Carta MERKEL SIT AND TALK (Cartes per la República)

Aquesta carta, a petició d’alguns voluntaris i col·laboradors, vol demanar a la Cancillera Merkel que intervingui i forci la mediació entre Espanya i Catalunya. A partir d’un breu repàs per la setmana post-sentència (14 a 21 octubre) emfatitza el fet que el President Torra i el President Puigdemont han demanat una taula de diàleg diverses vegades (el 21 d’octubre també, amb links als documents).

Esperem que us sigui útil. Recordeu, com sempre, pesonalitzar, adaptar i enviar per compte vostre, sota la vostra responsabilitat.

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Dear Ms. Merkel,

As a Catalan citizen, deeply worried about the situation of my people, I would like to give you the latest info and implore you to intervene.

Last Monday (October 13th) we found out about the lengthy prison sentences against Catalan pro-independence leaders. This caused a huge wave of protests in Catalonia and also solidarity messages (and demonstrations also) have arrived from all over the world.

The general strike on Friday Oct 18^th was widely followed and saw thousands of participants in the ‘Freedom Marches’. Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated peacefully, against the unfair sentence, by participating in 5 huge Gandhian marches on 16th, 17th and 18th October, ending in Barcelona by entering from the North, West and South, in order to join a massive and peaceful demonstration with more than half a million people, according to local police. (However, images make us believe that there were probably more than double that amount of people)
(https://www.elnacional.cat/en/politics/thousands-catalans-marches-for-freedom-barcelona_430976_102.html )

At the end of the rally, like in the previous days, Spanish police started heavy unreasonable attacks on protesters. They were helped by Catalan Police (Mossos). Although Interior Ministers and police authorities always talk about “adequate and proportionate operations”, the following videos from Friday (Oct. 18th) show brutal, arbitrary and illegal actions by Spanish police, often provoking the incidents rather than containing them, and beating and shooting forbidden rubber bullets and balls against peaceful protestors, some journalists, among also a minority of more radical individuals causing damages to public furniture, but not to persons.

As I am writing this mail (Oct 21st,21 h) the figures are the following: “SEM”, the Catalan medical info sources show 593 injured people reported, of which being in serious condition 10 (including one young girl and one police that are very serious; 4 young protesters that lost their vision from one eye, and 58 journalists injured while working and correctly identified!) and more than 202 detentions (28 in preventive prison without bail from this week), just for damaging urban public furniture, garbage containers burned for self-defence, or some of them doing nothing else than just being on scene. These numbers add up to the previous 9 political prisoners in jail since Oct-Nov 2017 and to the 7 detained of September 23rd 2019. Total number of people in prison today is 44, and 9 in exile (from politicians to rap singers).

Please watch the series of videos of this link: https://english.vilaweb.cat/noticies/spanish-police-brutality-against-catalan-protestors-in-10-videos/

There are lots of witnesses that make clear that infiltrators started attacks to police, provoking back their strong charges against people on streets, even sitting down. Also, there is presence of violent anti-system foreign people, who are professionals of generating streets violence. Spanish state pretends to qualify peaceful but angry young protestors with the latest, in order to make public opinion believe that Catalan pro-independence followers form part of a violent movement. This has been never the case for the last 7 years, when the support for independence of Catalonia sharply increased, starting the so called Catalan “procés”. The reason: having suffered a humiliating cut on self-government Catalan Statute by Constitutional Spanish Court.

With all this situation, the Catalan President, Mr. Torra has called twice recently week to the Spanish President Sánchez (provisional Spanish President as there are elections again in Spain on Nov 10th) who did not even pick up the phone! Find the letter by President Torra to President Sánchez: https://catalangovernment.eu/catalangovernment/news/303711/president-puigdemont-repression-continues-parliament-will-proceed-vote-formal-declaration-independence

Last, but not least, today Mr. Sanchez came briefly to Barcelona in order to visit one police agent at hospital, but avoiding, not only other injured persons in the same hospital, but incredibly avoiding to meet Mr. Torra, the Catalan President! Humiliating (again). And he quickly ‘escaped’ from Catalonia, making it very visible that he feels really a foreigner in Catalonia already.

As a response, Catalan people who were always in favour to negotiate with Spanish State and to initiate a true dialog, generated today a leading worldwide trend on twitter in order to denounce that Spanish government does not want to talk with Catalans (please check out #SpainSitAndTalk )

As of Monday, October 21st, Mr. Puigdemont is publishing an article on this lack of dialogue with the Spanish Government: https://time.com/5705915/carles-puigdemont-catalan-protest-barcelona/

Ms. Merkel, taking into account all the previous evidences, and generally speaking the quick and severe deterioration of democracy in Spain, I urge you to please do everything you can in order to find a political solution to a political problem. Things are heating up in Catalonia, and for the moment it seems that repression continues to be the only answer to Catalan demand of 2,3 million people that voted in the 1^st October 2017 referendum for self-determination (90% “YES”!)

Yours sincerely,

xxxx

For more information:

WeReport: @WereportC https://wereport.cat/

Assemblea Nacional Catalana in English: @assemblea_int https://twitter.com/assemblea_int?lang=ca

Omnium Internacional in English: @OmniumIntl https://twitter.com/omniumintl?lang=ca