It's been 40 years since Zizurkil's neighbor Joxe Arrangi Izagirre died on 13 February because of police torture. "This death occurred a few years after the dictator's death, when Franco's inertia and torture cases were kept in detention centers," said Ixone Fernández and Enkarni Blanco of the Egiari Zor Foundation.

“Managed was not the first to be killed by torture in the context of the political conflict, but was the first after the reform of the regime and the signing of the Spanish Constitution. Unfortunately, at the time of democracy, Joxe Arrangi was added other names to the list of torture victims in the telegraph grid’, they said at a hearing in Bilbao.

The members of the Egiari zor Foundation have acknowledged that there is a long way to go about the consequences of torture. They believe that it is true, recognition and reparation for those who suffered this ‘aberration’. “And the people, parties and institutions that violated our rights have not yet taken on responsibilities. He has not yet made a responsible exercise of honesty recognizing the damage done.’

Only 3% of the cases documented in the torture and ill-treatment research project carried out by the Basque Institute of Criminology in Álava, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa between 1960 and 2014 have been recognized as cases of torture. "It is necessary to clarify the role played by politicians, judges, forensic doctors, police, the media... to make torture possible. It is necessary to clarify the deaths that have occurred at the time of or as a result of the application of torture, as well as the trauma that has generated this violation of rights that has been put into practice in the protection of the State, and that has been carried out with total impunity, following a strategy".

CALL OF SORTU

The reality of torture requires, according to Tolosaldea’s sortu, that responsibilities be ‘recognised and clarified’. In a statement, he indicated that torture has been a ‘systematic and systemic weapon’ against Basque independence in recent decades. It has therefore considered it necessary for the truth to come to light ‘together with the recognition, reparation and guarantees of non-repetition that the thousands of torturers deserve so that this people can move towards a new scenario of peace and freedom’.

Sortu de Tolosaldea believes that torture still has total impunity: “In these times when we live the battle of the story, denying the existence of torture itself, in essence, seeks to hide the political conflict of Euskal Herria with the states. In this way, they want us to impose a fictitious narrative, between good and evil, to continue to deny the word and decision to a whole people, to perpetuate the suffering and pain of a whole people.’

Sortu has reported that at least 262 cases of torture have been proven in the Tolosaldea region. “However, no political leader has done any honesty or taken steps to acknowledge the damage caused,” he said in the note. “In this people we have had to learn to live with serious suffering. The pains caused by the barbarity caused to us in the headquarters of the Civil Guard, the National Police and the Ertzaintza have not yet been cured. They insulted us and humiliated us, despised and despised us, touched and drowned, beaten and raped, to the point of causing the death of several».

WEEKEND EVENTS

Sortu, from Tolosaldea, has announced his intention to bring these demands to the streets and has organised three demonstrations for tomorrow. In Anoeta and Tolosa, at 19:00 hours, concentrations will be held to claim "recognition, repair, guarantee of non-repetition". In Lizartza, Sortu made the appeal at 20:00.

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the murder of Joxe Arrangi by torture, the Egiari Zor Foundation will hold, as every year, a commemorative event on 13 February in Zizurkil. It will call for the recognition and reparation of all victims of torture and will urge the institutions to continue to work on the whole phenomenon. The event will take place in Joxe Arrangi Square, on Thursday at 12.00 p.m., under conditions that allow the state of health. Sortu de Tolosaldea has called for its participation, insofar as mobility between peoples allows it.

In addition, in Bilbao, in collaboration with the Master in Fundamental Rights and Public Powers of the UPV/EHU, the Egiari Zor Foundation will perform a dramatized reading of the Zutoin Beltza theatre by Alfonso Sastre, on the same Saturday at 11.00 in Spanish and at 12.30 in Basque. The event will take place in the Bizkaia aretoa of the UPV/EHU, in Abandoibarra (Bizkaia).