The terrorist group will put its members to the vote, and it considers having finished its "cycle and function"

After having definitively abandoned the violence in 2011, the terrorist group ETA announced its intention to disappear forever as an armed group. The group's management affirms that they have already "fulfilled their cycle and function" in the Basque independence cause. Although the organization does not use the words disappearance or dissolution in the communiqué, published by newspaper Gara, it implies that its end will take place this summer.

After 60 years of existence and 829 murders, ETA believes that "the end of the cycle is becoming more evident and the abandonment of the political-military strategy marked the beginning of the end of our activity". This self-disappearance of the terrorist band must be voted on and accepted by the members – most of whom remain prisoners, while the rest are either escaped or reinserted. This would be the last step before the end.

The ETA leadership wants its militants to pronounce clearly on whether they want the end, and they will be able to do it in a vote. The result of these elections will be conclusive, and if the dissolution triumphs, "ETA will no longer exist," according to Gara.

The band adds: "We must close the time of the armed conflict and the related situations to focus all our forces on strengthening the political process, and the only way to do it is to take the initiative, without waiting for anything or anyone. Now, it is up to the nationalist to keep ETA's legacy alive, because we're not going to constitute ourselves as a legal political party". This last decision obeys, according to the band, that if they tried to become a political party, they would have to "reinvent everything: strategy, concrete functions and means of struggle and influence".

The document that the organization is using for this vote is divided IGNORE INTO three parts:

1. Historical contextualization of the conflict with the Spanish State.
2. Summary of the situation from 2009 to the present.
3. Text itself on the solution, which will be voted.

This consultation will involve the 302 ETA members who remain imprisoned in 74 prisons throughout Spain. Additionally, the voting will count with a few dozens of members who remain out of the country and those ex-inmates who have already served their sentence but played a relevant role in the band.

ETA ends the statement exhorting its militants to maintain an active attitude in the political field. "Needless to say that those who have been ETA militants will also have to act in the future with the responsibility that corresponds to that condition, maintaining honesty , coherence, and responsibility necessary for the liberation process, and assuming the duty of maintaining internal cohesion in the nationalist left ".

This is the last step for the total disappearance of the terrorist group, who killed for the last time on March 16, 2010, when during a shootout in France one of the terrorists killed a French police officer. In Spain, the last deadly attack took place on July 30, 2009, when a bomb attached to a vehicle caused the death of two civil guards in Mallorca.

Latin American Post | José María González Alonso
Translated from “ ETA plantea su desaparición definitiva”