Letters
On Herri Batasuna

Dear Socialist:
Your article in the first issue on Herri Batasuna I found quite disturbing. You have advertised yourself as a publication of democratic socialist politics, but you have given a forum to terrorists and their supporters by printing the outrageous article from Gorka Baserretxea. Herri Batasuna has refused to condemn ETA or its violence, and the article does not ever mention the hundreds of thousands of people who have protested this violence and this organisation. Rather than simply allowing your magazine to be used as a propaganda (sic) for a group who is quite good at spreading their lies, you should present both sides of the story, including those who really want peace in the Basque provinces.

Miguel Aguilar
Valencia, Spain

Gorka Baserretxea responds:
Miguel Aguilar is disturbed by my article, yet he does not once offer any argument to the points within it. There is no answer to the question of why an entire political party should be banned for the producing of a video explaining a proposal for peace. There is no mention of the lies and denials of [former Spanish prime minister] Felipe Gonzales, now being brought to testify for his part in the Dirty War against Basque activists. There is no mention of the history of conquest, oppression, and murder by the Spanish state that created the modern movement for Basque freedom. And there is no mention of the hundreds of thousands of people who have taken to the streets for Herri Batasuna. Only the same thing that we always hear all the time Ñ Basques are violent troublemakers who are disturbing the peace of Spain, a nation which still has many of its legal and political forms from the days of fascism.

That Aguilar finds the article 'outrageous' is no surprise. Even the tiniest suggestion that an indigenous people who have been living in this part of Europe before there was such a thing as Spain should have self-determination is outrageous to those who agree with Aguilar. Anything we say is outrageous, and the idea that we should protest against a trial that would not take place in any other state in modern Europe is doubly so. That is why the Spanish media and Spanish intelligence is constantly trying to silence the facts of the Basques from the rest of the world. In a climate such as this, I am grateful that a magazine like Socialist would allow a Basque opinion to be published.

Socialist responds:
One of the basic truths of political history is that 'one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter.' What Aguilar has said about Herri Batasuna could be said alternately about the PLO or the Haganah, the members of both of which are now considered by most observers to be 'statesmen.' From what we can see from their public statements, Herri Batasuna is constantly calling for peace negotiations to end the conflict in the Basque Country, and constantly asking the Spanish government to allow a referendum on Basque independence. Our article on the trial against Herri Batasuna dealt with a case that attracted international media attention. The issue was the right of a political party to operate in a nation that claims to be a democracy, yet which appears to be attempting to outlaw a legitimate political party. That's not propaganda, that's news, and as Basterretxea's article pointed out, a number of international political and human rights groups agree that what the Aznar government is attempting to do is simply not acceptable in a democracy. In our view, the article explains the history and trials of the Basque independence movement from a Basque perspective, one that is seldom heard in the international press, and we stand by it.

Our objective with this publication is to offer different perspectives of democratic socialism, some of which are bound to be controversial. The article about Herri Batasuna did not advocate violence, nor did it solicit support for the organisation. It did, however, express a point of view which called for both socialism and democracy. For our part, we have listed the other Basque left party, the social democratic Eusko Alkartasuna, on our web site (www.socialist.org), and we recommend that people investigate the history of this conflict for themselves, with an open mind.

Dear Socialist,
Congratulations on what is a truly superb publication, and here's wishing you the best of success. I'm wondering if you will be providing HTML versions of the articles in future, so I can e-mail them to friends and colleagues. It would be much easier on the download.
Art Mansill
London, England

With this issue, we will be providing all articles in HTML, including back issues.

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