Thirty LGBTI groups endorse Catalonia's Freedom

Before the Spanish Supreme Court ruling, the last days protests in Catalonia and the frenzied Spanish State repression against the protesters, the signatory LGBTI groups state:

• The Supreme Court convictions against a democratic government and the two most important civil organisations in the Catalan Lands –and in Europe– because of a peaceful, popular and massive action such as the self-determination referendum of Catalonia, are convictions against fundamental rights altogether, also those of the LGBTI community.

• We are faced with the most important protests in recent history, which reflect the rejection of the majority of the Catalan people to an unfair ruling and the will to defend the exercise of fundamental rights, especially the social rights conquered by the working people and called into question by patriarchal capitalism.

• The repressive response of the Catalan and Spanish governments, physical attacks and kidnapping of protesters by their militant branches and judicial apparatus included, now amounts to more than 200 detainees, 600 wounded and thirty political prisoners. This repression is not new: we have seen it troughout history against the feminist, antimilitarist  and pro-independence movements, trade unionism or the LGBTI movement itself.

• Civil desobedience and direct action are the tools which have historically allowed us, in the face of unfair laws and illegitimate institutions, to progress as a society and gain rights. This has been the expression of the LGBTI liberation movement: since the Stonewall riots and the first demonstration under the Franco regime on the Ramblas to the present.

For all these reasons, we appeal to the entire LGBTI movement in the Catalan Lands and everywhere to endorse the following claims:

• The end of repression and the defense of peace, through the withdrawal of the occupation forces, the immediate release of political prisoners, the free return of exiles and total amnesty to the hundreds of persecuted for the general cause against the national liberation process.

• The call for permanent mobilization, civil disobedience and direct action to enforce amnesty and the exercise of the right to self-determination, inseparable and essential elements to overcome the exceptional situation.

• The opening of a people-based constituent process, with an active involvement of the LGBTI movement, which lays the foundations of a feminist and LGBTIfobia-free Republic.

Amnesty, desobedience, republic, LGBTI liberation.

Link