Juanjo Serrano, militant from the Catalan organization of the PCPE (PCP de Catalunya) and member of its Central Committee and two members of the CJC (JCP de Catalunya), are facing a trial in which each of them could be sentenced to three years and ten months in prison.
The state prosecution claims three years and ten months in prison for three Spanish Communists, members of PCPE and the CJC. The prosecutor bases his request on the events that took place in Barcelona on 14 November 2007, on the occasion of the demonstration to protest the murder of a young anti-fascist in Madrid on November 11.
This accusation is a police farce - supported by rigged evidence without any consistency, trying to demobilize the communist organization in this country and other anticapitalist organizations operating within the anti-fascist movement.
The facts that led to this farce are the following:
On 11th November 2007 the young antifascist Carlos Palomino was murdered in the Madrid underground at the hands of a 23 year old fascist - a professional soldier of the Spanish army - which was heading for a rally of the fascist party National Democracy. Immediately after this event, rallies and protests to condemn and protest this fascist murder take place in different Spanish cities, also in Barcelona.
The state of indignation among the anti-fascist demonstrators is proportional to the brutality of the murder and the misrepresentation of information that the sytem mass media execute by presenting the fact with the familiar and interested rhetoric of "clash between antisystem youth groups".
On 14th November in Barcelona, several anti-fascist groups and organizations convened a demonstration, where from the first moment it is clear that the police - Autonomous Police (directed by the Minister Saura ICV-EUiA - Catalan partners of United Left and the PCE -) were instructed to not leave it peacefully discourse. The operation did not have any proportionality with the protest: police take of the center of Barcelona with the anti-riot forces ready to charge, intimidation in the subway to those attending the demonstration, ambulances prepared as if it were a theater of war, threat of charging against the head of the demonstration as it was starting to march, etc.
During the demonstration there were several attempts from the police to cut the demonstration at various points, thereby increasing nervousness and outrage of the demonstrators. This situation worsened during the march, and after having marched only 400 meters there was a brutal police charge that brought an unjustifiable situation of social unrest to the heart of Barcelona as the repression was extended to the commercial area of Passeig de Gracia and ultimately affected bystanders.
As a result of the police charge there were several injured who had to be evacuated by ambulance. There were also 5 arrests, including two comrades from the CJC-JCPC, which were taken to the police headquarters of the Autonomous Police in Barcelona; since one of the detainees was a minor at the time, police had no choice but to notify the family of his detention, if not both they would have been at least 48 hours without external communication.
Immediately, leaders of the PCPC-PCPE and CJC-JCPC, accompanied by a lawyer, presented themselves at the police station along with the parents of the detainees. At that time they were required to be identified and, after a long wait at the station, a policeman called a comrade of PCPC-PCPE and two comrades from the CJC-JCPC, informing them that they had been recognized for their role in the demonstration and had been reported by the police. A real police set-up - as our Party member could not participate in the demonstration because of work reasons - led to criminalize the communist militancy and the struggle against fascism.
In the following days the prosecution settled the report:
On one hand, the three antifascist comrades arrested in the demonstration.
On the other hand, three comrades of PCPC-PCPE and the CJC-JCPC (one of those arrested and two of the defendants in the police station), who are accused "of a crime of assault and a crime of public disorder" for supposedly staging a roadblock with trash bins and throwing stones at the police and asking for "3 years and 10 months imprisonment and being disqualified for exercising the right to stand in elections." The case of the minors was filed, since the juvenile court did not see evidence of crime. To sustain this report, the prosecution presents only one evidence, the testimony of the police, there being no other evidence of the events mentioned.
It is not the first time that the Spanish government (the prosecutos is the government representative in the judicial process) uses false charges against anti-capitalist activists of different ideologies with only the false police statement (in Spain the police statement has the level of evidence, while the other witnesses' statements do not). The difference here is that instead of a single summary that affects all the defendants on the same facts, the prosecutor's summary has split into two: one with the three activists belonging to different organizations, and other one only against Communist militants from the PCPC-PCPE and the CJC-JCPC.
For all these reasons the Executive Committee of PCPE, understanding the situation of persecution and repression against three Communists militants - who may end up being sentenced to prison in the trial to conclude in the coming months - as a planned action by the state apparatus against our political project and against the development of a revolutionary option in Spain agrees:
To conduct an information campaign at international level to increase awareness of the repressive nature of the Spanish monarchist and bourgeois regime, and its false democratic discourse.
To ask for the solidarity of as many people and organizations share the anti-fascist policies anywhere.
To develop protest and solidarity actions with the three defendants in the coming months, demanding the dismissal of the case. Likewise for the other three anti-fascist comrades tried in separate piece.
To continue and intensify the campaign against the rise of fascism in Spain, and the complicity in all state apparatuses. To especialle denounce, the upward mobility of openly fascist individuals to police commanders; promoted in recent years from the same state police academies.
FREEDOM FOR THE PROSECUTED OF BARCELONA!
UNCONDITIONAL STRUGGLE AGAINST THE FASCISM OF THE MONARCHIST AND BOURGEOIS SYSTEM!
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE PCPE - February 2010
