Tuesday, October 15, 2018, Barcelona – Tomorrow marks a year of the imprisonment of the president of Òmnium Cultural, Jordi Cuixart, and the leader of the the Catalan National Assembly, Jordi Sànchez. They are in remand and without a trial date by order of the Spanish Audiencia Nacional. Currently under investigation for rebellion by the Supreme Court of Spain, with accusations from the Spanish Public Prosecutor, the State Attorney, and the far-right party VOX, Cuixart might face a 30 year prison sentence.

The accusation comes from having “promoted” the demonstration in front of the Ministry of Economy of the Catalan government during the search carried out by the Spanish paramilitary Civil Guard on September 20, 2017, shortly before the referendum on the independence of Catalonia of October 1. Throughout the demonstration, which began spontaneously and ultimately gathered 40,000 people in Barcelona, the protests were carried out in a non-violent manner and Cuixart never tried to “disturb the peace”, but rather had a pacifying role and asked the crowd to calmy return home at midnight. The president of Òmnium asserts that he would do the same today: “I preside over an entity with more than 56 years of history and 126,000 members. I followed the mandate of our associates and we have always done so in a peaceful manner”. According to Cuixart, “the judges and attorneys know that they lie and they prefer to maintain made-up narratives”.

Amnesty International calls for the release of Cuixart and Sànchez

Coinciding with the anniversary of his entry intro prison, Amnesty International demanded today that Cuixart and Sànchez be freed immediately. The deputy director of the NGO in Europe, Fotis Filippou, asserts that “there is no justification for keeping them in pretrial detention” because it constitutes “a disproportionate restriction of their rights to free expression and peaceful gathering”.

In the statement that was released this monday, Amnesty International remarks that, according to the information that it possesses, the accusations against Cuixart and Sànchez are “unfounded and must therefore be dropped”. In this regard, it points out that “If it can be shown that they called on demonstrators to prevent police from carrying out a lawful operation, this could constitute a prosecutale public order offence”, but “accusing them of such serious crimes as rebellion or sedition and detaining them for a year is disproportionate”.

More prosecuted individuals

Shortly after the imprisonment of Cuixart and Sànchez, criminal proceedings were initiated against all members of the Catalan government, the president of the Catalan parliament, and two pro-independence members of parliament. They are all also being accused of sedition and rebellion, despite the fact that the crime requires violence, which never took place. Seven of them were imprisoned, where they remain to this day, while the rest had to go into exile. In total, therefore, there are nine people in prison and seven in exile because of the October 1 referendum.

Up until now, the Spanish extradition requests for the exiled individuals have failed. In Germany, where Catalan president Carles Puigdemont was detained, the regional court of Schleswig-Holstein rejected the extradition for rebellion as it considered that the events under investigation did not involve violence. Nor did the British or Belgian courts agree to the extradition of the exiled government officials. Currently, the seven exiled individuals are free without bail. These decisions have exposed the Spanish judicial system, as well as the narrative of violence that serves as the accusation of rebellion.