Representatives of the Catalan National Assembly will be this week in New York and Washington DC to take part in the release of a new report on Spain’s tools of repression as an example for authoritarian states to use against national minorities, elaborated by the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO). The report is to be published in the context of the 77th UN General Assembly.
A delegation of the Catalan National Assembly led by its president Dolors Feliu is visiting the United States this week to internationalize Catalonia’s struggle for self-determination and denounce Spain’s repression of the Catalan pro-independence movement. On September 21st, at 1 pm NY time, Assemblea will co-host the release of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization’s (UNPO) report on the tools of repression that authoritarian states use against human rights defenders.
The report, Tools of Oppression: How Self-Determination Movements are Silenced, analyses how governments around the world, especially undemocratic ones, take advantage of the Spanish authorities’ repressive response to Catalonia’s independence movement to use it as a pretext for similar measures to suppress and criminalize peaceful self-determination movements and oppress minorities and indigenous communities.
Assemblea’s former president and UNPO vice-president Elisenda Paluzie will take part as a speaker in the session, alongside UNPO’s General Secretary Ralph Bunche, together with representatives from Kurdish, Southern Mongolian, and Crimean Tatar organizations. The event will be held at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, located at the CUNY Graduate Center, and its director John Torpey will also take part.
The presentation of the report will take place in the context of the 77th session of the UN General Assembly in New York. Assemblea’s representatives will also meet in NY and Washington DC with state delegations to the UN, policymakers, and other stakeholders to discuss the situation concerning Catalonia’s struggle for independence and Spain’s repressive actions, and discuss prospects of cooperation and ways to increase the visibility of the Catalan struggle in the United States.
The Catalan National Assembly has been a member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization since December 2018 and has held the vice presidency since April 2022. UNPO is a membership-based organization created in 1991 to empower the voice of unrepresented peoples and nations around the world and to protect their basic human rights. All its members have in common that they are denied equal representation in their institutions of governance, they struggle to realize their rights to civil and political participation and self-determination, and in many cases are subjected to the worst forms of violence and repression.
The International front is one of Assemblea’s main pillars of action, next to the popular and institutional fronts. In this regard, it works to gain worldwide support for Catalonia’s right to self-determination and to denounce the systematic repression and human rights abuses of the Catalans by the Spanish authorities.