UN officials are harshly criticizing the Spanish government’s use of national police in their increasingly violent crackdown on Catalonia’s upcoming referendum, warning they are violating fundamental rights that are basic to a democratic society.
The UN experts say that irrespective of the legality of the referendum itself, the Catalan public has the right to assemble publicly. They were also critical of cutting off websites, threatening the ability to debate and denying the public information.
Spain has shut down multiple websites and summoned multiple people to police stations on charges of having mirrored websites providing information on the October 1 referendum. Prosecutors have also threatened top Catalan officials with sedition charges, as well as threatening virtually all of the hundreds of Catalan mayors with charges for permitting the vote to take place.
Spanish officials have suggested they may have police physically prohibit voters from entering polling places, though local police warn this risks fueling public disorder. Catalan officials say the vote will go on as planned.
It is the history of Government to become tyrannical when people become demanding of a Right for determining how they are governed.
That Right was opined by our Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence – “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their CREATOR, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Two points history bears out – (1) The victors of battles will write the history books, and (2) Governments would rather kill than allow the exercise of that Right to determine self government as witnessed by the over 600,000 dead as a result of Lincoln’s invasion of the South when the 7 Southern States attempted to exercise that Right.
A comprehensive study of the extent Governments will go to retain control can be read in an excellent, well researched and documented book by R.J. Rummel, “Death by Government”. He documents over 169 million murdered at the hands of their OWN government in just the 20th century. See info on book available at the University of Hawaii website – https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM.
More deaths will be added in Spain if the Catalan people insist on Freedom to determine how they are governed.