Les droits démocratiques bafoués en Espagne

Ce samedi 10 juillet, plus de 500.000 catalans se mobilisent à Barcelone pour
défendre la « mini-Constitution » de la Catalogne. Approuvée il y a plus de 4 ans aux
parlements catalan et espagnol, ainsi que par référendum, cette loi a été sévèrement
mutilée cette semaine par le verdict de la Cour constitutionnelle espagnole.

En tête de cette manifestation, on comptera sur la présence de l'actuel président de
la Catalogne ainsi que de tous ses prédécesseurs depuis la restauration des
institutions démocratiques. La manifestation est organisée par Òmnium Cultural,
avec le soutien de plus de 1000 associations représentant la société civile catalane.

Le verdict de la Cour constitutionnelle suppose un inacceptable mépris de la volonté
populaire, exprimée démocratiquement par référendum, ainsi qu’un notable recul de
cette loi, limitant les compétences du Gouvernement de la Catalogne en matière
sociale, économique, juridique ou linguistique. Ce mécontentement est d'autant plus
justifié que la composition de ce tribunal est formée par des juges élus par les partis
politiques avec des critères purement partisans, et que, d'après la loi nationale, deux
tiers de ses membres auraient dû être remplacés il y a plusieurs années.

Nous, les catalans faisant partie de l’Association (loi 1901) « Casal de Catalunya de
Paris », manifestons notre préoccupation pour ces faits. La volonté démocratique
des citoyens de toute nation doit être respectée. C’est pourquoi nous tenons à
exprimer notre soutien à cette grande manifestation et invitons tous les individus et
organisations qui respectent la liberté des peuples à exprimer leur soutien via
l'adresse : http://www.somunanacio.cat/

Casal de Catalunya de Paris
http://www.casalparis.cat/

Unconfortable Views 4 - Student Flats

This is an Email that I send to my flatmates - being the author of the mail I feel in full authority to publish the story of the tomato spaghetti and chicken that were having a party in my kitchen for a week. If u dont speak spanish I suggest you get a translator- the email has had quite a sucess. If you are thinking wether to live in student flat or not...I suggest you read the mail :)

Que onda? Espero que tu viaje ande bien por Escocia. Por aquí Paris todo anda muy bien, te escribo por que me a sucedido un hecho inédito!! Si inédito!! En fin, es una historia que creo que aun que no te conté tu misma ya la conocerás pero en caso contrario te la explico.

Un mañana un tomate, pollo, queso, spaghetti, bueno en fin ya me entiendes varis cosas quedaron en una cocina! El siguiente día las chicas empezaron a cocinar y luego salieron de la casa, dejándolo todo allí. En fin, todo el mundo tiene derecho a tener prisa un día o otro. El tomate quedo allí en la cocina. De hecho no me siento mal por el, ya que estaba acompañado por un poco de carne y sopa. Mas lejos, en la mesa tenia a su amiga la lechuga que nunca había salido de la bolsa amarilla del supermercado. Que suerte tenían el tomate y la lechuga estaban bien acompañados! Siguieron allí toda la semana, todos juntos! Mientras una chica española y otra italiana pasaban cada día haciendo café y lo miraban. Supongo que al tomate no le sintió muy bien el hecho de estar allí abandonado y tener una muerte tan lenta y dolorosa. El tenía la ilusión de descubrir el sistema digestivo del ser humano. Pero todos sabemos que no tenemos siempre la suerte de tener la muerte que deseamos. En fin! A mí el que mas pena me dio fueron los spaghetti que después de casi dos semanas se endurecieron en un pote en la nevera. No solo se endurecieron sino que tuvieron que estar acompañados por un olor fuerte y repugnante ya que había otros vegetales allí muriendo lentamente.

Se que en estos momentos tu mayor preocupación puede que sea el hecho que es la noche y te estoy escribiendo un mail. TRANQUILA, ya vi que aun que no tuvieses tiempo de limpiar la cocina, y todavía menos de por lo menos pensar en decirme que sentías dejarlo todo literalmente en proceso de desintegración. En cambio tuviste muchísimo tiempo para esconder tu computadora y preguntarme donde estaba tu Ipod. Cada uno tiene sus prioridades, tampoco pensaba utilizar tu ordenador.

No te preocupes. Te escribo esto en Microsoft Word y luego lo voy a copiar y pegar en un email desde el trabajo a escondidas. Mas que nada para que sepas que por mi parte el proceso de desintegración de la comida esta aprendido. Y tu, has tomado buenos apuntes?

Mis músculos te agradecen eternamente que lo hayas dejado todo sucio. De esta forma han podido pasar una hora y media ejercitándose fregando tus platos. Todo y eso me dicen que prefieren ir al gimnasio donde cada músculo recibe una atención personalizada y la hora y media no se basa en mimar un solo músculo.

Solo nos quedan 6 semanas mas de vivir juntas. Durante ellas te darás cuenta que yo no soy la persona mas limpia del mundo – seguramente eso ya lo has visto. Solo les pido a todas 3 (y por eso todo el mundo esta en copia) una cosa – lo que se usa se limpia. Me hubiera encantado pasar la tarde leyendo o escribiendo en mi blog. De hecho por eso hoy salí del trabajo a las 17.30. Pero ahora son las 21h y aquí estoy terminando de limpiar.

Te escribo ahora en caso que hubieras dejado la sopa o el arroz en la cocina por que deseabas ver en que color se transformaba al cabo de una semana. A mi también me interesaba saber si la sopa tendría tonos mas naranjas o amarillos, pero tenia miedo que vinieran bichos sobre MI comida por eso lo tire. No te preocupes a tu arroz y tu sopa les he hecho un enterramiento digno. Hasta he puesto dos o tres velas.

Hablaremos del tema cuando vuelvas y estemos las cuatro chicas. Solo eso, por favor lo que se utiliza se limpia.

P.S. Te recomiendo que cierres la luz de tu cuarto si te vas durante una semana, que cierres la puerta ( o por lo mínimo me pidas si puedo cerrarla yo), que no te olvides las llaves en casa (ya van tres veces).Ah, y por ultimo, solo para que quede claro, gano [....]al mes, ya sabes cuanto pago de alquiler o sea no me vuelvas a pedir cantidades superiores a 20 euros si no es para una emergencia rotunda. Todavía menos si el día siguiente vienes con una nueva memoria externa.....

Con todo el respeto del mundo. . .

Buenas Noches

G

Unconfortable Views 3 - The temporality of international communities.

Dinner again at Strasbourg St.Denis, French, Brazilian, Mexican, Spanish, Turkish, Austrian. . No matter when you go there the apartment is always full of different nationalities. Fun and convivial dinners, with the few people who are left from the HEC times, some of us hadn’t even met at HEC, ironic huh? We end up always confronted with the same question “when are you leaving?” Response: Xmas, February, maybe march. The furthest that I heard was – “maybe April”. Its good to see that like me, many are full of international plans, moves and crazy adventures ahead. The same goes around my apartment “ 22^nd December”, “4^th of January”, “sometime in February”. . . . Yes, hanging around international people is what I am used to we are all in the same situation- new in a foreign country-, however this temporality makes it hard. I’m constantly being reminded that every single person with who I spend my weekends and evenings – except for red cross Tuesdays- will be gone within the next 3 months. I will probably be the last one to leave. And if I stayed? New friends all over again?? I do have some French friends- not many, some also left. In order to avoid all this temporality and sadness of friends coming and going are we meant to stick to local communities? Will we then be assured that nobody moves away from the city within the next 6 months? No. However, maybe then, we will be the ones that will move the fastest and like this feel less the impact of the movement of others on our lives. But let the concept not trap us, at the end nothing is permanent, and even in more local communities things move and change; maybe at a slower pace- but they change too. However, when trying to find a stable life the international community of expats exchange students and international interns might simply move too fast.

Unconfortable Views 2

It was windy on the boulevard, a grayish winter Parisian midday as I was walking back from the gym, after an astonishingly long work out. Suddenly the old woman with a red coat, make up, and shaking hands that hold a black umbrella and purple bag shouted at us. “Madame Madame, vous savez ou c’est la maison de retraite, je suis perdu”. She was looking for the house of the retired people, she was lost and did not know how to get back home She told me she didn’t know her street name, so I asked her for an ID card to try and figure out her street. She didn’t have one, but told us that once she was in front of the retired peoples home she could find her way around. We had no idea where it was. All we knew was our house, the cinema, the gym , the supermarket and the metro stop. We told her to hold on as we asked somebody else for directions. Luckily we got a response super quick as she was not too much in the mood to wait in the cold air. We walked with her the two blocks till the elderly peoples house. Her slow pace due to her age of 92 allowed us to have a nice talk, she didn’t remember her street name, she had a son, no grandchildren, she lived in the neighborhood, usually had lunch at the retired peoples home which was near her house and came from outside of Paris.

We reached the retired peoples house. Outside the building it clearly said that it was opened only from Friday to Saturday, but luckily the door was open. We encountered two women who must have worked there. With a very pissed of face they said that she got lost usually, and then they asked her in the most rude and uncaring tone ever Why she didn’t spend Sundays at her house rather than going out. They told her that she always comes to the elderly home with random people from the street (like us). When she said that we were her friends they could only answer in a continuous rude tone that we were not her friends but just some people who she had crossed in the street. Rude comments continued which did nothing more than underline to the old woman that she was mentally loosing control of herself and getting lost. The woman was nice, kind and thanked us for helping her and told us she would like to see us again some time. I didn’t want to leave her there with the two bitches who clearly had no patience or empathy for older people- and who ironically worked at an elderly home. I told the woman I could walk her home if she wanted, but she decided to stay there and watch some tv and reassured us by explaining that now she knew where her home was. The elderly home was her guiding point. She clearly had some guts to stay with those two bitches. Will we meet again?

Unconfortable Views - Help Falun Gong Practicians!

Which medal for human rights???

"By giving Pekin the chance to organize the games, you will contribute to the development of human rights"( Liu Jungmin, vice president of the comitee to presente the Pekin Candidature for the 2008 Olympic Games, April 2001)

"When China was chosen to host the Olympic Games, the authorities of the country promised to improve the situation of human rights. Now that the time of the olympic flame is getting closer, serious worries still exist" Iren Khan, General Secretary of Amnesty International.


Downtown Paris a campaign was taking place today by Amnesty International to sak for human rights in China. I listend for 30 minutes to a speaker who was explaining her story and how she was tortured for being a practician of Falun Gong. Falun Gong is a traditional chinese meditiation method, which helps to harmonise the spirit and the body.Falun Gong practicians are tortured to get their organs and sell them. From a lung costing 150,000 Euros to the pancreas for 45,000 Euros. Falun Gong practicians are victims of the chinese communist party as the number of practicias is larger than the number of members who support the communist chinese party (according to a survey of the chinese goverment in 98). In addittion the chinese goverment applies a policy of unique thought, which goes against that of Falun Gong- Truth-Bonté-Tolerance. In 1999 Jian Zemin launched a plan to eradicate the Falun Gong practician in 3 months. Due to the failure of the plan in 2002 there was a new order to kill the practicians. There are at least 36 secret extermination camps used for the trafic of organs. More than 500 000 people are being tortured and deported to "forced work camps".

The woman talked how she was taken three times, how they put liquids into her, threw freezing water on her. All her friends and family where also blamed for her acts, thus her husband was told that he would never get a promotion at work as a consequence of her actions -practicing Falun Gong- His work collegues told him it would be better to get rid of her. She went to a place where they brain washed her, and she survived as she told them her name and she was forced to help "the policemen" torture other practicians. Finally her husband was able to "get rid" of her by somehow (didnt fully understand it) sending her to France. It was the exchange, she was going to leave him alone he was sending her to France.

For more info:

www.infofalungong.net
http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/end-persection-falun-gong-practitioner

Unconfortable Views 1

It was somewhere in mid july, when the temperatures were reaching the 40C and half of the catalan population was on holidays. The unfortunate were still working, and needed nannys for their children who were still too young to stay on their own. In the past years immigrants have arrived non stop to our country, increasing exponentially yearly. And my town has attracted many of them, specially due to the growth of snobby people who have moved from Barcelona to St.Cugat. Of course they are in need of a man to clean their car, one to cook, one to take care of their children, a housekeeper etc. So now when every spanish person is doing their siesta and all the shops are closed, you walk in the streets and you come across the ecuatorians, colombians,peruvians,bolivians,argentinans,venezuelans etc... Its an enormous change from a few years back when all you could encounter were catalan people who had lived their for ages, not even those snobs from barcelona had moved to st.cugat... now its a mix of immigrants. First there are the snoby barcelona immigrants who decided to move to st.cugat and procrate so that our town becomes the town with the highest natality in catalonia and the immigrants from south america. . . . . Whether i like the situation or not, somewhere in mid July i was confronted with a situation that i wish would have been different.

5pm was the meeting time, infront of the train station of course, our small train station. It was friday! End of the week, for me holidays so of course, no problem...friday, monday, tuesay they all ment party... but for many it was the beggining of the weekend. I forgot that in spain people tend to be a bit late, and i arrived at 4.50. Having nothing to do i just sat in the steps of the stairs and as always started to look around the square infront of me. Its a newly renovated square, which you can reach from 3 different streets, and cars cant pass there. So i sat and observe, and it was then that i started to realize that something was different that day, the weekend for many people was gona become not such a great one.

There was a police car, hidden in a corner of a square. If you were coming from the street in the far left you could not see the car. Barcelona is full of immigrants without legal papers, so of course the last thing you want to do is go near a police car. But this time they had done it right, they had hidden their car. Not only was the car hidden but also the policemen were completley dressed without their uniforms. It was almost 5pm so many people were coming to the station,but because it was holidays only a few were catalans, a great majority were immigrants. They were easily detectable, non chick cloths, darker skin, darker hair, not wearing the typical menorquines that every catlalan wears in the summer. . . Although maybe a few were indistinguishable the majority were.

Everytime there was one of them coming to the station , which they were coming in a constant flow, the policeman in his nice shirt would go up to them and show them the police badge and say "police, i want to see your documents". You would see a few persons geting some documents out of their purses and them and being let to pass, the rest were taken to the car. What happened there i did not have clear, so i took a walk,but i couldnt get too close. However,there were many of them standing by the car while three police men interrogated them. I went back to my sitting place in the stairs, it was so unconfortable to sit there. I had passed from my typical view of seeing people coming and meeting friends, to observing how the police had set a trap for those immigrants. I saw the women and men coming with their smiles in their faces, they were over with their job for that hour, maybe they were going to the next one maybe they were going to enjoy a nice weekend. And then came the man "Police, Documents" in such a rude way. I felt like i could not sit there and observe. I know,actually i knew that immigration has to be controled,i can still not decide which level of controlability must be attained. But i could not bear sitting there and seeing someone pass by and geting checked and taken away. Couldnt i do something? I felt like running two streets down and telling them all to not take that street but to enter the station through the back door.

When my friends came, we took a walk to the monestary and i saw a few people just sitting infront of the shops and not going towards the station. . . they had been warned by their friends or by someone i guess. . .

Sometimes im the one controled, everybody gets their checks and scrutineies, we get retained for reasons for which maybe we shouldnt. We get judged for not looking the right way, we get kicked off places for not having the right requisites. But it was disgusting and unconfortable to sit there and to see how systematically those people were checked, and who knows were they ended up afterwards.


That day i felt that i could connect with those persons somehow, whether they were immigrants or not. I could see them coming towards the station, i saw the policeman approaching them, i knew what was gona happen. Yet,i just sat and observed, they were taken to the hidden car, and then i never saw them again...

I would of have liked to say that next time i would of have stand up and help the persons, but we all know we are not heros. One month later i found myself in the middle of a police assault to the indian shops where i was shopping in the middle of Jaipur. For the first seconds i just stood there, then i had to run i didnt want to be beaten up with the bamboo sticks that the police carried. . . its so easy to dream that one day we will be heros.