Political prisoner Orkatz Gallastegi leaves EPPK
- The Basque political prisoner in Berango is currently in Zaballa prison and has announced in his letter that he has left the Basque Political Prisoners Collective.
Orkatz Gallastegi has pointed out that he has "profound discrepancies with the strategy and line that the Abertzale left has developed over the past few years" and that is why he has abandoned the group of prisoners. “At one time the Abertzale Left was a political reference for the national and social liberation of Euskal Herria,” but now it is no longer.
According to Gallastegi, “the role that prisoners have to play is to maintain the legitimacy of the political struggle that has led them to be imprisoned; that is, not denying or condemning the right of a people to cope with oppression”. In his view, the roadmap of the Abertzale Left to channel the problem of prisoners has meant that the EPPK violates this political coherence.
In his letter, he pointed out that the situation currently being experienced by the prisoners is “dramatic” and the “brown of the prisoners” has been left on them. With the strategy of the Abertzale Left today “the legitimacy that Euskal Herria has obtained as an oppressed people for decades is dismantled”, and this delegitimization directly affects “this liberation struggle that has not yet ended”.
“I want to make it clear – the prisoner continues – that this decision to leave the body has not been taken to go against anyone; fundamental political coherence leads me to take this step.” Gallastegi was arrested in 2002 and has since been in pre-trial detention in the prisons of Topas (Salamanca) and Castellón I (Valencia).
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