The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights has been ratified by Spain and many other countries and has been incorporated into their own legal systems as a mandatory superior law.

The first human right defined by the United Nations in this covenant and guaranteed by the signatory states is the right of all peoples to self-determination. Article 1(1) of the Covenant states unequivocally and validly that all peoples of the world without exception have the right to self-determination:

"Article 1:
(1) All peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of this right they decide freely on their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development."

The provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights are, both in Spain and in other European countries, law and binding for all state officials.

Like all human rights, the collective human right of peoples to self-determination is universal, inalienable and indivisible. No constitution of a state, no legal system may restrict or withdraw it. If a people, exercising its right to self-determination in freedom, decides to join another state, it also has the right to revoke that decision. It is not bound by any previous decision, since human rights are inalienable. In particular, the human rights of people living today must not be restricted by decisions or political processes that took place decades or generations ago.

There is no doubt that the Catalans are a people and an independent nation. Whether the Catalan people want to continue to belong to the Spanish central state or whether they opt for state autonomy in the form of an independent Catalan Republic is a matter for the Catalan people alone and exclusively. It does not require the consent or vote of the other peoples united in the Spanish central state.

The Spanish state is attempting, through brutal violence and inappropriate legal persecution of Catalan politicians and leaders of Catalan civil society, to massively and permanently suppress the right of self-determination of the Catalan people. In fact, its legal system should guarantee this right of the Catalan people. Police truncheons and tear gas, an economic exploitation of Catalonia which is unparalleled in Europe and a repressive judiciary which seems to be indifferent to human rights and European democratic standards reveal the enormous democratic and constitutional deficit of the Spanish State, which has become the European Union's biggest blot on the face of the earth.

It would be the duty of all politicians from all European states who have submitted to the binding law of the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to support the right of self-determination of the Catalan people without any ifs or buts. Instead, since 1 October 2017, most European states and their political leaders have not only expressly approved of, but even supported, the repressive measures taken by the Spanish state against Catalonia, which are contrary to human rights, and probably the greatest human rights violations in the European Union in decades, for which Spain is responsible.

More and more people are raising their voices against the moral failure of the European political caste in the Catalan conflict. Already 500,000 people from Europe and all over the world have signed a petition for Catalonia's right to self-determination, which began on 1 October 2017, first in German and then in other languages:

500,000 people who stand up for the first human right of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights;

500,000 people who are not blinded by the lies of those who claim that the right to self-determination is only granted to colonised peoples outside Europe;

500,000 people who put the political caste of Europe to shame by pointing out, clearly and in accordance with international law, the universality, inalienability and indivisibility of the collective human right of the Catalan people to self-determination;

500,000 people who stand up for their own human rights and for the human rights of all people by supporting the human right to self-determination of the Catalan people;

500,000 people who give hope to the Catalans and the peoples of Europe that the lies of many Spanish and European politicians, which are contrary to human rights, will not stand the test of time;

500,000 people whose commitment shows the Catalan people that they are not alone;

500,000 people who will one day be able to say that they have been on the right side of history.

Five hundred thousand!