Two more Catalan political prisoners join hunger strike

Tue, 04 Dec 2018 08:32:48 +0000

From today, four of the seven male Catalan political prisoners held in Lledoners are hunger striking. Joaquim Forn and Josep Rull, former Interior and Territory ministers in the Catalan government, have joined the indefinite hunger strike started on Saturday by their colleagues Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Turull. Through this extreme means of protest, they are all denouncing that the Spanish Constitutional Court does not respond to their appeals (some of them filled more than a year ago), blocking them their access to European justice.

Bad example to the world

Antonio Marinho Pinto, a member of the European Parliament from Portugal, has said that the hunger strike is “terrible for Spain” adding that “putting political rivals in jail is improper of a democratic state.” Pinto, a member of the liberal ALDE group, visited the former parliament speaker Carme Forcadell in prison on Monday. He was accompanied by Miroslavs Mitrofanos, a member of the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament from Latvia.

“Spain is giving a very bad example to the world. Law can be a source of freedom and justice, but it can also be a source of terror” he said. “When we fail to find political solutions to political problems we resort to courts as a tool for terror.” Referring to Forcadell’s case, he said that “her only crime was to allow a political debate, Catalan independence, to be discussed in parliament,” and added that his can’t be compared to “robbing a bank, rape or murder.

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Two more Catalan political prisoners join hunger strike - VilaWeb

Two more Catalan political prisoners join hunger strike