ETA members attend hunger strike event
THE banned youth wing of the Basque terrorist group ETA visited a Sinn Fein hunger strike event in Tyrone at the weekend, it has emerged.
During the visit to the commemoration in Galbally, a prominent member of ETA youth group Segi told a local newspaper that the group had taken inspiration from Irish republicans in their fight for independence from Spain.
Last night, a local Ulster Unionist councillor said that Segi’s presence at the event, which Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams addressed, was particularly disturbing given a series of recent ETA attacks on tourist areas of Spain.
ETA has exploded a series of bombs in recent weeks on the Spanish island of Majorca, one of which killed two policemen.
In an interview with the Tyrone Herald, Segi member Inaki, one of those who visited Tyrone at the weekend, claimed that the violence was justified because the Spanish government would not talk with ETA.
And he said that Segi’s link with Sinn Fein’s youth wing, Ógra Shinn Féin, was “strategic”.
Ógra Shinn Féin has organised a petition calling on the Spanish government to reverse its decision to outlaw Segi because of its links with ETA.
Inaki said of the links between Segi and the Sinn Fein youth wing: “For us it is a strategical relationship. We are two people that have been fighting for our rights for a long time.
“We understand that the freedom of Ireland – a united Ireland – will be a help to us because it will prove it is possible for the people to decide on their own future.”
But Omagh Town Ulster Unionist councillor Ross Hussey condemned Ógra Sinn Fein’s decision to invite Segi to Tyrone.
He said: “The decision by Ógra Sinn Fein to invite representatives of the youth group of ETA to the hunger strike commemoration event should clearly indicate to any right thinking person that Sinn Fein still supported international terrorism.
“ETA is a prescribed organisation throughout the European Union as it clearly is a recognised terrorist organisation.
“When one considers the recent murder of two Spanish police officers by these terrorist murderers one would have thought that we in Northern Ireland, who suffered more than 30 years of mayhem and terror, would not have wanted anyone related to this type of event on our soil.”
Cllr Hussey added: “Sinn Fein has accepted that Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom and will remain so until the majority of people in Northern Ireland choose otherwise. This has always been the situation since the creation of the state – was one life worth the heartache that 40 years of conflict caused?
“How soon will it be before Ógra Shinn Fein feel it would be appropriate to invite those who planned and implemented the massacre of innocents in Omagh on August 15, 1998 to such an event?”
