ETA, an acronym for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, was an armed Basque nationalist and far left separatist organization in the Basque Country between 1959 and 2018. The group was founded in 1959 and later evolved from a group promoting traditional Basque culture to a paramilitary group engaged in a violent campaign of bombing, assassinations, and kidnappings throughout Spanish territory and especially in the Southern Basque Country. Its goal was gaining independence for the Basque Country. ETA was the main group within the Basque National Liberation Movement and was the most important Basque participant in the Basque conflict.
The Omagh bombing was a car bombing on 15 August 1998 in the town of Omagh in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It was carried out by the Real Irish Republican Army, a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) splinter group who opposed the IRA's ceasefire and the Good Friday Agreement, signed earlier in the year. The bombing killed 29 people and injured about 220 others, making it the deadliest single incident of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Telephoned warnings which did not specify the actual location had been sent almost forty minutes beforehand but police inadvertently moved people toward the bomb.
The Anglo-Irish Agreement was a 1985 treaty between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland which aimed to help bring an end to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The treaty gave the Irish government an advisory role in Northern Ireland's government while confirming that there would be no change in the constitutional position of Northern Ireland unless a majority of its citizens agreed to join the Republic. It also set out conditions for the establishment of a devolved consensus government in the region.
The Northern Ireland peace process includes the events leading up to the 1994 Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) ceasefire, the end of most of the violence of the Troubles, the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, and subsequent political developments.
The International Crisis Group is a transnational non-profit, non-governmental organisation founded in 1995. It is a think tank, used by policymakers and academics, performing research and analysis on global crises. ICG has described itself as "working to prevent wars and shape policies that will build a more peaceful world".
Arnaldo Otegi Mondragón is a Basque politician who is currently General Secretary of Basque nationalist party EH Bildu. He was member of the Basque Parliament for both Herri Batasuna and Euskal Herritarrok. He was one of the key negotiators during the unsuccessful peace talks in Loiola and Geneva, in 2006.
Monica Mary McWilliams is a Northern Irish academic, peace activist, human rights defender and former politician in Northern Ireland.
Nuala Patricia O'Loan, Baroness O'Loan, MRIA, known between 2007 and 2009 as Dame Nuala O'Loan, is a noted public figure in Northern Ireland. She was the first Police Ombudsman from 1999 to 2007. In July 2009, it was announced that she was to be appointed to the House of Lords and she was so appointed in September 2009. In December 2010, National University of Ireland, Maynooth appointed her as Chairman of its Governing Authority. She is a columnist with The Irish Catholic.
Events during the year 2007 in Northern Ireland.
Events during the year 1999 in Northern Ireland.
Torrens Knight is a Northern Ireland loyalist, who belonged to the North Antrim and Londonderry Brigade of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA). In 1993 he took part in two mass murders in County Londonderry: the Greysteel massacre and the Castlerock killings. After being convicted—along with three others—for the killings, he served seven years in the Maze Prison before his release in 2000 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
Brian Currin is a South African lawyer who was instrumental in the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
ETA's 2006 "permanent ceasefire" was the period spanning between 24 March and 30 December 2006 during which, following an ETA communiqué, the Spanish government, led by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero on one side, and the militant group on the other, engaged in talks as a means to agree on a formula to voluntarily disband the latter. It was terminated as a result of the 2006 Madrid Barajas International Airport bombing.
The Basque conflict, also known as the Spain–ETA conflict, was an armed and political conflict from 1959 to 2011 between Spain and the Basque National Liberation Movement, a group of social and political Basque organizations which sought independence from Spain and France. The movement was built around the separatist organization ETA, which had launched a campaign of attacks against Spanish administrations since 1959. ETA had been proscribed as a terrorist organization by the Spanish, British, French and American authorities at different moments. The conflict took place mostly on Spanish soil, although to a smaller degree it was also present in France, which was primarily used as a safe haven by ETA members. It was the longest running violent conflict in modern Western Europe. It has been sometimes referred to as "Europe's longest war".
Professor Christopher George Maccabe CB is a former Political Director of the Northern Ireland Office, and a former British Joint Secretary of the British Irish Intergovernmental Conference. Since 2006 he has been involved in conflict resolution and political development in various parts of the world, including Sri Lanka, Kosovo, the Middle East, Tanzania, Iraq, Lebanon, Cameroon and Colombia. He is a member of a team appointed by the Minister of Justice in Northern Ireland to oversee the August 2010 agreement between the Minister and dissident republican prisoners in Maghaberry Prison. He was a member of the International Verification Commission in the Basque Country that monitored the permanent ceasefire declared by ETA at the beginning of 2011. The Commission’s work came to an end in April 2017 when it oversaw ETA’s final act of decommissioning its weapons and explosive. He is Chair of Enterprise Media Ireland CIC, a Director of the Forum for Cities in Transition (Belfast) Ltd, a Director of the Center for Democracy and Peace Building, and a member of the New Ireland Commission. He was educated at Brackenber House School, the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, Queen's University Belfast and the University of London. He is the son of Max and Gladys Maccabe MBE, a renowned Irish artist. He is married to Jenny and has three children and nine grandchildren.
The International Conference to Promote the Resolution of the Conflict in the Basque Country — more widely known as the Donostia-San Sebastián International Peace Conference — was a conference aimed at promoting a resolution to the Basque conflict, which took place in Donostia-San Sebastián on October 17, 2011, at Aiete Palace. It was organized by the Basque citizens' group Lokarri, and included leaders of Basque parties, as well as six international personalities known for their work in the field of politics and pacification: Kofi Annan, Bertie Ahern, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Pierre Joxe, Gerry Adams and Jonathan Powell. Tony Blair — former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom — could not be present due to commitments in the Middle East, but he supported the final declaration. The former US President Jimmy Carter and the former US senator George J. Mitchell also backed this declaration.
The Monbar Hotel attack was carried out by the Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación (GAL), a Spanish state-sponsored death squad, on 25 September 1985 in Bayonne, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France. The targets were four members of the Basque separatist terrorist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), whom the Spanish government believed to be senior figures in the organization, itself proscribed as a terrorist group in Spain and France. All four people were killed, with a fifth person, apparently unconnected to ETA, injured in the shooting. This represented the deadliest attack carried out by the GAL. Although two of the participants were apprehended shortly after the shooting, controversy surrounded the possible involvement of senior figures in the Spanish police.
Artisans of Peace is a group of civilian activists and union members from the Northern Basque Country in France, who came to prominence during 2016 and 2017 when they worked as peace brokers in order to obtain the disarmament of the separatist group ETA through disobedience with the French government.
The International Verification Commission (IVC) for the peace process in the *Basque Country was created on 28 September 2011 to verify ETA's declaration of a definitive end of violence. Since 2011 to 2017, the Commission, together with Basque institutions and Basque civil society, worked towards achieving an orderly end of violence.
Women in ETA in Francoist Spain were few in numbers, and portrayed as dangerous by the media. Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) grew out of a Basque nationalist movement with roots that pre-dated the Second Spanish Republic. When Franco seized power, the new regime cracked down on Basque nationalism, imprisoned and killed many activists and made traditional women's activism difficult to continue. Women found themselves being investigated by the new regime. Basque nationalists began to stockpile weaponry following the end of World War II. ETA was created in 1952 by students in Bilbao, creating a fissure in the Basque nationalist community by the mid-1950s. Their attitude towards women was patriarchal and informed by their conservative Roman Catholicism. There would be few women in the movement in this period.
