This is how Spain unfolds a clear strategy of 'lawfare' against
Catalonia.
The concept of justice as a weapon of political war, born in
the US, is applicable in this conflict
‘
The repression of Spain against independence in Catalonia has the form and purpose of what is called lawfare , that is, 'judicial war', a concept of American origin that refers to the The use of the law as a political weapon.
It is an unequal way of war, because whoever promotes it is the one who
has the control of the law, even if it means that it is forced,
distorted or even violated. 'Who has made ERC and JxCat today have no leaders because they are escaped? Mariano Rajoy y el PP ', the Spanish Vice President, Soraya Sáez de Santamaría, was praised.
A state operation with the same purpose: the disqualification of the
political adversary, the judicial persecution of the enemy, and the
justification - by means of the laws - of the violation of fundamental
rights. 'The law was over the citizen's coexistence,' said Diego Pérez de los Cobos, head of the 1-O police device. An obvious case of lawfare , of judicial war.
The origin of this concept is uncertain, although there are references to the 1970s in the United States. But it is considered that the first to theorize it was Colonel of US Air Force Charles Dunlap Jr. with the essay ' Law and military iterentions: Preserving Humanitarian Values in 21st Conflicts ' (pdf). Dunlap defines lawfare , directly, thus: 'Use of the law as a weapon of war.' Later, it was the The Lawfare Project initiative, driven by human rights lawyer and film director Brooke Goldstein , who expanded the definition.
And it has helped to popularize it, by seeing the various cases around
the world in which a legal system or legislation is used to justify the
elimination of political opponents.
"It is about the abuse of the law and our judicial systems to undermine
the principles they say: the rule of law, the presumption of innocence
and the right to freedom of expression," said Goldstein in this speech on 2010
This video of the No Lawfare initiative is revealing, if it applies to the situation of political and judicial repression of Spain:
Define these actions framed in the lawfare : 'Political persecution, destruction of the public image or disqualification of a political adversary;
a combination of actions that seem legal with a great media coverage
that exerts pressure on the adversary and his environment, formulating
accusations without evidence, so that he loses support and does not have
the ability to react.
'The joke is over'
The most clear and forceful instrument of political repression in Spain
in recent years has been the Constitutional Court, with a system of
designation of the magistrates that responds to the political majorities
that exist, and that in the case of Catalonia has It had a detonating
function of the conflict, with the ruling of July 2010 that escaped a
statute of autonomy approved by the parliament, later cut by the Spanish
courts and finally approved by referendum by the Catalans.
And
with the outbreak of the independence process, the absolute majority of
the PP allowed the reform of the organic law of the TC, made expressly
to combat this process and its leaders, giving the court for the first
time sancionadora capacity. 'The joke is over', threatened the leader of the Catalan PP Xavier Garcia Albiol in the presentation of the reform.
They were the years of growth of independence, with roadmaps that were
endorsed by a parliamentary majority, the years immediately after the
ruling of the statute, during which Francisco Pérez de los Cobos, former
militant of the PP, with a past linked to the extreme right and
recognized anticatalanist, presided over the institution. Pérez de los Cobos, brother of the police who said that the law was above the coexistence.
The political interference in a court that leads the repressive action
against the independentism has become evident also these days.
With the calls of the Spanish government to the president and the
members of the court to make them see the importance of admitting to the
process the challenge of the candidature of Carles Puigdemont to be
invested president of the Generalitat.
The court ended up postponing the decision on the appeal, but agreed to
please the Spanish government imposing precautionary measures
impossible to assume for Puigdemont to be able to undergo investiture.
He did this taking into account that neither the speaker nor the
lawyers nor the Spanish Council of State did not advise the admission to
the process of a resource that in practice implied a preventive
challenge of an investiture vote of " a candidate that could be
presented to the elections perfectly. Something never seen.
All this is accompanied by a decisive action of virtually all the media
machinery in Spain, which builds a discourse of caricaturization and
demonization, raising this adversary to the condition of public enemy
number one, and that allows to make the conviction that the punishment
that you receive will be fair between the audience and the citizens, and
that considerations of doubtful legality or of manifest illegality are
secondary. Because the political objective, in this case the preservation of the unity of Spain, is worth it.
Violence is the fault of the attacked
The enemy is not only Puigdemont; It is all independentism.
That is why a general cause was opened, made with secret investigations
and constructed with police convictions that deliberately falsify the
facts, to allow the action of justice to be implacable with those
responsible for facts that are properly presented as violent ,
'tumultuaris'.
From here comes the accusation of sedition against Jordi Sànchez and
Jordi Cuixart, of the uprising 'tumultuary' and violent, which refers to
the Spanish penal code.
The demonstration on September 20 before the Department of Economy was
multitudinous and peaceful, and the leaders of Omnium and the ANC acted
for it to be.
But, on the other hand, they will be tried by sedition, and it is by
this accusation that more than one hundred days ago they are in
preventive prison.
On September 20 there were protest concentrations; On the 22nd at noon, the spokesman of the Spanish government, Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, already spoke of 'tumultuary' actions;
and when the press conference had not yet finished, the state
prosecutor's office already presented a complaint for sedition against
Sánchez and Cuixart.
Later, Judge Lamela, first, and Judge Llarena, later assumed the thesis
of the Civil Guard, which was the same as that of the Spanish
government, which was the same as that of the prosecutor's office, which
was the same as the yours And that of Judge Pablo Llarena. A case of lawfare in full rule.
And something similar happened with rebellion accusations against the
members of the government and those of the parliament table, including
the president. That there was no violence that required the accusation of the rebellion crime?
The Civil Guard, and the prosecutor's office, and Judge Lamela, and
Judge Llarena, invented it in both probate and interlocutories.
And if the demonstration trials were scarce, it ended up being
responsible for the violence of the Spanish police during the referendum
on 1-O (a violence, yes, very obvious and clamorous) to those who had
called the referendum , that is to say, to those who had been victims.
All in all with the appropriate media accompaniment. And social and political. The PSOE, the other great party of the state, has painted with the PP, Citizens and the King of Spain.
On October 3, when Philip VI appeared ordering to act against
independence, the Socialists withdrew the petition of reprimand by Sáenz
de Santamaría for the violence of 1-O. And only the foreign media were surprised at Felipe VI's speech and criticized their hardness. All the powers of the state rowed at the same time against a common enemy that had to be destroyed. This is one of the principles of the definition of lawfare , the one of unequal war, between a very powerful combatant, owner of the law, and another that receives the consequences.
In this fight, freedom of expression has also been resented and
improper use has been made of the concept of hate crime, which is
imposed on all those who have dared criticized the violence of the
police and the Guard Civil during the 1-O. As in the general cause open to Reus.
It ends up being useless to resort to any of the internal mechanisms
available to the Spanish judicial system, because in all judicial bodies
there is a same point of view and a same way of proceeding in this
conflict; which is the same dictated by the political majority in Spain. There is the recourse to the international judicial route. Because, politically, the EU has not, at the moment, been used to request protection against repression. In fact, the European Commission has ended up becoming the last piece of the law firm against Catalan independence. The penultimate episode: the answer to a question that asked the community executive to investigate the violence of 1-O.
The answer: 'It is the responsibility of the Member States to guarantee
fundamental rights in accordance with international treaties and their
own constitution.' That is, the same states that can be violated.
