This question is answered by Spanish and French politicians and the police in the Basque Country
with increasing heavy handedness. Last weekend in the Basque village of Villabona a young man was
brutally beaten, arrested and only released after several hours in jail, because he dared to confront the
police force with the question: What did you do to Jon Anza?
The Basque former political prisoner Jon Anza, who lived as a refugee in the French part of the Basque Country, has disappeared. Two months ago he boardered a train from Baiona (French: Bayonne) to Toulouse and never arrived there. Since then, there has been no sign of him.
The civil rights movement Pro Amnistía issued the following statement:
"The Basque Country is currently immersed in a situation of persecution and repression with no end in sight. People held under incommunicado detention are subjected to beastly torture, in recent years two daily newspapers have been closed down, several political parties and organizations have been outlawed; bans on demonstrations and events are usual, often ending in police brutality. Right now there are 740 Basque political prisoners dispersed throughout jails all over the France and Spain. Prisoners with cancer and other incurable illnesses are kept in jail, several prisoners have had their sentences arbitrarily extended by 10 years, just when they had finished serving their original sentences in full. There are increasing numbers of people in jail for carrying out exclusively political work.
Prisoners relatives and friends have to travel thousands of kilometres every weekend, just to visit their loved ones. This policy of dispersal has terrible consequences. Every 15 months a relative or friend dies on the road to or from a visit; every year a political prisoner dies in jail.
The aim of the state with this policy of repression and persecution is very clear: to annihilate the Basque independence movement. Not content with denying the most basic democratic rights to the Basque people, they are at war, with all the means at their disposal against an entire section of the population that works for independence.
In this context, Basque political exile Jon Anza has disappeared. It is now more than two months since he left for Toulouse, from the train station in Baiona, and there has been no sign of him since. There are previous cases of Basque activists who have been disappeared, tortured and murdered. We fear what they may have done to Jon. We demand the case be clarified and those responsible are brought to justice. The shadow of the dirty war is becoming larger every passing hour.
We wish to issue a call to abandon the strategy of war and repression and to move towards a real political solution. Repression will not cover up the political problem in this country, which can only be solved through political negotiation and agreement.
(The photograph shows a picture of Jon Anza. The background is made out of events of the dirty war of the past.