Time passes; labels change. That great scourge of the 20th century, anti-communism, is now called anti-terrorism. It remains a label designed to generate fear and to make any abuse permissible.
On Feb. 20, the Spanish government closed the newspaper Euskaldunon Egunkaria, the only one published in Euskera, the ancient Basque language. The police arrested 10 people -- most of the staff of the tiny operation, including the editor. Accusing them of aiding the violent Basque nationalist group ETA, police sent the 10 to Madrid, held them for days and tortured them, they say, before some were released on high bail. When they publicly described their mistreatment, they were informed that they might be rearrested for lying.
Just how the newspaper, whose books are scrutinized by the Basque government, is allegedly working with ETA is unclear. But the events are all standard procedure, made possible by anti-terrorist laws passed in Spain in the 1980s. Political parties are banished, newspapers are shut down and thousands are arrested, held without judicial scrutiny, beaten and tortured. Hundreds have been killed.
Yet, while human rights groups write their reports, nobody is particularly upset, for the victims are Basques. And the Basques, we are told -- like the Arabs -- are terrorists, and they deserve whatever they get, no matter how law-abiding they are.
The average Spanish family living in a different corner of Iberia will not see a problem with any of this until the political party they vote for is outlawed, their newspaper of choice is shut down, their son vanishes one day and turns up weeks later with bruises and scars. The Spanish government can do this, too, with the same anti-terrorism laws it uses against the Basques.
The Franco dictatorship drew close to the U.S. with the unspoken argument that a commitment to anti-communism was more important than human rights. Today, the government of Jose Maria Aznar draws close to the Bush administration by virtue of a commitment to anti-terrorism.
The great lie on which all this is based is that the Basques are terrorists.
Once a people is labeled "terrorist," anything is permissible, and so the Spanish government insists on this label.
The Basques are a notoriously divided people. Their tiny land, about the size of New Hampshire, is divided into seven provinces -- three in France and four in Spain -- each speaking a different dialect of an orphan language that probably predates all other European languages.
