Etxerat
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| Founded | 1991 |
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| Type | Non-profit NGO |
| Focus | Prisoners and exiles of Basque nationalist movement |
| Headquarters | Hernani, Gipuzkoa, Spain |
| Services | Supporting families of imprisoned and exiled persons |
| Method | Legal advocacy, Media attention, direct-appeal campaigns, lobbying |
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Key people
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Fermina Villanueva, President |
| Website | www |
Etxerat (Basque: [e t͡ʃeɾat ], meaning 'Homeward') is an association of family members of E.T.A. terrorists who have been imprisoned or exiled because of their activity in support of the Basque National Liberation Movement. Most of those prisoners and exiles are members, or former members, of the Basque armed separatist organization ETA. Others were not members of ETA but have been jailed for collaborating with it, or have been convicted of other crimes such as belonging to illegal organizations like SEGI or Gestoras pro Amnistía, belonging to or trying to rebuild banned political parties such as Batasuna and Askatasuna, participating in Kale borroka, or for the "public glorification of terrorism". Etxerat's primary activities are to support those family members, and to campaign to defend the rights of their imprisoned and exiled relatives.
Etxerat, originally called Senideak ('Relatives' in Basque), was created on 6 October 1991. In 1989 the Spanish Government had begun sending Basque prisoners involved in the separatist movement to prisons all over Spain. This 'dispersion of prisoners' caused the family members of those prisoners to feel that they were being punished even though they had done nothing wrong. This lead them to form an association to speak on their behalf. In addition to this it has been suggested that an additional motive was that the families of the prisoners were unhappy with the way the organisation Amnistiaren Aldeko Batzordeak, which up until then campaigned on behalf of the prisoners, was undertaking this task.
In December 2001 Senideak changed its name to Etxerat.
The aims of Etxerat are to achieve an end to the policy of dispersion of prisoners used by the French and Spanish Governments, to assist and support family members of Basque nationalist prisoners and exiles, and to bring to public attention the conditions in which those prisoners and exiles live.
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Wikipedia