On January 17, 2019, Javitxu Aijón was late for a demonstration outside the Zaragoza auditorium. Inside, a Vox rally was being held as part of the regional electoral campaign. “Even before launching the first slogan, the riot police were lined up with helmets and batons. There were no banners, because they had been removed. It took them ten minutes to start charging against the protesters”, recalls Aijón. That day of protest ended with the arrest of him and five other protesters, known as the Zaragoza six.
The Council of Europe warns of deficiencies related to human rights in the reform of the gag law
Further
After the 25 hours they spent in jail, they were followed by a trial that ended with a conviction by the Provincial Court of Zaragoza. Four of them, including Aijón, received six years in prison, while the other two – who were minors – were sentenced to one year of probation and to pay a fine. “They sentenced us because the statement of some police officers who contradicted each other all the time was accepted in court,” explains Aijón. “I did nothing. The truth is that they sentenced me because I was participating in a protest.”
His story is not the only case of violation of the right to protest, as demonstrated by the report “Criminalization of the right to protest: patterns, actors and instruments” presented this Tuesday at the Eccoo cooperative headquarters in Madrid. The study, carried out by the Observatory of Multinationals in Latin America (OMAL), analyzes the barriers to the right to protest from different cases in Europe and Latin America.
“There is a lot of talk about the gag law in Spain, but the problem is that there are many gag laws at the international level,” laments the Anticapitalistas MEP Miguel Urbán during the meeting. “The right to protest is not only in danger, but also in question internationally. This report makes clear how unfortunately the South of the world has always been a laboratory of anti-militancy and repression. This South reaches more and more to the North”.
The study identifies three patterns that are repeated when it comes to criminalizing the right to protest, as explained by Erika González, a researcher at OMAL. In the first place, the pointing out of people and organizations that, due to their activist work, are branded as “opponents of development and the well-being of the majority of the population.” Secondly, and as a direct consequence of the previous point, the repression and persecution of these groups.
The third factor is the violent obstruction of the protest. “When the two previous ways do not have the desired effects, the use of force is used to block the protest. In many cases, in Latin America this translates into the systematic assassination of activists and journalists”, explains González. “This is the biggest difference, at least for now, between the two regions.”
common trends
After an analysis of the patterns and instruments used to repress protests, common trends have been found between Spain and Latin American countries. For example, groups that fight for the defense of human rights are labeled as “radical”, “anti-system” or “anti-development”.
This is the case in Spain of the movements fighting for housing, such as the PAH, of which Gustavo Rioja is an activist. Rioja is currently awaiting a trial behind closed doors for refusing to leave the Caixabank branch in the Guadalajara town of Cabanillas del Campo. His objective was to try to stop the eviction of a family. “Unlike Aijón, I am guilty. Guilty of having accompanied a compañera from the PAH with three minor children to ask to stay in her house, ”says the activist. “The problem is that what we did that day in 2017 is a minor crime, which carries a fine. But we ended up illegally detained and they want to give us three and a half years in jail.”
“These types of attacks against activists and social groups are increasingly common in Europe,” Urbán details. “We witness campaigns that are aimed at dismantling the people who defend some ideas, instead of the idea itself. Because it is much easier to attack a PAH militant than the idea of the right to housing. It is easier to criminalize six young people from Zaragoza than the anti-fascist discourse”.
gag laws
The study also highlights a “permanent legal sophistication” to advance in the penalization of the groups that protest. As examples, he refers to Argentine legislation, which seeks to convert the protest action of the piquetero movement into a crime. Likewise, the law of legitimate use of force in Ecuador, or the gag law in Spain are cited. “They are examples of how the legislature is adapting criminal codes, citizen security laws and police protocols to criminalize and prosecute by all means the forms of protest that are emerging,” González details.
The degree of violence used in the criminalization of protests is much lower in Spain, where it is more frequent to use administrative sanctions –which in the report call bureaurepression– to repress social mobilizations. “Although it is recognized as a low-intensity phenomenon, it has a deeply discouraging effect in contexts of increasing precariousness, and makes it more difficult to denounce it collectively,” the creators acknowledge.
