Who are we?

“Egiari Zor” Foundation (“to reestablish truth” in Basque) was founded on 22th April 2012. Its objective is to work for the rights of victims of all types of violence carried out by both Spanish and French states.

The Foundation is formed by persons whose relatives were murdered, wounded and tortured by the violence of the States in the context of the Basque conflict. We are a broad and plural sector, bringing together people with different points of view.

Why was it founded?

We founded “Egiari Zor” because for a long time we have suffered a lack of official recognition as victims: we have never been taken into account in the statistical data monopolized by the State.

Therefore, what binds us is that all of us have suffered from different forms of State violence, and nobody has yet assumed responsibilities for it.

What is it for?

In the Basque Country and in a new context after ETA’s decision declaring a final ceasefire in 2011, we decided to try and turn victims’ suffering into virtue and contribute to promoting the peace process.

Taking into account that the roots and consequences of the conflict are political, we have our vocation is to facilitate the achievement of a resolution of the Basque conflict by means of political and democratic agreements.

What unites us?

This is our main commitment: the building up of a new society based on co-existence, human rights and peace.

During many years, Basque society was unable to stop the escalation of human rights’ violations. All approaches of dialogue, agreements and negotiation failed.

We can’t allow it to happen ever again. This is our main ethical commitment.

In addition, these are the principles that determine our work:

• It is essential to address the conflict from an integral perspective, and to offer tools to make that possible: deaths, extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances, torture, threats and other kinds of sufferings are personal and collective tragedies. Those must be comprehensively recognized, acknowledged and repaired.
• Against of all kinds of violence: Those cases should never have happened. It must be borne in mind that some kinds of violence still exist. We demand the definitive end of all of them.
• In favour of a multifaceted and plural narrative, that will guarantee the whole truth.
• Against instrumentalist use of victims: We reject the utilization of victims for partisan and particular purposes.
• Against categorization of victims. We demand equal answers to similar breaches of human rights.
• Innovative means of recognizance and reparation of victims are necessary: we defend a new approach of recognition and reparation for all victims, since we do not share traditional Justice’s purely punitive approach. That is why we call for truth as a mechanism for obtaining justice.

Our work

These are our main work lines:

1. To overcome the categorization that victims of the Basque conflict have suffered up to now, and work to guarantee the same level of recognition for each person that has suffered the same violations of human rights. For this purpose, we support victims through all the legal mechanisms available nowadays (helping them with applications, giving advice…), or we try to initiate innovative mechanisms that can help to achieve recognition.

2. To bring hidden truths out into the light. A lot of suffering that has taken place in the context of the conflict still remains hidden, either because it is not known, or in many cases, because it has been covered up. We work to bring all these cases out into the open, to make known and share everything that has happened, so that we can guarantee that such sufferings will not occur in the future. For that purpose, we organize informative talks or we undertake investigations.

3. To demand that a new model of justice is necessary to build coexistence: to achieve a scenario where all the consequences of the conflict have been overcome, it is necessary not to create any more suffering. Thus, we consider it necessary to build a new model of justice that aims at truth rather than punishment, so as not to prolong the conflict, delay the overcoming of its consequences and block its resolution. That will only be possible taking as a basis the commitment of Basque institutions and civil society. We dedicate our efforts to spreading this idea.

4. To publicly denounce of the impunity of our aggressors: we work to know, make known and publicly denounce the direct and indirect responsibilities in the crimes that hit us, because in many cases, they have still not been identified.