Spain violated four ex-Catalan leaders’ rights: UN committee

Spain violated 4 ex-Catalan leaders’ rights by suspending them from public duties previous to convictions, the UN says.

The chief of the Catalonian ERC social gathering Oriol Junqueras leaves after gathering his credentials on the Spanish parliament in Madrid [File: Bernat Armangue/AP]

A UN committee has discovered that Spain violated the political rights of 4 former Catalan separatist leaders by suspending them from public duties previous to their convictions over the area’s 2017 bid for independence.

Wednesday’s ruling is essentially symbolic with no penalty for the Spanish authorities or Spain’s courts however represents a lift for Catalan separatists, who proceed to push for independence though their motion has misplaced momentum.

The UN Human Rights Committee mentioned the 4 had been suspended following an accusation that they had inspired a violent rise up however had been finally convicted of the lesser cost of sedition.

It mentioned the violent rise up accusation was “not foreseeable” given that they had urged their followers to protest peacefully.

“The committee took an vital step in affirming that the safeguards in opposition to the restrictions of political rights have to be utilized extra rigorously if these restrictions happen previous to, fairly than after, a conviction,” panel member Helene Tigroudja mentioned in an announcement.

‘Political repression’

The Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya social gathering main the regional authorities known as the case an instance of Spain’s “political repression” and mentioned the Spanish authorized system “stays strongly politicised”, with dozens of circumstances associated to separatists nonetheless pending.

The committee’s choice contradicts Spain’s Constitutional Courtroom, which in 2020 backed a 2018 Supreme Courtroom ruling to provisionally droop the politicians as regional legislators pending their conviction.

Spain’s Supreme Courtroom in 2019 sentenced 9 Catalan separatist leaders to lengthy jail phrases for sedition, two years after Catalonia held a referendum, which had been banned by courts, and briefly declared independence in Spain’s greatest political disaster in a long time.

4 of the leaders filed a criticism over their suspension from public workplace to the UN Human Rights Committee, together with Oriol Junqueras, Catalonia’s former deputy head, who obtained the longest jail sentence of 13 years.

The 9 leaders left jail in 2021 following a pardon by Spain’s left-wing coalition authorities. The federal government has not but commented on the ruling.

The UN committee has just lately reviewed different circumstances relating to political rights. It mentioned in April that the investigation and prosecution of ex-Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva violated his proper to be tried by an neutral tribunal, his proper to privateness and his political rights.