28 March 2012
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Justice
While news of torture arrives from the Basque Country, we come across politicians who assure us, without checking, that everything was done correctly. Of course nobody was tortured; the detainee broke his ribs, perforated his lung and suffered several bruises in the struggle while he was detained. It is also obvious in Roquetas del Mar, that the Guardia Civil did not kill a citizen who, in the worst of cases, should have been held and accused; the reason for his death was a cardio-respiratory failure; a technical expression to say that his heart stopped and he ceased to breathe - as if you could die any other way -.
This should not be normal, but it is the customary way in which things occur. But how else should this happen? The truth is that it is naive to believe that some day we will hear some politicians saying that they will ascertain, up to the final consequences, whether a prisoner was tortured or not, or how he died in a police station. And this is how things are because of the daily truth about the way in which the representatives of the people who we re-elect every four years act.
How can we expect them to worry about whether a member of the security bodies and forces perforated a detainee's lung, or broke his sternum or induced his death by denying him a medicine if, when this is proven, they are the first ones who propose and grant them a pardon?
While this occurs, while officers who torture, kill or allow death through negligence are given pardons, ordinary citizens are convicted without proof, on the basis of false testimonies and prepared evidence. But if this wasn't enough, even when this is proven, when a whole village rises in support of these citizens, the State once again ignores its duty to be just and denies them a pardon. Just as worrying, it is the justice system itself, that same one that unfairly convicted this neighbour, which upholds the pardon for officers who tortured.
This happens in the Spanish State and while the neighbours of O Eixo remain in prison, the Supreme Court refuses to review the pardon conceded to four Vigo police officers who kidnapped and tortured an immigrant and never apologised for this. Four officers whom we pay to protect us, to guarantee our safety; not only do they not guarantee us it, but rather, furthermore, when they mistreat us, we forgive them.
Renato Núñez
Spokesman of Movemento pelos Dereitos Civi´s
[translation by Statewatch]
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