The letter addressed to the Pegasus Inquiry Committee of the European Parliament denounces the Spanish authorities’ attempts to prevent and hinder the fact-finding trip to Spain and call the members to include meeting victims of the civil society on their agenda.
The Catalan National Assembly has forwarded a letter to the Pegasus Inquiry Committee of the European Parliament denouncing the Spanish authorities’ attempt to prevent and hinder the committee’s trip to Madrid, in a joint letter prepared with Òmnium Cultural and the three Catalan political parties ERC, Junts and CUP.
The communique also criticises the fact that there is an attempt to make the diversity of victims invisible, since the committee is only meeting with victims of the Catalan ruling party, excluding victims of civil society, including the victims of the Catalan National Assembly, who were spied on illegally.
The Pegasus Committee is set to visit Spain next week, on the 20th and 21st March. The Spanish authorities tried to prevent it at all costs, as several MEPs denounced, and now it is scheduled on a public holiday and the day of Spanish far-right party VOX’s motion of no confidence against the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez. Surprisingly, the European Parliament’s inquiry committee had not been warned.
For all of these reasons, we call on the members of the Inquiry Committee to give voice to all the espionage victims and not be manipulated by the Spanish authorities. Such abuse of fundamental rights of European citizens needs to be fully investigated. If not, it sets a dangerous precedent within the European Union, as the right to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, the right to privacy are at stake.