(RSF/IFEX) – The following is a 24 May 2001 RSF press release: SPAIN A director of the newspaper El Diario Vasco assassinated in the Basque Country RSF calls for an emergency meeting of European union authorities Reporters sans frontières condemns in the strongest possible terms the assassination of Santiago Oleaga Elejabarrieta, chief financial officer of […]
(RSF/IFEX) – The following is a 24 May 2001 RSF press release:
SPAIN
A director of the newspaper El Diario Vasco assassinated in the Basque Country
RSF calls for an emergency meeting of European union authorities
Reporters sans frontières condemns in the strongest possible terms the assassination of Santiago Oleaga Elejabarrieta, chief financial officer of the Basque daily El Diaro Vasco, which has been attributed to ETA.
Through attacks on journalists and media professionals, it is no longer against Spain alone that ETA has declared war but rather against all of Europe and its values. This barbarity in the heart of Europe must be stopped.
We ask the Swedish presidency of the European Union and the speaker of the European Parliament to convene an emergency meeting of European authorities in order to mark the fifteen member countries’ determination not to accept this terror campaign.
According to information collected by RSF, on 24 May, in the morning, Santiago Oleaga Elejabarrieta was assassinated at point-blank range in San Sebastian. The chief financial officer of the Basque daily El Diaro Vasco was hit by two or three bullets in the Maria Hospital’s parking lot, in San Sebastian’s El Antiguo neighbourhood. He died instantly. The regional police attributed the attack to the Basque pro-independence organisation ETA.
On 15 May 2001, Basque journalist Gorka Landaburu, correspondent for the Madrid based magazine Cambio 16 and Radio France, suffered significant wounds to his hands and face when a parcel bomb exploded at his home in Zarauz (northern Basque Country). José Luis Lopez de Lacalle, journalist from the daily El Mundo in Basque Country, was killed in May 2000. In the months which followed his assassination, there were many threats and bomb attacks against journalists and newspaper offices. In total, close to 100 journalists are under official or private protection. A dozen Basque Country information professionals are in self-imposed “exile” in Madrid and some media outlets have increased their security measures, notably by acquiring bullet-proof windows and scanners.
ETA is listed among the thirty “press freedom predators” denounced by RSF on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, 3 May 2001.
