Repression Against Student Activists In Spain

national | miscellaneous | news report Tuesday March 12, 2002 16:48 by antrophe antrophe at hotmail dot com

A mail sent to International-pupil-student-action...

In Spain, the students are being persecuted again and again. I don't knowwhen it will be stopped. This time is in Santiago de Compostela now, instead of Sevilla. The students are not imprisioned yet but around 30 students are been called to state -on the next April 25th.- in the Court in Compostela due to the facts happened the past December 18th.

Mail from Spain:

This day the students of the Santiago de Compostela University gathered into the University Senate meeting wich had taken in Dec 18th in order to unfurl a banner saying not to LOU and to demand the resignation of the Rector-President of this University because of his attiude against the intention of the students to lock themselves into the Rectorship --Presidence Building--. Those 30 students would be able to be economically punished because they must to provide proofs of their economic situation to the judge.

In adding, the students gathered the Senate as a refusal reaction because the days before of the 18th. it happened a police repression against around 300 students and everyone who stayed there casually during the investiment of the President of Galicia, Manuel Fraga (by the way, this person was Minister of Information in the last years of Franco dictatorship in Spain).

Here you have the info in spanish about Santiago de Compostela:
http://www.antilou.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=250

And, remember that the 15 students from sevilla have been released but they are in parole (conditional freedom) because they must to assist to the Court the days 8th and 22th of every month --do you remember CGH-UNAM (Méjico) judicial process??--, and more students could be imputed in the future.

In Barcelona the students are organising themselves due the European Council Summit. There are two universities very near the place where are taking place the Summit. Specially one university, the University of Barcelona wich have a building in the Diagonal Avenue, his Rector-President has decided not to shut the builiding and announced that the in this university the teaching will be stopped but there will be activities related to the European Council. The other university is the University of Pompeu Fabra wich have a building in the Ramblas Avenue.

As you can think, in these buildings police can't enter without the permission of the Rector-President because Universities have autonomy circunscription. I don't know what are doing there, but I think that from Barcelona have proposed that would be better to do descentralised actions in the city of Barcelona because the anti-riots cops are being too hostile and they are going to do the "hug bear" to the demonstrators if we centralise the actions in Diagonal Avenue, such as in Berlin or in Gotembourg, finding to make "invisible" the people for the media. Write to [email protected] if you want more information. You can also visit www.antiue.net, barcelona.indymedia.org, eu-bcn.chatsubo.org, to get more info about activities to do in Barcelona in March 2002.

And in State-wide scope, students have been met in Girona last weekend to engage again the struggle against the privatisation of the education (LOU, GATS, etc...) as the exams period has just finished. The meeting have grouped student assemblies from more than fifteen universities of Spain. The most important decisios were mainly to make our own media through a monthly bulletin paper and through a electronic bulletin (www.antilou.org). It's because for the corporate media the struggle against the LOU doesn't exists
already and because of it the people think that the struggle ended and it isn't certain. And another decissions were about the forum and subjects to talk in Salamanca, and send proposals to the students assembly about to do a student strike during the Salamanca meeting (March 17th-19th), and to demonstrate against the student repression in front of the Rectorships (Presidency Buildings) of every University. If you want more info about this meeting you can read (in spanish) the acts from
http://www.antilou.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=243
.

And Salamanca... There it's still doing the tasks and jobs, and very soon the information will be available on the web, but if you want provisional info you can write to [email protected]. Otherwise, we need volunteer people from other european countries in order to translate texts to as much languages as possible. If you want to contribute, send a e-mail to [email protected] and you will be joined to [email protected] wich is a mailing group where we send the texts requested to translate. It's very very very important to be able to translate texts as much easy way as possible.

Thanks very much for the solidarity came from Berlin!!!.

Struggling up to the victory!! LOU no!! GATS no!! Education is not for sale.