenzó por el teniente coronel Blanco, siguió por Fernando Buesa y su escolta y continuó con decenas de muertos más.
ETA no es y no puede ser un legitimate political party. There is nothing to negotiate with the terrorist group beyond its delivery to the courts and their dissolution. There can be no prize or reward to stop killing.
On the other hand, experience and terms of this statement, we are obliged to mistrust the intentions of ETA. The terrorist group aims to weaken the state action, to deter the democratic beliefs of society and take the opportunity to rearm and rebuild its network both at the institutional level and in its ability to kill, thus trying to overcome its current weakness. Merely a "permanent ceasefire" does not substantially change anything, is merely an no finality to be interpreted as a tactical action of the band, which maintains the terrorist blackmail conditioning their truce taking its political objectives, as it did in the previous five truces.
The terms of release, after nearly 40 years of criminal activity, the grant-in October 1977 - a general amnesty to absolutely all ETA prisoners, including those convicted of violent crimes and being in a moment of maximum weakness, are unacceptable and must be rejected by the English democracy. The English and made a great effort of generosity in the birth of our rule of law, ETA did not respect at all.
So to be able to enter into a negotiation with ETA, four conditions must be met:
- that ETA proclaimed its intention to dissolve immediately and definitively as an organization,
- to announce that the terrorists fleeing and sentenced or pending cases, prosecuted or charged, will be delivered at short notice to the State Attorney,
- that ETA is committed to deliver verifiable arms and explosives, and
- that ETA declares that puts an immediate end to extortion, terrorism street and any use of violence in all its facets.
Forty years of suffering the brutality and repeated deceptions have taught ETA Basque citizens and the rest of Spain not to rely on half-words of these criminals, not to believe his vague promises and promises, broken again as it suits them. We must not repeat the cycle the previous five-trap truce which ETA emerged stronger in structure and in its legitimacy as an interlocutor.
FORUM
From ERMUA ask the Government and all political forces do not be fooled and take decisive action, accountability and trust in the defeat of ETA without concessions or negotiations, through the instruments of rule of law.
