Internet Censorship In Spain

An anonymous reader writes "I thought it only happened in China or Arabia Saudi... but it also happens in Spain: spanish government has ordered all the ISP in the country to block the web of Batasuna which is hosted outside Spain. Batasuna is a political party from the Basque Country (similar to Sinn Feinn in Ireland) and has been recently illegalized in a very controversial decision. I can't access their web right now. Luckily, proxies come to rescue me (for instance http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.batasun a.org/g_index.htm. There are also some mirrors which are being opened in other countries and haven't been blocked yet."

Comments

Re:Off topic, but I have to say this:

[eggstasy]

As a portuguese person, I live some 200 miles from spain and can more or less understand spanish.
It's odd to me that you american fellows are not well informed about what goes on here in Europe, but Spain has an awful terrorist problem.
First you have to understand that there is no "spain" country per se. Spain is merely a collection of kingdoms that have been subdued by the kingdom of Castilla. The only ones who have managed to fend off their attacks throughout 1000 years of history have been us, the Portuguese, the only remaining independent country in the Iberian Penninsula, and even so, they are occupying a portion of our land called Olivença which they have colonized so no one there is truly portuguese anymore.
There isn't a spanish language or a spanish people either. There are 3 or 4 different languages for the different kingdoms.
This means that the peoples of the Iberian Penninsula have managed to maintain a certain cultural identity throughout this long history of Castillian domination. In Galicia, the spanish kingdom to the north of our country, there have been protests claiming that they want to integrate with us, since their language and culture is more similar to ours, and they are a natural extension of our territory, since they occupy the strip of land between our northern border and the northern sea.
In Pais Vasco, however, the Basque protests are all but peaceful. They have a very different language and culture from all of us. It does not even derive from Latin. They are a separate people, which they have been throughout history, their territory is split between France and Spain, and no one cares about them. I think it is obvious that they more than deserve their freedom, although I cannot support their actions.
You see, some of the Basques have formed a terrorist organization called ETA which has commited numerous atrocities throughout the past few decades. Many important people have been assassinated, numerous bombs have been planted, injuring innocent bystanders.
Batasuna is an independentist left-wing party aiming to promote the freeing of the Basque people and territory from their Castillian opressors.
A link between the party and the terrorist organization has never been established, their site does not promote or even mention ETA or any form of violence, so it is terribly anti-constitutional to illegalize the party and block their website.
I am amazed that I cannot reach the website without the anonymizer link, since I don't live in Spain. Would this mean that our government secretly agreed to block it as well? I find it highly unlikely.
If you want more information about spanish events there is an excellent newspaper at http://www.elpais.es (use the fish).

ETA are just stubborn fanatics.

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

Spain is right to ban anybody with links to the ETA. The IRA stopped when it became clear that a peace process and negotiations were possible. The basques have been granted an autonomous government (in 1979), with their own legislature. They live and participate fully in a normal western democracy, with full rights and freedoms. but the ETA is still planting bombs.

The ETA is still planting bombs all over Spain, in spite of the massive public demonstrations all over the country, and especially inside the Basque region itself which have said "Stop Bombing!" See CBS News, and The Guardian

They are still bombing in spite of being a party which is close to single digits in most polls, and in spite of the fact that the regional government is (peacefully) nationalist.

The ETA has more in common with Al Qaida than the IRA, where anyone who is not as violently radical is branded a traitor to the cause.

Yup. Blocked.

[vadim_t]

I have an ADSL connection with Telefonica:

vadim@alice:~$ traceroute batasuna.org
traceroute to batasuna.org (161.58.228.92), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 router (192.168.0.1) 1.010 ms 0.816 ms 0.744 ms
2 10.3.50.1 (10.3.50.1) 66.757 ms 63.716 ms 63.745 ms
3 83.Red-80-58-11.pooles.rima-tde.net (80.58.11.83) 63.761 ms 60.499 ms 61.945 ms
4 37.Red-80-58-76.pooles.rima-tde.net (80.58.76.37) 66.936 ms 71.502 ms 63.596 ms
5 17.Red-80-58-72.pooles.rima-tde.net (80.58.72.17) 65.170 ms 70.477 ms 71.765 ms
6 242.Red-80-58-73.pooles.rima-tde.net (80.58.73.242) 68.336 ms !H * 68.530 ms !H
vadim@alice:~$

For those who don't know, "!H" means "Host Unreachable"