Ten years after closure of the newspaper Egin and Egin Irratia radio

Argazkia: Andoni Canellada

This coming July 15, it will be ten years since the basque newspaper, "Egin" and the basque radio, "Egin Irratia" were closed by order of the examining magistrate of the Spanish High Court (called Audiencia Nacional) Baltasar Garzon on the pretext that both media were controlled by the organization ETA. Three years later, because of the lack of evidence, the Fourth Section of the same Court had left without effect charges of "membership of armed group" attributed to all the prosecuted members of the board of management of the Orain publishing group. Nevertheless, at the sentence of the 18/98 indictment passed in December 2007, some of the members of the board of management and some of the persons in charge of editorial staff were sentenced to prison penalties by judges of the Spanish High Court.


In February 2008, 300 lawyers and academics in the international field, who taked part as observers at the trial by 18/98, presented a report which reflects the combination of irregularities that have characterized the process, concluding that the passed sentence contradicts the grass roots of the State of Law. In June, a group of international legal experts produced a report to state that the closure of Egin and Egin Irratia, as well as that of Euskaldunon Egunkaria—only newspaper published in Basque language and also closed by the Spanish courts in February 2003 for similar reasons—, violate the Spanish Constitution. The document, compiled by teachers Kai Ambos (University of Gottingen, Germany), Luis P. Chambers Calero (Florida International University, USA), John Vervaele (University of Utrecht, Netherlands) and Juan Luis Gomez Colomer (University of Castellon), states that the closure of these media violates Articles 10 and 15 of the European Convention on Human Rights "by its disproportionate nature". Moreover, the closure violates " the fundamental right to freedom of expression, both at the individual and at the collective side, namely the right to receive any information and the right to know the expression of someone else´s thought ".

In this tenth anniversary of the closure of Egin and Egin Irratia, the former workers of both media we want to remember that serious human rights violation that took place within a member country of the European Union. Next July 12, we have organized a day to denounce the situation and show our solidarity with the members of Orain and Egin imprisoned. The activities will be carried out in Hernani, the town where there is still located the head office of the newspaper, now empty and closed down. The programme of activities and other information of interest will be available on the blog: http://egin10.info