Basque ‘terrorist’ group offers apology amid plans to dissolve
ETA says sorry for the pain caused Group has killed 850 people in total
The Basque militant group ETA has offered an unprecedented apology for the pain caused during more than four decades of armed campaign for independence from Spain and France and vowed not to return to violence.
ETA, which killed about 850 people, including police, politicians and entrepreneurs, is due to announce its final dissolution early next month. The move will end one of Europe’s last standing violent nationalist conflicts.
After nearly half a century of car bomb attacks, shootings and kidnappings, the group gave up its violent campaign in 2011. The organisation also handed over to authorities most of its remaining arsenal a year ago.
In a statement published yesterday by Basque newspapers Berria and Gara, ETA acknowledged its responsibility for the pain caused by assassinations, torture, kidnappings and people forced to leave the Basque country in a vague reference not only to ETA’S victims, but also to the plight of some of its own militants.
“Wewanttoshowourrespect to the dead, the injured and the victims that ETA’S actions have caused,” the statement said. “We really are sorry.”
Spain’s government, which considers ETA a terrorist organisation, welcomed the move, but said the apology had come too late.
“ETA should have sincerely and unconditionally asked for forgiveness for the damage caused a long time ago,” the government of prime minister Mariano Rajoy said.
The statement added that yesterday’s announcement was “nothing more than another consequence of the fortitude of the rule of law that has defeated ETA with the arms of democracy”.
ETA’S victims were also critical of the announcement because it sought the forgiveness of victims “who didn’t have a direct participation in the conflict”, apparently excluding those who had been specifically targeted by ETA.
AVT, a national association of terrorism victims, said the statement aimed to “whiten” ETA’S past. Another victim group, Covite, which is based in the Basque town of San Sebastian, said the distinction between “guilty and innocent victims” treats them “as collateral damage in the imposition of a totalitarian project”.
ETA emerged in the late 1950s during the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco with the stated aim of forming an independent state from Basque areas on both sides of the Pyrenees. Basques have a distinct culture and an ancient language known as Euskara.
Shadowy death squads killed and tortured dozens of ETA militants in the 1980s in what was known as the Spanish government’s “dirty war” against the group.
Both France and Spain, where ETA committed most of its deadly actions, had been demanding an apology and for the group to take a further step and disband.
The official Basque regional broadcaster ETB, which has in the past had access to the organisation’s plans, reported this week that ETA’S dissolution would be announced in the first weekend of May.
ETB said an event to mark the end of ETA – a Basque-language acronym for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, meaning Basque Homeland and Freedom – will be held in southern France before the final announcement by the group.
In yesterday’s statement, ETA said it was committed to finally overcoming “the consequences of the conflict and not to fall into its repetition”, adding “this political and historical conflict should have had a fair and democratic solution a long time ago”.
Authorities still need to solve the issue of what to do with the hundreds of jailed ETA members and the handful still on the run. Hundreds of killings also remain unsolved and the arms could help lead to some of the perpetrators.