Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights comments on reprisals against Spain's political prisoner Jordi Cuixart
While the European Union seems to consider its own human rights convention and the international human rights covenants as not universally and à la carte applicable in the Catalonia conflict, contrary to the legal nature of human rights, the Council of Europe, founded in 1949 and independent of the EU, is committed to the protection of human rights.
The Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Council of Europe, in its report on the «Situation of human rights defenders in Council of Europe member States» of 24 March 2021 (AS/Jur (2021) 03), after corresponding remarks on Azerbaijan, the Russian Federation and Turkey, also addresses the situation in Spain under «3.2.4. Other cases of reprisals against human rights defenders» (p. 11). There it literally states:
«35. Furthermore, in relation to Spain, I have also taken an interest in the situation and conditions of imprisonment of Mr Jordi Cuixart, president of the Omnium Cultural association which was founded in 1961 under the Franco dictatorship. Omnium Cultural is an association that promotes civil and cultural rights in Catalonia. Mr Cuixart was arrested and placed in pre-trial detention on 16 October 2017 following events related to the Catalonian independence referendum of 1 October 2017. In September 2019, the Supreme Court convicted him of sedition and sentenced him to nine years' imprisonment in the trial of twelve Catalan political and social activist leaders. According to his lawyers, the trial was political in nature and Mr Cuixart should not have been tried by the Supreme Court, which has jurisdiction to try elected officials and not civil society activists like him. According to the most recent information, Mr Cuixart's detention conditions have worsened because of the Covid-19 pandemic and he is being held in isolation in his cell for 23 hours a day.» (https://assembly.coe.int/LifeRay/JUR/Pdf/DocsAndDecs/2021/AS-JUR-2021-03-EN.pdf p. 11).
Amnesty International has also been campaigning for some time for the immediate release of Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sànchez, two political prisoners unlawfully detained in Spain:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/europe-and-central-asia/spain/
Other human rights organisations and the competent body of the United Nations Human Rights Council have also called for the release of the Spanish political prisoners.
The human rights record of Spain, a member state of the European Union, under its current 'socialist' government, can be seen, inter alia, in a letter from Dunja Mijatović, Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, dated 11 March 2021, and the reply of Juan Carlos Campo, Spanish Minister of Justice, dated 18 March 2021:
https://rm.coe.int/letter-to-mr-mr-juan-carlos-campo-minister-of-justice-of-spain-by-dunj/1680a1c05e
https://rm.coe.int/reply-of-mr-juan-carlos-campo-minister-of-justice-of-spain-to-the-lett/1680a1d554
As is well known, there are also other abuses in Spain with regard to human rights, for example:
https://english.vilaweb.cat/noticies/catalan-parliament-bureau-investigated-again-for-disobedience/
As long as the European Union tolerates such abuses in one of its member states, it will hardly be able to credibly raise its voice against human rights violations in other parts of the world, but will rather have to put up with the then fully justified accusation of hypocritical double standards and thus lose reputation in other parts of the world.