These are the data reported by the Director General of Memory and Coexistence of the Government of Navarre, Martín Zabalza, in the commission of the same name in the Parliament of Navarre, with 50 applications for recognition in 2023 and 75 in 2024. The Review Committee had considered 47 at its 11 meetings, of which 41 had been approved, one had not been approved, and five had not been adopted for the review. A further 78 reports are under consideration.

Of these admitted victims, six were killed by security forces, one of whom was tortured while in the custody of the Civil Guard. Sixteen other victims were tortured and wounded during the 11 demonstrations and/or in the context of the incidents that followed. 34 victims are men and seven are women. In the case of the latter, it is recognized that they have been sexually assaulted when they have been tortured. Up to now, they have been paid compensation in the amount of 1.24 million euros.

Good assessment of the victims

On Thursday, Mikel Soto of the Network of Torturers of Navarre and Ainara Gorostiaga of the Truth Debt Foundation made an appearance in Pamplona, where they gave a very good assessment of the work that the Commission for the Recognition and Reparation of Victims is carrying out in the last two years.

Gorostiaga stated that of the 142 confession requests, 107 have been processed by Egia Zor and 96 of them are related to torture. To date, 375 cases of torture have been reported, but between 1960 and 2011 there were 1,104 cases of torture in Navarre and 896 people were tortured. This means that some of these people were tortured on several occasions.

Any citizen who has suffered human rights violations in this context can address the request from this association or even from this Memory and Coexistence site of the Government of Navarre.

Cases of human rights violations have been appearing since the possibility of applying for confessions was opened, and representatives of the two associations reported that in January of this year twelve people have already applied for recognition of the human rights violation suffered. Mikel Soto himself confesses that it is not an easy step, that he received his report last year [he was tortured] and it took him three months to sign it.

Act of recognition on February 13 in Baluarte

Mikel Soto expressed his gratitude to the committee that is carrying out the study and also gave a good assessment of the parties’ assessment of the report presented by Martín Zabalza in Parliament: “Everyone except Vox has acknowledged that there has been this state violence.”

All this work is being guided by the principles of “truth, justice, reparation and non-repetition” and Soto reminded us that knowing the truth would be beneficial to take more steps towards coexistence: “Telling them why they did it and who ordered it would help prevent them from repeating themselves in the future.” He stressed the importance of forgiveness and said that the Civil Guard should ask for forgiveness, which would be “very important” for the victims.

All this is being done in 2019 under the Law of Recognition and Reparation of Victims of Extremist Right-wing Groups or Public Officials by the Parliament of Navarre, which requires an annual recognition event for these victims. This year will take place on February 13 in Pamplona Baluarte and representatives of these victims have made a special request to President María Chivite to be present at the event this year.