Hate to peace, victim of separatist group recalls
SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain: Inaki my older sister came to get me, Garcia Arrizabalaga was 19 when and said ‘come home, dad didn’t a breakaway commando of the show up at work’,” he said. Basque separatist group ETA “All of us siblings went home, murdered his father, plunging we started asking around in him into a “spiral of hate” before hospitals to see if there had been he changed his outlook and an accident, and no.” started working for peace in his Then came a call that a body homeland. had been found on a hill in the
Morecity.than36yearslater, ETA says it has finally laid down They all went and discovered its arms, but for the business it was their father’s, a director at professor at Deusto University telecoms firm Telefonica whom he in the Basque Country, the later found out had been targeted highly-mediatised event is but an by the Autonomous Anticapitalist “anecdote.” Commandos, an anarchist
For him, the truly key event breakaway of ETA, in retaliation was on October 20, 2011, for phone taps being used against when the armed group that militants. killed 829 people in its fourEnsued four, difficult years decade campaign for Basque during which he plunged into independence declared a what he calls a “spiral of hate,” ceasefire. before being sent to London to
“It was inevitable that study by his mother. they were going to hand over Away from the strife, he was weapons,” he said this week ahead able to think more clearly and of Saturday’s official disarmament came back a changed man, he ceremony in Bayonne in the said, realising the killers had not French Basque Country. only murdered his father, but were
Sitting in his office in Spain’s ruining his life as well. northern Basque seaside city of Later, he started working San Sebastian, the 55-year-old for peace and conciliation and calmly remembered the day his has never stopped, giving talks father was found shot dead, his about his experience in schools covered corpse propped up and — among other initiatives. In chained against a tree. October 2011 when ETA declared
“On October 23, 1980, I was a a ceasefire, Garcia Arrizabalaga student at this university, I was in was giving a presentation at a class and at 8.30 in the morning conference. — AFP