[D66] The arrest of Catalan President Carles Puigdemont: Another step toward a police state in Europe

[A.O.]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/27/pers-m27.html

The arrest of Catalan President Carles Puigdemont: Another step toward a
police state in Europe
27 March 2018

The arrest of former Catalan regional president Carles Puigdemont in
Germany is a major step toward the development of a police state in
Europe. The Europe-wide police-state structures, which emerged under the
pretext of combatting terrorism and cracking down on refugees, are now
being deployed against political opponents.

Puigdemont’s arrest was conducted based on a European arrest warrant.
These warrants were introduced in 2004 to simplify the extradition
process between EU member states following the elimination of internal
border controls. They were allegedly aimed at combatting terrorism,
gangs, people trafficking, the drugs trade, and other serious criminal
offences.

Ever since, the police, intelligence services and judiciaries in the EU
member states have intensified their cooperation. Puigdemont’s arrest
was planned by Spanish intelligence, which had been following him across
Europe with 10 to 12 agents. It was done in close consultation with
Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office, which received information
from Spanish intelligence about Puigdemont’s car and route ahead of time
and organized the arrest.

The charges against Puigdemont are as hypocritical as they are
fraudulent. His “crime” consists of nothing more than advancing the
demand—which has a long political history—for the separation of
Catalonia from Spain. He has neither called for nor threatened violence
to achieve this goal. The Catalan separatists have relied on peaceful
and democratic means: elections, parliamentary motions, and demonstrations.

The German state accepts the claim of the right-wing regime in Madrid
that the advocacy of separatism is a crime. But in the case of
Yugoslavia, Germany ruthlessly pursued the breakup of that state in the
1990s, with catastrophic results. As always, the policies of the German
ruling class are determined by its geopolitical and economic interests.

Puigdemont and 24 other Catalan politicians face charges of “rebellion,”
which carry a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison. The corresponding
paragraph in Germany’s Criminal Code, which could potentially serve as
the basis for Puigdemont’s extradition, punishes “high treason against
the federation” with a sentence of between 10 years and life imprisonment.

Both criminal offences presuppose the use of violence, and Spanish judge
Pablo Llarena resorted to completely specious arguments to claim the
Catalonian leader was guilty of violent activities. He accused
Puigdemont, absurdly, of accepting that there was a risk of violence
during protests against raids on Catalan ministries by Spanish security
forces.

The German government, which never tires of denouncing Russia, Turkey,
and other countries for arbitrary judicial proceedings, is backing the
legal farce of Puigdemont’s extradition. German government spokesman
Stefan Seibert stated that the arrest was carried out on the basis of
German law and the regulations related to the European arrest warrant.
Spain is a democratic, constitutional state, he claimed.

A German law professor rushed to Seibert’s defence. Martin Heger, who is
chair of the department of European criminal law at Berlin’s Humboldt
University, told Spiegel Online, “In principle, the legal situation is
straightforward: When a European arrest warrant is presented, it will be
carried out, so long as the prerequisites for it have been fulfilled ...
So it is clear: Germany has to extradite Puigdemont.”

Puigdemont is a pro-capitalist bourgeois politician, whose Catalan
European Democratic Party (PDECat) is a member of the liberal
parliamentary group in the European Parliament. When a pro-capitalist,
democratically-elected politician is pursued in the EU for high treason,
it is not hard to imagine how the leaders of mass protests or a general
strike calling capitalist rule into question would be treated.

This is the more fundamental reason for the erection of a European
police state, and the close collaboration between Berlin and Madrid. The
goal is to intimidate and smother all forms of opposition, resistance
and protest.

Europe is on the brink of bitter class battles. Social relations are at
the breaking point. Hardly any European country has a stable government.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy leads a minority government that
confronts mass social protests. Hundreds of thousands of retirees took
to the streets last Saturday alone. On the same day, France was shaken
by widespread protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s labour market
reforms. In Germany, the new instalment of the Grand Coalition, which
came to power only after a six-month crisis, no longer has a majority in
the polls.

In the UK, tens of thousands of university lecturers are engaged in a
bitter contract dispute. And the US is in the midst of a strike wave by
teachers throughout the country, while millions of students took to the
streets last week to protest the violence that dominates American society.

Europe’s rulers are responding to this growth of social and political
opposition by moving ever more openly toward authoritarian and
dictatorial forms of rule.

The crackdown on political opposition takes perhaps its most direct form
in the drive toward Internet censorship, which is being driven by a
series of laws throughout Europe and its member states making technology
companies criminally liable for the posting of “violent” and “extremist”
content on their services.

While the EU is increasingly breaking apart, its member governments
cooperate ever more closely on the issue of building a police state.

Last Friday, Germany’s Interior Minister, Horst Seehofer pledged to
strengthen police-state measures in his first speech to parliament since
taking office. “At the European level, we must do all we can to
integrate the various databases so that our intelligence agencies can
act to achieve their goals more swiftly,” he said. The arrest of
Puigdemont two days later shows what Seehofer meant by this.

The cooperation between Berlin and Madrid in the Puigdemont case recalls
the darkest period in European history. German authorities have arrested
a Catalan prime minister once before, in 1940. Hitler’s secret police,
the Gestapo, detained Lluis Companys, who fled into French exile in 1936
after General Franco, with German support, crushed the Spanish
revolution and established his bloody dictatorship. They extradited
Companys to Madrid, where he was tortured, sentenced to death and executed.

The International Committee of the Fourth International and the World
Socialist Web Site condemn Puigdemont’s arrest and demand his immediate
release. His targeting by the German authorities is a warning. The only
way to prevent the establishment of a police state, and a relapse into
militarism and war, is through the development of a socialist movement
to unite the European and international working class in the struggle
against social inequality, dictatorship and war.

Peter Schwarz