Letter campaign asks European leaders to help Catalonia

The Catalan Association for Civil Rights (ACDC), which unites the relatives of Catalan political prisoners and exiled pro-independence leaders, has launched the campaign ‘Europe, make a move’ today. The aim is to fill the offices of the heads of government of five European countries with letters asking for help and denouncing the current ‘violation of rights in Catalonia’. During the campaign presentation today in Barcelona, organisers said they want to ‘make a cry for help from all those who are committed to democratic values ​​and the defense of human rights’.

ACDC has prepared a letter in the five official languages ​​of Germany, Finland, France, Ireland and Portugal. If European leaders receive thousands of copies of the same letter in a very concentrated period of time, there will be an ‘impact for saturation’. The campaign is backed by several pro-independence organisations and political parties and they will distribute the letter on April 23rd during the festivity of Sant Jordi.

The letter asks ‘not to look away’ and describes the breach of fundamental rights recognized in the European Convention on Human Rights, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU and the Spanish Constitution itself. Similarly, it recalls the application of article 155 from the Spanish Constitution ‘flagrantly fails to comply with constitutional laws’. The text condemns ‘the use of physical violence against citizens who participated in a referendum’ and the ‘judicial persecution against mayors and politicians, with disproportionate preventive prison measures, as well as the attribution of the crime of rebellion without existing violence’. The result is that ‘separation of powers is violated and the rule of law is put at risk’.

Finally, the letter reminds that ‘the European Community was born with the noble objective that the poison of authoritarianism and fascism would never again get hold of the states that make it up. Today, the founding mission and soul of the EU are at risk from the moment that it allows the authoritarian drift of one of its member states, without any reaction to prevent it’.