More than 200 jailed members of the armed Basque separatist group ETA are on hunger strike in jails across Spain in a growing showdown with the government.
About 35 prisoners started the action last week in a show of support for Iosu Uribetxebarria, an ETA convict jailed for kidnapping a prison official in the 1990s, who is demanding parole because he is sick with cancer.
The action has since grown, but the exact number of prisoners taking part fluctuates as some inmates abandon it and dozens more join each day.
Uribetxebarria himself is on hunger strike to demand his conditional release on humanitarian grounds. He was sentenced in 1998 to 32 years behind bars for the kidnapping of a prison services employee, Jose Antonio Ortega Lara, who was held for 532 days.
When Lara was finally released, the image of his emaciated face and body deeply moved Spaniards.
A judge will decide if Uribetxebarria should be released based on the results of medical tests carried out on the ETA prisoner on Monday.
The hunger strike spread across the border to France several days ago, and the French penal administration said Tuesday that an unspecified number of ETA prisoners were taking part in 15 French jails.
“The Uribetxebarria case is just the visible part of the iceberg,” said Gorka Landaburu, an ETA expert and editor of the Spanish weekly magazine Cambio 16 who was injured by a letter bomb sent by the group in 2001.
“Behind the hunger strike there is the whole issue of all Basque prisoners,” he added.
ETA is blamed for more than 800 killings in a four-decade campaign of bombings and shootings to create a Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwestern France.
It announced an end to armed actions on October 20 but has not formally disarmed nor disbanded.
ETA has refused to disarm unless its prisoners are given an amnesty, but the governments of both Spain and France demand ETA disbands and disarms without conditions.
ETA has only about 50 active members, following a wave of arrests of its members in recent years, according to experts on the group.
The group's 600 prisoners in Spain, and the roughly 150 in France, now form the backbone of the outfit.
ETA has called for jailed members of the group to be moved to prisons in Spain's northern Basque region as well as the release of ETA prisoners who are sick.
Successive Spanish governments have long had the policy of holding ETA prisoners in jails far from the Basque region, in what the separatist group argues is an unfair form of punishment to its jailed members.
“The prisoners, members of ETA and its political entourage, that's to say radical left-wing Basque nationalists, have all tried since October 20 to put the issue at the heart of the political agenda, without success,” said Florencio Dominguez, editor of the Basque news agency Vasco Press and an ETA expert.
In April, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government launched a “reintegration plan” for ETA prisoners who renounce violence that could “facilitate” their “rapprochement” to the Basque region.
Radical left-wing Basque nationalists call the measure a “smokescreen”.
“Madrid is in no hurry,” Dominguez said. “The radical left and the prisoners have taken advantage of the Uribetxebarria case to engage in an arm wrestle with the government.”
Rajoy has said the hunger strike is “blackmail”. His government argues that the decision whether to release Uribetxebarria must respect the law.
The threat from the fasting prisoners remains small, said Dominguez.
“It would be disturbing if they were like the IRA prisoners, who allowed themselves to die of starvation. But the ETA members are far from that.” - AFP