Published on 1 June 2009
3 February 2010 - Court urged to acquit journalists in trial of Basque daily Egunkaria
8 June 2008 - ETA bombing of Basque daily firmly condemned
20 May 2008 - Judge Santiago Pedraz calls new witnesses in Couso case
Euskadi ta Askatasuna (Basque Homeland and Freedom), the armed separatist group that is better known by the acronym ETA, has constantly targeted journalists, both in France as in Spain, since its creation in 1959. Controlling the news is a key goal for ETA and journalists considered “enemies of the cause” are among its potential targets. ETA’s media victims include José María Portell, murdered in 1978, José Javier Uranga, wounded in a shooting in 1980, José Luis Lopez de la Calle, murdered in 2000, and Gorka Landaburu, who sustained severe face and hand injuries when he opened a parcel-bomb in 2001. Several dozen Spanish journalists are currently forced to have bodyguards because of ETA death threats.
ETA spoke in 1998 of “the need to give the people a voice, that the people get their voice back and that their voice be respected.” But it has never shown the same enthusiasm for giving a free voice to journalists, whom it often describes as “dogs” or “policemen.” Speaking on condition of anonymity, a journalist with the Madrid- based daily El Pais said of ETA: “The last few years have been tough. The problem is the general climate, the tension that makes our work so difficult. I am tired of it all. It has been going for too long.”
He is the editor of Erk, the last opposition newspaper in Uzbekistan until it was banned by the authorities in 1993, and he was jailed on 18 August 1999 in the wave of repression after the failed assassination attempt on President Islam Karimov in Tashkent on 16 February 1999.
