Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, Se\u00e1n Crowe TD, has raised the disturbing situation in Catalonia in the D\u00e1il with Minister for European Affairs, Helen McEntee.<\/p>\n
Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said:<\/p>\n
\u201cYesterday we saw some extremely disturbing events unfold in Catalonia, when the Spanish Guardia Civil raided the headquarters of the Catalan Government, arresting 14 high ranking civil servants and public officers, and entered into the offices of at least one major political party.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the past few days\u2019 armed police have visited newspapers’ offices, shut down websites, and raided storage warehouses and printing centres, seizing voting boxes, ballots and political posters. More than 700 Catalan Mayors who support the referendum have been threatened with judicial prosecution.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is unprecedented in recent history and completely unacceptable. When elected officials are detained for political reasons and ballot boxes for a popular and democratic referendum are seized, we must speak out.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen newspapers are threatened and democracy is denied, surely we have to say stop, enough is enough. I called on the Minister to join me in speaking out against these worrying developments, but sadly she refused to do so.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese raids and arrests have triggered massive demonstrations, all of which were peaceful, and which saw tens of thousands of Catalans demand the most basic of rights \u2013 the right to vote in a democratic referendum.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people of Catalonia should have the right to democratically decide their own future in a legally binding referendum on 1 October and the Spanish Government should refrain from using these heavy handed tactics in an attempt to stop this democratic vote.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, Se\u00e1n Crowe TD, has raised the disturbing situation in Catalonia in the D\u00e1il with Minister for European Affairs, Helen McEntee. Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said: \u201cYesterday we saw some extremely disturbing events unfold in Catalonia, when the Spanish Guardia Civil raided the headquarters of the Catalan Government, arresting 14 high […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catalonia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3256"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3257,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3256\/revisions\/3257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}