Human Rights and Democracy (XII)

EUSKAL HERRIA AND THE KINGDOM OF NABARRE, OR THE BASQUE PEOPLE AND ITS STATE, AGAINST FRENCH-SPANISH IMPERIALISM

 

XII –Human Rights and Democracy

Iñaki Aginaga and Felipe Campo

The fundamental human rights (HR) are inherent, original, immediate, unconditional, continuous, permanent, non-transferable, inalienable, un-renounceable and indefeasible; they do condition, preside over and subordinate the whole issues of violence, peace and policy in general. Being constituents of all freedom and democracy, they are not to be submitted to voting or put to anyone’s decision; they do not depend on petition or concession, grant or condition; they are not a matter of choice nor are they referred to “the majorities or the minorities”. They are not accessories that can be taken or left or distorted – according to times or occasions – by interest, venality, incompetence, casualness or simple opportunism. Quite simply: they are either freely exercised, or criminally violated.

The offences against HR are timeless and imprescriptible international crimes against the laws of war, against peace and security of Peoples and of States legitimately constituted on HR, and against Humanity. The contemporary International Law formally recognized – not constituted – within the framework of the United Nations (UN) has reiterated some of them: the aggression (which “is the most serious and dangerous form of the illegal use of force”) and the war of aggression: a crime against the international peace; the threat of aggression; the annexation in all its forms; the genocide in all its forms (which includes the rape of indigenous women); the murder, the extermination, the enslavement, the execution of hostages and the torture; the destruction and devastation of towns and villages; the looting of public and private property; the colonialism in all its forms and manifestations; the violation of the right of self-determination of Peoples, an international crime; the repressive and terrorist acts of the colonial, racist and alien régimes that deny to the Peoples their legitimate rights of self-determination and independence and other human rights and fundamental freedoms; the use of force to deprive the Peoples of their national identity; the use of mercenaries by the colonial and racist régimes against the national liberation movements struggling for their freedom and independence from the yoke of colonialism and alien domination; the politics of violation of the colonial Peoples through the systematic influx of foreign immigrants and the displacement, deportation and transfer of the indigenous inhabitants; the attacks or acts of violence against the civilian population or individuals, including the reprisal attacks; the acts or threats of violence whose primary purpose is to spread terror among the civilian population; the acts of hostility directly aimed against historical monuments, works of art or places of worship that constitute the cultural or spiritual heritage of Peoples; the inhumane treatment to combatants fighting against colonial and alien domination and racist régimes, who – captured as prisoners – are denied the legal status provided under the Geneva Conventions and other international instruments to be applied to persons involved in armed struggles against colonial and alien domination and racist régimes, even if they are represented by a Government or an authority not recognized by the adversary. Etc. etc.

The fundamental human rights do in general involve the right of free disposición or self-determination of all Peoples (RSD). There are no HR in general where, in particular, is missing the indefeasible and inherent RSD or independence of all Peoples: first of fundamental human rights and prior condition of them all. (This is not an abstract or metaphysical hierarchy of “values”, according to the usage of monopolist propaganda, but a precedence of an objective, practical, strategic and political order.) Especially, there cannot be respect for HR where the RSD of Peoples is being repressed. Even though the observance of the Self-Determination or Independence of Peoples does not ensure the observance of all fundamental HR, its violation ensures the violation of the others.

As established in Chapter I, Article 1, of the United Nations’ Charter:

“The Purposes of the United Nations are: 1 To maintain peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace; 2 To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;” etc. (Charter of the United Nations; 26 June 1945.)

The RSD is a fundamental human right of custom, which sometimes has been applied and which anyway has been formally recognized – not constituted – by the Charter and the Resolutions of the UN and by successive Declarations and Conventions of Human Rights.

After examining the reports submitted by the States Parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [UNGAR 2200 (1966)], in accordance with article 40 of that Covenant, the Human Rights Committee (attached to the Office of the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights) adopted in its Twenty-first session (March-1984) a General Comment No. 12 on Article 1 (The right to self-determination of peoples) of that instrument. This General Comment, in its most outstanding paragraphs, runs as follows:

“1. In accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights recognizes that all peoples have the right of self-determination. The right of self-determination is of particular importance because its realization is an essential condition for the effective guarantee and observance of individual human rights and for the promotion and strengthening of those rights. It is for that reason that States set forth the right of self-determination in a provision of positive law on both Covenants [the already mentioned and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights] and placed this provision as article 1 apart from and before all of the other rights in the two Covenants.

“2. Article 1 enshrines an inalienable right of all peoples as described in its paragraphs 1 and 2. By virtue of that right they ‘freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development’. The article imposes on all States Parties corresponding obligations. This right and the corresponding obligations concerning its implementation are interrelated with other provisions of the Covenant and rules of International Law.

“3. Although the reporting obligations of all States Parties include article 1, only some reports give detailed explanations regarding each of its paragraphs. The Committee has noted that many of them completely ignore article 1, provide inadequate information in regard to it or confine themselves to a reference to election laws. The Committee considers it highly desirable that States Parties’ reports should contain information on each paragraph of article 1. [...]

 “7. In connection with article 1 of the Covenant the Committee refers to other international instruments concerning the right of all peoples to self-determination, in particular the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, adopted by the General Assembly on 24 October 1970 [UN General Assembly Resolution 2625 (XXV)].

“8. The Committee considers that history has proved that the realization of and respect for the right of self-determination of peoples contributes to the establishment of friendly relations and co-operation between States and to strengthening international peace and understanding.” [HRI/GEN/1/Rev. 9 (Vol. I); 13-March-1984.]

There is no doubt that for the agents of imperialism and fascism “the right to life” is an absolute right. In this way, those in our Country who maintain professional, permanent and omnipresent armed forces of land, sea and air organized and trained to kill: which do effectively shoot their weapons and kill in an immediate and systematic way the first opponent or the first passer-by who skips a road control, denounce that there are here “people who are up to pistols”; and that the Peoples – attacked and oppressed for centuries by them and their predecessors through horrendous and countless imprescriptible crimes – have banalized violence. They proclaim “the life” – that of themselves – as a supreme, absolute, inviolable and sacred value; and “the right to life” – theirs – as “the most fundamental, the first of human rights, without which all the rest are impossible: thereby starts everything”.

Now then, the right to life is not an absolute right, and anyone with a right conscience can understand it. To begin with, the right to life of an aggressor recedes before one’s or others’ right of legitimate self-defence against the aggression. Armed aggression against an individual or a Country, or the threat of his/its domination/enslavement, does immediately activate the right of legitimate self-defence to free himself/itself from that situation “by all available means that the attacked has at his disposal”, according to constant resolutions that the UN General Assembly has recognized, since the right of legitimate self-defence is an absolute right and not conditioned by any other higher right. On the other hand, there are Countries in whose legislation it is admitted – whether this is desirable or not, that is another question – the death penalty as a penalty handed down by judicial sentence for certain crimes. Put in the negative form, homicide is not always: absolutely and necessarily, an offence or crime; whereas torture – for example – is always and necessarily an absolute crime.

Hypocritical and ideologically functional stupidities such as those mentioned are spread and imposed every day, to the disgrace of this Country, by the propaganda monopolies of the French-Spanish imperialism and fascism destined to the useful or useless fools that they create and feed on them. Such statements are contradictory of the political reality, of the own positive law of the powers that impose them, as well as of the universal declarations of rights. They show by themselves the degree of destruction of the reason resulting from their totalitarian and imperialistic domination.

In the face of such falsifications, and as there has been recognized, the RSD of all Peoples is the first of the fundamental human rights and the precondition of them all: There is no in this issue valid place for distortion, manipulation or postponement:

“The right of peoples and nations to self-determination. - “A – Whereas the right of peoples and nations to self-determination is a prerequisite to the full enjoyment of all fundamental human rights, [...], Whereas every Member of the United Nations, in conformity with the Charter, should respect the maintenance of the right of self-determination in other States, The General Assembly recommends that: 1. The States Members of the United Nations shall uphold the principle of self-determination of all peoples and nations;” etc. [UNGAR 637 A (1952)]

The dominant usage and the official texts have generalized the improper and misleading term “self-determination” among other equivalent ones, nor better or worse. “We don’t want to argue about words.” Actually, the so-called – by a metaphysical extrapolation – “right of self-determination” is a right of hetero-determination, the same as every right, since there is no policy or law without otherness. (It has been even formulated the opposition between self-determination and exo-determination. But the correlative contrary of self-determination is not exo-determination but hetero-determination. The correlative contrary to exo-determination is endo-determination, not self-determination.)

As for the complications arising from its name, to the interchangeably used forms to call it: either as “right of” or “right to” self-determination (which do nevertheless correspond to very different ideas), there are to be added the difficulties created by the alleged correspondence between multiple legislations and languages, and the disparity of meanings for the same terms between the common and the special semantics; as well as by the differences between the languages: with six work languages nominated by the UN as original, of the same rank and authentic.

This terminological diversity has provided imperialism with a first opportunity to distort it, proposing it as a purported “right to [reach] self-determination”. However, Self-Determination is a right, not the object of a right. (The emergence of this misunderstanding is certainly not exclusive of the international right of self-determination; nevertheless, it has been rarely called in question – for example – the identity between “property” and “right of property”, when speaking about a meta-juridical “property”.)

The distinction between the civil right of property and civil right to property allows us to make evident that the right “to” property is the right of access to the property; as opposed to the right of property over something that actually is already possessed. The right of property is not, therefore, the dispositional or optional right “to” property, neither is it reduced to the corresponding faculties of limiting, transferring or extinguishing the civil right of property through alienation, sale, lease, resignation or the other legal figures – of a secondary, derivative and belated content – that integrate the waivable, alienable and transmissible right of civil property, different in any case from the civil right to property.

The right of property is the right whose integral faculties both formal and partial: those of selling or not selling, leasing or not leasing etc., are so pursuant to a civil right that excludes any decision on itself, although not on its secondary, derivative and belated content. Thus, the civil right of property is the exclusive right of reservation of its object in the face of all other individuals (who are excluded from the right and from its object), and it is also the right to decide on the sale of the object or on other rights involved in the right of property. Even so, the civil right of property: alienable and waivable, is not an inherent right as is so the right of self-determination, which is furthermore inalienable and un-waivable.

Anyway, whereas there is a right “to property”, that is: to the access to the property of something, for someone who is not and who will not necessarily become its owner, yet there is not a right of access to the right of self-determination. The RSD or all Peoples is inherent in a People, and cannot be acquired, suspended, abandoned or waived. The ideological purpose or effect of introducing such a “theoretical” substitution into the RSD is to destroy the juridical content of the self-determination, to establish a hiatus which separates the right from self-determination, to limit the extent of the right, and to open a continuity space (in favour) of the imperialistic régime. It is, in short, the theoretical and practical destruction of the RSD of Peoples.

(The “theory” of the “rights on rights” is a well-known “contribution” also of the theorists of civil law. The resort to it, by its expansion to the international law, would further allow complicating matters even more  for the benefit of the imperialistic ideology, making of the self-determination an object of a right and at the same time a right, with so much meaning and utility as the originating idea.)

The so-called ‘right of free disposition or self-determination of all Peoples’ has an amplitude of meaning that does not correspond either to narrow homonym concepts in civil law. Limiting it to this scope would open the door to the consideration of the right of free disposition or self-determination as a part of the right of the dominant Nation; and this reactionary effect is even more accentuated with the “right to free disposition” and the “right to decide”, as it will be discussed later.

The RSD: inherent to all Peoples, is not “dispositional or optional”. It does not need nor accept/depend on any decision to exist. Any eventual and hypothetical decision to the contrary, or even the Peoples’ resignation to it, are null and void. The “will” of the Peoples in nothing can affect to their RSD or to the other fundamental human rights, which are inherent and inalienable; the Peoples having therefore nothing to decide or nothing to vote, nor having any “right” in this regard. The RSD is a primitive or primary right. The afferent regulations of International Organizations regarding the RSD are declarative, not constitutive. In practice, its defence by the multinational organizations is purely declarative, quasi-non-existent or defective. The “legitimate self-defence” of the Peoples: which they all do claim for themselves, is in practice its constitutive factor.

The RSD of all Peoples is a fundamental, inherent (immanent or “natural”), customary, common, original, primary, constituent, continuous, permanent, unilateral, inalienable, inconvertible, un-renounceable and indefeasible human right. “Cornerstone of democracy”, the RSD of all Peoples is of an unconditional and immediate validity: it is the right to prevent any foreign aggression or occupation, and – where appropriate – to ensure the complete evacuation of all the military occupation forces and of the entire political apparatus of imperialistic subjugation.

The RSD is a fundamental human right inherent to all Peoples: all Peoples have the inherent and inalienable right of self-determination. The RSD of all Peoples is their right to independence from imperialism. The imperialism and the freedom of Peoples are antagonistic realities. National independence is the opposite of alien domination. An institutional instrument of the freedom of Peoples, the international right of freedom, free disposition or self-determination of all Peoples is their right to complete, unilateral, unconditional and immediate national independence from imperialism, against alien aggression, occupation and colonization, and against all political interference: this is a tautological proposition.

The RSD is not properly “compatible or incompatible” with democracy but, strictly, that right does found and establish it. The RSD cannot be expected or claimed from a democracy, which does only exist insofar as it is previouslyconstituted by that right. The RSD does not result from democracy – which would be the same as to deny that sight – but it does precede and constitute democracy. It does not come from any Constitution but is the constituent foundation of all democratic political régime: it precedes all formal or secondary Constitutions, just the same as it occurs with all fundamental human rights.

Quite on the contrary, it is the real or primary constitution of a State that must be based on the principle of freedom, independence and self-determination of Peoples, that’s to say: on the denial of the right of imperialism, in order that a primary constitution can be a democratic and legitimate one: “The act whereby a People is a People is the true foundation of society”. It doesn’t make any sense that such a right be expected from or claimed to democracy or to a democratic State, which does exist but constituted by it.

It is not democracy that does found, allow or guarantee the respect for fundamental human rights; quite on the contrary, it is the respect and observance of the fundamental human rights that do found, allow, guarantee and constitute democracy. The fundamental human rights are not a product of democracy, they are its foundation. All democratic order implies the observance of fundamental human rights in general: every fundamental and inherent right is constitutive and constituent of the democratic order. The denial of human rights, in general, is not constitutive of democracy, it is constitutive of absolutism and fascism. Absolutism and fascism are the denial of freedom, of fundamental and inherent human rights, and of all democracy.

Imperialism is the denial of Peoples’ freedom, of the integrity of their legitimately constituted States, and of all democracy. Democracy is the political power of the People, and neither there is nor there can be a power of the People and democracy where there are no fundamental human rights; therefore, the Peoples’ Self-Determination or Independence: first of fundamental human rights and prerequisite of them all, is constitutive of all democracy. Without the Self-Determination or Independence of all Peoples, there is no democracy.

At the international level, and in the confrontations that currently exist within international law used as a weapon between the Powers, one of the fronts of the offensive campaign developed by the ideological agents of imperialism against fundamental human rights in general – and against the RSD of all Peoples in particular – consists in reducing the significance of those fundamental rights to the revealingly differentiated and carefully detached scope of “the humanitarian rights”: which are used in order to fraudulently supplant and replace the former, and so as to hypocritically “demand” that “humanitasrian rights” be respected while turning a blind eye to the violation of fundamental human rights.

Currently, horrendous crimes and violations against HR are perpetrated by imperialism to obtain its objectives, which are respected by the “international community”, while its “scrupulous keepers”l divert the worls’s attention from this fact to talk only about “humanietarian rights”. And this on condition – in any case – that guarantee, security and satisfaction are afforded to the sensitive and almighty Governments that violate fundamental human rights and above all the Self-Determination or Independence of Peoples: a unique and equivocal way for the NGOs and the like to obtain the generous, benevolent and interested indulgence or these Governments. Thus, the limit between possibilist efficacy, on the one hand, and recognition-collaboration with the imperialistic totalitarianism, on the other, does immediately appear and shows the dangers and the drifts towards collaborationism so many times verified and suffered.

Contrary to what the imperialistic and fascist ideology aims to, the democracy – the democratic State, where it exists – does not provide, adopt, allow, supply or recognize the Peoples’ Self-Determination or National Independence but it does imply and mean it. The RSD of a subjugated People (i.e., of a People that, because of its being under imperialism, remains deprived of its Self-Determination or National Independence); that’s to say: its right of national Independence, does found and constitute democracy. In short, the Self-Determination or National Independence of Peoples in the face of all imperialism founds and constitutes democracy. The Self-Determination or National Independence of Peoples is constitutive of the democratic State and International Law.

Democracy does not lead to Self-Determination; quite to the contrary, it is Peoples’ Freedom and Self-Determination or national Independence that do found and constitute authentic Democracy and the democratic State, which do not exist without them. As such, Peoples’ freedom and Self-Determination are always democratic. Thus, either both Democracy and the Self-Determination that constitutes it do exist, or neither the one nor the other do exist: everything else is confusion and mystification at the service of imperialism and fascism. The “elections and majorities” established under an imperialistic and colonial régime of military occupation – which consists of the denial of fundamental human rights and therefore of all democracy – are a sham, a falsification of democracy. As already indicated, colonialism: the imperialism of population, is incompatible with Self-Determination; it is its complete denial.

The RSD of all Peoples against the imperialism, and of independence and integrity of their States legitimately constituted upon the principle of Peoples’ Self-Determination or Independence, has always been a fundamental, customary and inherent right of all Peoples; at least of the Peoples capable of exercising the individual and collective right of legitimate self-defence: a right also fundamental and inherent, and inseparable from the right of self-determination, which the Member States of the United Nations’ Organization (UNO) did always oppose as the limit to the competences of the other States and of the International Organizations themselves. Indeed, if it is not lawful to repel aggression, but it is so to perpetrate it, then there is not RSD but an imperialistic monopoly of violence.

“Article 51. Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.” (Charter of the United Nations; 1945.)

Being defective and precarious as a matter of fact, the RSD is inseparable from the inherent right of legitimate self-defence, and includes the right of integrity and independence of the States consistent with and constituted upon the RSD. (The rights of self-determination and of legitimate self-defence are inseparable: a right without a defence is not a right.)

All Peoples: dependent and independent, do assert their inherent rights of self-determination and of legitimate self-defence against imperialistic aggression, subjugation, occupation and colonization. For its part, the United Nations’ General Assembly has recognized this in numerous Resolutions: 3070 (1973); 33/24 (1978); 35/35 (1980) etc. When the Peoples and their legitimate States are acting in their own legitimate self-defence and in resistance against the imperialistic aggression, for which they are fully legitimized and entitled, the determination of the freedom fighters’ means of struggle is a mere matter of strategy, not of morality.

In short, all the consequences caused by the national defence or Resistance of the subjugated Peoples against the aggression of imperialism are attributable to it, as the first, eminent and efficient cause of all subsequent violence that it is, and that it does constitute by its essence and by its very existence.

The “inherent right of legitimate self-defence against aggression” implies “a customary right”: it is a right that is presented as “exceptional, subsidiary, last, provisional, limited, proportional and controlled”, but which in fact is usually normal, substantive, first, permanent, unlimited, disproportionate and uncontrolled. This right is subject to general and unilateral positive exigency and reservation by all Peoples and States of the world, and its extensive interpretation – no less unilateral – includes the “preventive self-defence”.

All the (serious) Peoples and all States of the world do make a reserve of the right to international legitimate self-defence, “by all necessary means available at their disposal, including the armed struggle”; a right equally recognized by the UN as inherent and customary. In resisting and opposing to alien domination, the subjugated Peoples and States do act in defence of their fundamental and inherent rights of self-determination or independence.

The RSD of all Peoples, and their right to independence from imperialism, are the same thing. In the political order, the “right” of imperialism, on the one hand, and the generally called right of free disposition or self-determination of all Peoples, on the other, are constitutively correlative and antagonistic concepts: none of them can be or exist without and against the other one. That is to say, the “right” – mind you, the crime – of actual or virtual imperialism over a subjugated People does immediately lead to the establishment of – is the constitutive condition for the establishment of – its RSD; therefore, if no crime of actual or virtual imperialism is perpetrated and if there are no imperialists against a subjugated People, there is no RSD to claim (nor any need of it either). Conversely, the RSD: which does necessarily arise as an immediate consequence of the domination of a People that is being subjugated, constitutes – is the constitutive condition for – the crime of imperialism; therefore, if there is no RSD (which implies the double condition first of the existence of a People, and then of the violation of its national independence), there is no crime of imperialism.

Imperialism is the correlative contrary to Self-Determination or national Independence of Peoples. The Self-Determination or national Independence of Peoples is the correlative contrary to Imperialism. Crimes – as well as the rights they violate – do all necessarily have their agent and patient subjects. In this way, the agent of the crime of imperialism is the patient subject of the RSD, held by all Peoples and States that are attacked and occupied by imperialism.

In subjugated Countries, despotism and imperialism are the same things. Raising the question of national freedom and RSD is raising the general issue of freedom, human rights and democracy. The right of national freedom or self-determination is the correlative contrary of actual or virtual imperialism; and the establishment of the latter does necessarily and automatically produce the emergence of the former: imperialism implies, a contrario, the RSD; and vice versa.

The RSD does not depend on the degree or form of implantation of the political imperialism, that’s to say: on its being more or less declared, brutal or revolting; the former is absolutely the correlative contrary to the existence of the latter; its absolute denial. The right of self-determination of the subjugated Peoples is the same thing as the right to their effective freedom: it is the free disposition or immediate independence of the Peoples in the face of the foreign domination or interference constituted by imperialism. In short: if Self-Determination is (is in force and effective), Imperialism is not (does not exist); and if Imperialism is (is in force and effective), Self-Determination is not (does not exist, is being violated). The affirmation of Self-Determination of Peoples as a reality already effective in an imperialistic régime is a contradiction in terms: such reality does not and cannot exist, and does not lead, therefore, to independence or to any other part.

The RSD of Peoples against imperialism or under an imperialistic régime is their right to effective, unconditional and immediate national independence. It implies, without any other form of procedure, the total and immediate evacuation of the military forces of occupation and of all the entire apparatus of subjugation  of imperialism, OUTSIDE the occupied and annexed territories; not having the form of the entity that will replace it any relevance in this regard. “Get out from the occupied and annexed States and Territories!” is the simple AND UNIQUE fundamental norm of the act of Self-Determination – carried out by virtue of the RSD – under imperialism.

The RSD of all Peoples against the imperialism or under an imperialistic régime is not the “right to decide”; does not give “option to vote, choose and decide on their national independence”: it is their right of national independence itself. The Self-Determination or original Independence of Peoples is not an option; it is a fundamental, inherent, inalienable, unconditional and immediate right of them. It is not the capacity to choose independence; it is the effective capacity of independence. Correspondingly, the national Independence of the subjugated Peoples against/in the face of imperialism is not an option of the RSD, it is identical with the RSD. The RSD of the subjugated Peoples does not give them a possible access to national independence, it is their right to national independence itself. The Peoples’ national Independence constitutes and is the basis that makes possible their free Self-Determination, which the military occupation or interference of imperialism does criminally violate by its very existence. Thus, under an imperialistic régime, the RSD of the subjugated Peoples does not perchance lead to their national Independence, it is their national Independence itself.

The unconditional and immediate Independence of a People subjugated by imperialism, this is: against or in the face of imperialism, as well as the freedom and integrity of their States legitimately constituted on the principle of equal rights and self-determination of Peoples [UN Charter, Chapter I, Article 1, 2; UNGAR 545 (VI-1951); 2625 (XXV-1970) etc.], is not an “option” of the RSD but its necessary content: it is identical to the RSD. Apart from this there can be only place for criminal subjugation of Peoples, and annexation of their legitimate States.

Independence from imperialism does not “follow”: neither eventually nor necessarily, to Self-Determination. Strictly speaking, the simple, complete, unconditional and immediate Independence of the Peoples subjugated under/by imperialism is the only content: tautologically possible and necessary, of the RSD. Imperialism is not a democratic choice, is not an “option” of the RSD: it is its absolute denial.

The RSD does not give a “right of option” to imperialism, which is contradictory to the RSD. The “capacity to vote and decide on the independence” in/under an imperialistic régime is the denial of the RSD, since it implies immediate independence from imperialism. The “right to decide between all the options”, “by virtue of the right of self-determination”, does not include the “option” to imperialism, which is contradictory to the right of self-determination. The “right of option” is a subsequent form and part of the RSD, which is identical to the right of immediate independence from imperialism.

The choice of independence from imperialism is not “a possible result of the ‘right to decide’ about the future”; it is the essence of the RSD, of which that choice is an integral part. The national Independence of a subjugated People is the unique and permanent content of its RSD, not a formal variant, a possible end, consequence or result. These variants are irrelevant as for what it is the common base of the RSD and therefore of them all: national Independence from imperialism. Similarly irrelevant are the variants of the agents of the right.

The correct distinction between the Peoples’ original Independence in the face of imperialism, on the one hand (which is the necessary, unconditional and permanent content of the right of all subjugated Peoples to Self-Determination or Independence); and, on the other, the independence as a concrete way – dispositionary or optional, eventual and conditional – of exercising this right of independence from imperialism (once this one has been abolished and the national freedom and democracy that it was violating have been restored), makes it possible to avoid the risk of unfortunate mistakes, whether voluntary or involuntary.

The right of freedom, free disposition or self-determination of all Peoples subjugated under imperialism has as its sole and necessary content their independence from imperialistic domination/exploitation, and not “the right to vote, decide, opt or choose” either between national independence, or national submission under imperialism. This constitutes a functional – theoretical and practical – absurdity, since it makes imperialism at the same time the starting condition, the limit, the base, and the option of arrival of that reactionary monstrosity; which consists of affirming that “to exercise the right to self-determination” is to carry out a so-called “referendum of self-determination” under imperialism and even with its permission, as is claimed by its indigenous ideological agents in charge of falsifying the RSD. Yet, quite to the contrary, Self-Determination or Independence of Peoples subjugated under imperialism is a starting requirement, not a matter of choice: it is something that is not to be voted, nor requested, nor chosen, nor decided, nor conditioned, nor suspended, nor limited, nor waived or alienated, nor does it expire.

Self-determination is the absolute opposite of Imperialism: where Self-Determination is effective there is no imperialistic domination; this is a tautological proposition. Conversely, where imperialism constitutes its State on the subjugation of Peoples and the annexation of their legitimate States, their Self-Determination is violated: if there is Imperialism, there is no Self-Determination; if there is Self-Determination, there is no Imperialism. The first condition for the exercise of the right of self-determination of a People subjugated under imperialistic military occupation is the unconditional and immediate evacuation of these occupying forces. Groups that do not start from this demand but accommodate themselves to the military occupation of imperialism in order to “exercise the right to self-determination” within that occupation, are agents – whether they be alien or aboriginal – of imperialism.

Under those circumstances, to affirm that under the conditions and the continuity of an imperialistic régime is possible to exercise the “right to the separation or secession (let them both be understood as independence until we make a further precision of these concepts) of the subjugated Peoples”, it is not to affirm but to deny the RSD; it is to make the apologia of the imperialism, to again return to the right of conquest, and to recognize the legitimate imperialistic right of ruling/domination over the Peoples. The independence of Peoples and States subdued under imperialism: immediate and without any other form of procedure, is the only necessary content of the RSD.

Imperialism is the actual or virtual, theoretical or practical denial of Peoples’ national Freedom or Self-Determination. In contemporary UN International Law, imperialism and the theoretical and practical denial of the Peopes’ Self-Determination or Independence are one and the same thing: Imperialism is the negative of Peoples’ Self-Determination. Conversely, the Self-Determination of Peoples and the juridical denial of Imperialism are one and the same thing: Self-Determination is the negative of Imperialism. (The crime and the punishment are contrary and correlative: the crime is contained in the law.)

Imperialism is a part and condition of international political relations. Imperialism does not exclude nor contradict the international law, in the same way as the crime in general does not exclude nor contradict the law: it is an assumption, a part, a condition and a violation of law in general. The policy of national liberation, and the rights of self-determination and legitimate self-defence of the Peoples, are politically the contraries of imperialism. However, although they are the contraries of it, they are not between themselves mutually exclusionary or contradictory but are their mutual and correlative constitutive condition of each other: the former cannot exist without the latter, and the disappearance of the former implies the disappearance of the latter.

In the same way as the absolute victory in war is the end of the combatants and of the war itself, also similarly the absolute triumph of the imperialism is the liquidation of the policy of national liberation, of the rights of self-determination and legitimate self-defence, and – therefore – also of the imperialism itself. Conversely, and correspondingly: the absolute triumph of the policy of national liberation, and of the rights of self-determination and legitimate self-defence, is the end of the imperialism and – therefore – also of the policy of national liberation and of the rights of self-determination and legitimate self-defence. Once imperialism has been abolished, there is no longer a possible claim of a subjugated People’s RSD; there is current and operational Self-Determination or Independence of a People free from all colonial and foreign domination.

The fundamental human rights and democratic freedoms in general are irreconcilable with imperialism and colonialism. Imperialism is not “compatible or incompatible” with democracy, is exclusionary of it: imperialism and democracy are contradictory realities. The idea of “colonialist or imperialistic democracy” is contradictory in the terms: if there is Democracy, there is no Imperialism; if there is Imperialism, there is no Democracy. Therefore, the Self-Determination or Independence of Peoples in the face or against imperialism is not an aleatory end or result of Democracy, it is a constituent of it: without Self-Determination or Independence of the subjugated Peoples, there is no Democracy. A “democratic imperialism” is a sheer contradiction in terms: it does not and cannot exist, it has never existed nor will ever exist. Imperialism is not a democratic “option” but quite all the opposite.

Since French mythology coined a triad of trickeries: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” and the like, so as to hide behind them the falsification-destruction of the fundamental human rights of non-French Peoples and the authentic democracy at the hands of the then republican French imperialistic Nationalism of always (imposed on those Peoples through the reign of Terror, deportation of populations, and horrendous and countless crimes), the real content of those rights and concepts has since been replaced on a systematic basis by French imperialistic totalitarianism with such wiles to this day. Traditionally exploited this procedure in the regions of our Country under French occupation, that adulteration and falsification of the cardinal terms and concepts: undertaken with the same purpose by the Spanish neo-fascist régime of the Second Francoism, is unparalleled. This régime: which since 1977-79 is having the constant support of the Pnv-Eta liquidationist bureaucracy and its satellites, is currently clad in adornments of “human rights, democracy and popular will” that cannot be more false.

The “modern” totalitarian propaganda does constantly reveal the fascist technique of ideological double meaning, recuperation and double play of ideas and concepts, aimed at the conditioning and manipulation of the masses. In a new exercise – one more – of manipulation and falsification, when the imperialistic propaganda demands in the Basque Country the “respect of human rights”, it is merely demanding respect for the exigencies of the local Renegades and of those of its own Agents and beneficiaries, acting in the service of the French-Spanish imperialism and fascism. These official and paid “defenders and protectors of HR” could not care less of HR; and the repeated Declarations of Rights – universally disseminated – that define them are too much wide for them: it little matters whether they falsify, hide, or have not even the slightest idea of those rights. The “rights” they talk about are the imperialistic and fascist right to destroy the fundamental HR of the Basque People/Euskal Herria.

In short, this is the situation posed by those “defenders”: unconditional and immediate admission of the established situation where fundamental human rights are being violated and suppressed by the French-Spanish imperialistic and fascist Nationalism, on the one hand; and on the other, empty verbiage and endless and pointless byzantine debates over “the respect for human freedom” (that of Fascists mainly), as means and condition to obtain the recognition and restoration of those rights.

With all shamelessness, the “freedom” that Fascists and Renegades do claim for is what they call “a freedom needed” of limitations; which, as it seems, must be determined under the French-Spanish fascism, armed occupation and colonization. It is this the way in which the concealed or disclosed agents in functions of the fascist “humanism” do understand the respect of human freedoms and rights. Once more: it is not possible to restore the fundamental human rights where it is being violated, denied or conditioned the RSD of all subjugated Peoples: first of human rights and precondition of them all. And the first requirement to restore them is the unconditional and immediate evacuation of the occupying forces of imperialism.

Fascists and imperialists do affirm “the law and the Constitution” (the ones they've imposed through Terror of their criminal military domination for centuries), and what they call “democracy”, it is: their totalitarian and colonialist “majority”, and oppose them to the immediate national independence implied in the RSD. Yet, the fundamental freedoms and human rights do precede and take precedence over the democratic laws, the democracy, the formal (secondary) Constitution and the real (primary) constitution; and do constitute the democratic institutions and decisions, which do oly exist by virtue of those ones. It is not democracy that brings fundamental human rights: they are the fundamental human rights that bring and constitute democracy. “The Constitution, laws, rights and the democratic State that we’ve given us ourselves”: which the French and Spanish imperialists and fascists talk about, are those that by means of war and organized and continued crimes against the fundamental human rights of the Nations that they have subjugated, they have given themselves for us the others to suffer.

In the end, in its residual and official version, the so-called “State/rule of law” that fascists and imperialists do constantly invoke boils down to the “rule of law”. But the law of the State does not found or legitimize anything, starting with the State itself, which has produced it a posteriori. Every State enacts its laws, and therefore any State is a “State/rule of law”, even the totalitarian ones.

On the other hand, and important though it may be, it is not the respect for the “forms of the law”, i.e.: the much-vaunted “principle of legality” established by the positive law of a “rule of law”, what shelters the individual and guarantees his legal protection but the respect for the fundamental human rights. For the French-Spanish imperialistic “State/rule of law”, the human rights are in reality the rights of conquest, dismemberment, exclusion, colonization and annexation of the subjugated Peoples and their States, through which it installs the sociological “universe” to which the “universal suffrage” is “granted”, and from which there can be deducted next their colonialist so-called “democratic majorities” aimed at crushing and destroying the Peoples. Its “rule of law” is the imperialistic and criminal ruling law.

It is in this way that the reality of the régime of military occupation established and preserved by means of violence and Terror, its imperialistic and fascist essence, and its radical incompatibility with freedom, democracy and the RSD of Peoples: first of human rights and prior condition of them all, are practically and theoretically DENIED by the indigenous accomplices of the bureaucratic mafia Pnv-Eta: collaborationists and official “opponents” of the system, in total coincidence with the Renegades, Agents and Ideologists of the imperialism.

In fact, these armed or unarmed institutionalists: who assert the “more or less democratic” character – with or without deficit – of the imperialistic régime of military occupation and annexation, do at the same time deny and destroy democracy, freedom and the right of self-determination of Peoples, and do legitimate the imperialism, offering it in addition “a democratic consultation [under the conditions of an imperialistic, colonialist and fascist régime of military occupation!], and if it turns out nay to independence, we accept”. The recent express affirmation about “the independence as one of the options of self-determination”: made by one of their “specialists” and kindly aimed to illustrate the fascist Spanish minister on shift about this particular, is the acceptance of the “democratic” continuity of the imperialistic régime, and constitutes sabotage of the fundamental and inherent RSD of the subjugated Basque People/Euskal Herria, and a denial of the criminal nature of the French and Spanish régime of military occupation: imperialistic, fascist and incompatible with the fundamental human rights, but affirmed on the contrary as a democratic one by those traitors.

The dire consequences of this error are difficult to exaggerate: there is no way for the strategic implementation of a fundamental right whose nature is kept unknown, hidden or distorted. After having provoked a catastrophe in this Country for half a century with their crazy “armed activism” – a simulacrum that they presented as “revolutionary war” – and with the dogmatism of a ridiculous “Marxism-Leninism” of their own invention: procedures with which they have befuddled generations and led their followers to the cemetery or to jail and finally to collaborationism since 1979 to this day; and after having put it to the brink of a complete disaster, exhaustion and collapse, this is the current contribution of the so-called “abertzale left” to the theoretical and practical development of the right of self-determination of all Peoples, namely: the acceptance of imperialism, fascism and their consequences, of the armed occupation and subsequent colonization imposed for centuries on the Basque People by Spain and France through horrendous and countless crimes committed under the protection of their occupying armies, as a “legitimate and democratic” outcome.

The unmasking and denunciation of this mafia gang of unscrupulous and incompetent individuals who form the bureaucratic and liquidationist Pnv-Eta group (identified as such in particular by their mutual and stubborn recognition of the imperialistic and fascist régime of the Second Francoism as “democracy”), is the precondition for the regeneration and strategic reconstitution of the democratic policy of national liberation that this Country urgently needs.

Those liquidationists do also claim that the RSD is the “last resort or remedy against the established law of force”: a law that they have precisely supported and recognized to this day as “democratic”, and do similarly require the absence of any violence as a condition of the RSD or of any other; which is again another more absurdity. Because the RSD: like any other fundamental and licit right, is not a resort or remedy to the law of force. It is either a democratic and anti-imperialistic form of the law of force: when it is properly understood and implemented; or simple verbiage at the service of the imperialism.

Without criminal constitutive violence there is no imperialism nor fascism. Imperialism is the criminal and effective denial of the RSD of Peoples. If there was not imperialism, there would not be RSD either nor would it be needed; but when the imperialism exists, the RSD and its corollary: the right of legitimate self-defence, express the right of the oppressed Peoples to resort to legitimate violence in order to shake off the domination of the imperialism. Democracy, its law, the HR in general and the RSD in particular consist of legitimate democratic violence, as opposed to criminal totalitarian violence of imperialism and fascism. Those who hide the constituent criminal violence of the French-Spanish established régime, do conceal its origin and nature typical of a régime of military occupation, and actually support the totalitarian imperialist monopoly of violence, along with all the crimes by means of which it has been established.

The RSD: considered as a foundation and not as a result, is essential for the qualification of the democratic State, which is necessarily constituted on Self-Determination or Independence of Peoples. Self-Determination of Peoples and Democracy are contradictory concepts with the imperialistic régime. The supporters of this régime try to escape from the contradiction, but they can only conceal it through the “confusion” between the democratic system: which is founded on Self-Determination of Peoples; and the imperialistic system, based on the denial of Self-Determination or Independence of Peoples.

This implies the distortion and destruction of the terms and concepts of Democracy and Self-Determination; the denial of both the occupied Nation and State, and of the imperialistic reality; the acceptance and recognition: de facto and de jure, of the régime constituted by means of war, conquest and occupation; the confusion between the unconditional and immediate independence from imperialism: as THE SOLE AND NECESSARY CONTENT of the RSD, and the “option” of independence, which is its denial; the shameful counterfeiting and abandonment of the RSD of the subjugated Peoples; and the theoretical and practical liquidation of the real process of Resistance against imperialism: central task and objective for the worldwide imperialistic reaction. Such is the actual content of the ideological “adaptations” persistently disseminated by the transmission belts of the “autonomous communities”. It is nothing other than that, what lies ahead and behind their faked and grotesque version of the RSD.

The denial of this right is the basis of imperialism: in itself a crime against the “fundamental right of peoples to peace and security”, according to International Law. The ideological attack on the RSD is carried out according to general lines that here we can only point. The three “common” ways of ideological denial of the right of national freedom and Self-Determination of all Peoples are based on:

1/ full denial of the right;

2/ denial-reduction of its contents: reduction to a conditioned, subordinated or limited freedom and right either to autonomy, federation, association, integration etc.; reduction of the means constitutive of all policy and all law; in short, “limited” forms of domination in opposition to independence; and

3/ denial of the Peoples who have the right of “Self-Determination or national Independence of all Peoples”, reduced to one or some of them (generally, the Peoples recognized as States), or to special cases; which empties the right of others in the face of the occupying imperialistic States.

Among those ways, the Spanish and French – military, civil or ecclesiastical – imperialism adopts preferably, of course, the most radical, namely: the denial of the very existence of the Peoples: a solution that excludes in itself all accessory question of freedom and rights. But, according to its usual ideological technique, it uses them all by accumulation: simultaneously or in succession, according to the time and occasion; without the formal contradictions inherent in this procedure harming it too much, in the face of populations stunned by the monopolies of violence and of ideologically determined information/disinformation.

The indigenous imperialists and liquidationists talk about “Basque Nation, self-determination and democracy” but they recognize: with an unheard-of stubbornness, the fundamental “democratic and non-violent legitimacy” of the French-Spanish régime of military occupation where “all the means of coercion and communication are in the hands of the army”, whose State is constitutionally, formally and really founded on the denial of the Basque People and its historical State, and on the affirmation of the occupying Nations, Peoples and States as the only reality and basis of that “democratic and non-violent legitimacy”. Despite all their “democratic and abertzale” rhetoric, they are unable to theoretically and ideological assume the national reality and qualification of the occupied Basque Country, and the imperialistic and fascist character of the occupying States, officially founded “on the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation, common and indissoluble Fatherland of all Spaniards” and “on the Spanish People, from which emanate all the powers of the State”; as well as “on the Nation and Republic one and indivisible, Fatherland of the French People”.

Through the working of the “Basque” Pnv-Eta liquidationist bureaucracies and their satellites: the local accomplices of the imperialism, the ideological negation/destruction of the RSD has now reached peaks of confusion and hypocrisy which before now were ignored or considered inaccessible by humans. They have thus destroyed or abandoned the very foundation of the oppressed Nation, of the right of free disposition of all Peoples, and of all democracy. The inevitable consequence is that the “right to self-determination” that they talk about is formally the “right of self-determination of the Spanish and French Peoples and Nations in order to determine the others”; which is an ideological falsification that implies the negation of the fundamental RSD of the subjugated Peoples. Their task consists in a constant reactionary effort in order to hide both the RSD as the right of independence in the face of imperialism, and the opposition against imperialism as its only strategic content, and in order to deny the imperialistic character of the French-Spanish régime of military occupation.

Neither is the own “nation” that they talk about a reality and a political foundation, or an active subject and basis of the RSD, but an empty expectation and object of rhetorical claims or aspirations within the framework of a régime of military occupation that they have accepted, recognized and legitimized as democratic and their own one. The RSD that they talk about is an ideological falsification that implies its denial; and the democracy that they talk about is the French-Spanish imperialistic fascism in power.

Unprecedentedly, they recognize the de facto French-Spanish régime as essentially democratic, peaceful, non-violent and non-Nationalist, all at the same time. “We should not abuse of words as serious as ‘fascism’, because in spite of everything France is yet a democracy. The French State, like any other, has a right to defend itself against violence, basically, it was made for that; but it does not always have a sense of measure.” (J-L Davant.)

So, after so many years of apologetics applied to the Eta “activism” (“the capital event in these last forty years is the development of ETA”), the convert Davant does long ago approve the repression of the – according to him – “democratic” French State, at the service of maintaining its domination over our Country (as it does in the antipodes). And that, even recognizing that it was about the repression of defendants who were acting “Euskal Herria libratu nahiz” [“seeking to free the Basque People”]. But here’s his explanation: “Horrekin ez dut erran nahi jujatu gabe uzten ahal zirela: bere burua zain dezake bai Estatuak, eta funtsez hortako egina da”. [“With this, I don’t mean to say that they may be left without being judged: since the State has the right to look after itself, and basically it was made for this.”]

Now then, and to limit ourselves just to logic: how can one thing – the State or whatever else – be made in order to look after itself? “I would like it was explained to me”, as he himself says. Because, in simple formal logic, if something does already exist, it cannot “be made” to look after what already exists; and if it does not exist, it cannot be made to look after what does not exist. But imperialism and formal logic keep problematic relations, as we can so often see.

Not only strategy, also the fundamental political and juridical affirmations have been denied and evacuated. In reality, the “moderate and radical Basques” institutionalists have long since abandoned the essential and decisive affirmation of the occupied Basque People, Nation and State; which, from being the foundation of democratic policy and law, have been reduced to a vague objective or futile pretension. On the cardinal issue of determining the People, the Nation and the State, the aboriginal spokespersons for the broad and multiform institutionalist armed and unarmed Pnv-Eta conglomerate: in use of the privileges of propaganda that the “new” régime grants those who in word or deed – partially or fully – recognize and legitimize it, say and do the same things that establish the law and the propaganda of imperialism, with some formal precautions. And above all they accept and recognize as legitimate, democratic and non-violent the Spanish régime of military occupation, as well as the Francoism reformed by the intra-totalitarian transition.

They proclaim “the right of the Basque people to form a nation”. They do graphically announce that “We are a people with the right to form a nation. This country is in water breaking and you women know much of that: it will be a boy or it will be a girl, but a creature is coming. A new nation is going to be born.” (X. Arzalluz)

Thus, in the ideology of the “moderate and radical – whether armed or unarmed – peripheral Basque institutionalists”, the Nation: as foundation and agent of the national freedom and the inherent right of self-determination or independence (a fundamental principle that all States and all national liberation movements in the world do affirm), gives way to the “nation” which only exist as an aspiration of a “nationalism without a nation”. With the vague aim or vain aspiration – for that “nationalism without a nation” – of “forming” or procreating the nation in and from the same legal-institutional system that does totally and absolutely deny it.

They do formally confirm with this that the Basque Nation does not exist as a previous reality; that the National Resistance cannot be based on it; that the national Independence is not a fundamental right but the more or less futuristic object of a “secessionist” project, aspiration, claim, right or perspective inside the imperialistic State – a democratic one according to them – from which that “nation” is to be born; and that the RSD is only a so-called “right to decide” of the more or less viable or abortive foetus that “will be born”. But then it is about an inevitably abortive ‘nasciturus’, since according to those institutionalists it must be formed and given birth from the pregnant – although democratically virginal and immaculate – wombs of the bearing mother-countries: the two “great” occupants nations, France and Spain; these ones not futuristic but quite actual and – albeit pregnant – quite determined to get rid as soon as possible and by all means of so annoying and undesirable spawn.

By keeping such positions, these “Basque institutionalists” are but just confirming thereby the fundamental points of the formal and real constitutions of the States and régimes of military occupation of Francespain, which deny the very existence of the Basque People and State. This does not prevent them from recognizing the occupying States as “democratic with or without deficit” and as their own ones. They thus deny the reality of the French-Spanish imperialistic régime of military occupation, turned and accepted by them as the “natural and democratic” framework for a purported “right of self-determination” of the nasciturus which the Pnv-Eta bureaucracy calls “Basque citizenship”, but never Basque People/Euskal Herria.

Together with the Basque People, do also disappear the policy of national freedom and the rights of self-determination and legitimate defence: resources that proclaim in words the UN and that, as far as they are concerned, claim all States and Movements of National Liberation in the world. Then, the only thing that there remains to be done is to close the shop that never should have been opened. Everything else is hollow and meaningless hot air: the speech and ravings of useful fools or lunatics: clinically ready to be locked up, or the hypocritical palinode of the useful or useless scroungers of always.

If they now “discover” that even “the Statute is dead” and – what’s more: that “the Statute was born dead”, there remains to know how long will it take the experts in social obstetrics and gynaecology of the group Pnv-Eta in perceiving the non-viability and the death of the foetus fathered or given birth by grace of the genetics of “self-determination” that they have launched. In it the subjugated Nation: as the basis of all defensive nationalism, gives way to the “nation” as an aim of a “nationalism” without Nation. And that nationalism: way of being of the Nation, gives way to the “nationalism” that should produce the “nation”. This is the “process” that they suggest, which gets so transformed into the apologia of the régime of military occupation, and flows into the political “solution” proclaimed by the “hopeful and exciting” racket “process” of Lizarra-Garazi and its inevitable and logical consequences.

Once again: a “Basque nationalism” that holds such principles and practices is sheer Spanish and French imperialistic Nationalism camouflaged; however much they play with the words so as to falsify and confuse the ideas. Starting from there, one may then wonder what is so much fuss and so much history about, how can be solved a problem that doesn’t even exist, and what is doing this administratively constituted greasy-pole “country”, apart from providing employment, salary and sinecures to the local auxiliary services of the “political class” in power.

Immediate and unconditional legitimization and recognition for the imperialism, the aggression, the conquest, the occupation and domination over the Peoples, on the one hand; condemnations, conditions, obstacles and delays for the freedom, the defence or the restoration of the subjugated Nations and States, on the other: it’s this the way as the aggressors of the occupied and colonized territories of the Basque People, along with their “moderate and radical” armed and unarmed collaborators and accomplices, understand the RSD of all Peoples.

The right of self-determination or independence of all Peoples is, like all democratic rights, a “reflection” of an obligation imposed by the political power that underpins International Law. The International Law is opposed to imperialism, and by that very Act it constitutes the same right of self-determination and independence of Peoples against imperialism. No additional Constitutive Act, on the part of the free or subjugated Peoples, makes any sense so as to constitute what is already constituted.

(From the text: “Euskal Herria and the Kingdom of Nabarre, or the Basque People and its State, against French-Spanish imperialism”.)