No
Somos Delito, a platform of over 100 groups held the first ever hologram
protest in Madrid against the Law of Citizen Security (also known as Ley Mordaza, Gag Law) on April 10, 2015.
Andrea Teti speaks to Cristina Flesher Fominaya, No Somos Delito spokesperson.
Andrea Teti (AT): How did you come up with the idea for a holographic
protest?
Cristina Flesher Fominaya (CFF): We didn’t! This idea was brought to us by a group of
media professionals concerned about what is happening to our democracy in
Spain, and who designed this campaign to raise awareness about the law of
citizen security. They brought the campaign to us for free, and we supplied the
content, the people, the media contacts and disseminated it through our
networks. The instigators prefer to remain anonymous because they wanted
all the attention to be for the platform, who have been fighting against this
law for over a year and a half.
AT: What is the campaign message?
CFF: The campaign sends a message to Spain’s citizens that soon the only way
to protest freely will be as holograms. It sends a message to the government
that we will not be silenced and will continue to stand up for our democratic
rights. And it sends a message to the world that the right to protest must be
protected in any democracy and that those rights are being taken away, not only
in Spain but around the world.
The
government wants to turn the millions of Spaniards who have been protesting
into criminals, but we are not criminals, we are citizens who have the right to
be heard.
AT: How did the whole thing actually work?
CFF: There are two aspects of
the campaign. The first, the actual hologram protest itself, which took place
in front of parliament and involved a screening of a previously filmed
holographic protest. Spokespeople from No Somos Delito and the media were
there, but no one else: it was a virtual protest.
A black hologram booth was set up so that journalists and the
spokespeople could do the media interviews as holograms too. The protest was
screened across a transparent screen on a loop, with an audio track. All the
technical support was provided for us by these anonymous creative
professionals, because we do not have any sort of funding and would never have
been able to do anything like it.
The second part of the campaign is the webpage, where people
from anywhere in the world can go online and leave their hologram, a written
message, or a shout out. (Search for “Holograms for Freedom”
and you can participate). Over 50,000 people visited the site, and about 18,000
people left a hologram, message, or shout. Some of the messages were then
incorporated into the slogans on the protest signs for the filming and some of
the shouts were incorporated into the audio track.
AT: You protested in front of
the Spanish parliament? How did you manage that?
CFF: We were only able to do
it because we got a film shoot permit. Protesting in front of parliament is
forbidden, and whoever does so after July 1 will incur a fine of up to 30,000
Euros, so a protest permit would not have worked.
AT: So – will there be more hologram protests? Is digital protest
as effective as 'real' protest?
CFF: No, this is a one-off
for us—it is a symbolic protest designed to raise awareness so that people
realize what is happening to their basic rights. Remember millions of people in
Spain have protested over the past four years, and under this new law they
could be criminalized and subjected to fines for peaceful protest. People need
to be aware of that.
Digital protest has its place, it is easier to do, and it really
helps raise awareness and the webpage enabled people who cannot physically come
to Madrid for example, to express their opposition. But as a platform what we
want is for people to take to the streets. We need to defend our right to
protest by protesting, by being on the streets. That right is absolutely
fundamental in any democracy worthy of its name.
AT: After the success of the hologram march what is the next
plan of action for the No Somos Delito movement?
CFF: We have been working
for over a year and a half to raise awareness about the threat to our democracy
and to try to stop the laws from being passed in the first place, using every
means at our disposal.
Now that the law has passed we
will continue to work to have it revoked. This involves a number of strategies,
from continuing to work with opposition parties to overturn the law in the next
government, to supporting measures to have it declared unconstitutional, which
it clearly is, and to continue to educate people about their rights and what is
happening to them.
Millions of Spaniards have engaged
in protests over the past four years, and as of July 1 they can be subject to
disproportionate fines and even jail for exercising their democratic rights to
freedom of expression, assembly, protest and information.
AT: What are your thoughts
on the current Spanish government?
CFF: We believe that the government is
trying to make citizens think that they do not have the right to protest or to
stand against what they perceive to be injustice or against the interests of
the people.
That
we do not have the right to be on the streets, to voice our opinions, to hold
assemblies.
And
that those who do protest are extremists, threats to security.
But
these rights, to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom to
protest, and freedom of information are enshrined in our constitution, and this
law as well as the other measures they have passed that criminalize protest are
unconstitutional and fundamentally undemocratic.
This
government has used its absolute majority to unilaterally pass a package of
laws, including the law of citizen security, that no other party supports and
that the majority of Spanish citizens oppose. The law does not make us more
secure, on the contrary it increases our insecurity by criminalizing the
exercise of basic human rights.
AT: Who are No Somos
Delito backing in the election? Will you support Podemos?
CFF:
No Somos Delito is completely apartisan. We will work with any party
that is willing to oppose the Gag Law (as this law is known) and we have
already brought together representatives of a number of political parties to
publicly sign a manifesto committing their parties to work to overturn this law
within the first six months of the new government if they are elected.
Podemos
is just one of many parties that has publicly committed to do this by signing
our manifesto.
AT: How many people are
involved in No Somos Delito?
CFF: No Somos Delito is a platform that
encompasses over a 100 associations, including lawyers and jurist associations,
migrant rights groups, environmental organizations, and human rights
organizations, as well as dozens of assemblies associated with the 15-M
movement in Spain.
The
day-to-day running of the platform takes place in a weekly assembly that
usually ranges from about 20 to 40 people in any given meeting, but the
assembly is connected to the social movement network through various forms of
communication and working groups.
AT: Why do you believe the
government has decided to impose the Citizen Safety Law?
CFF: The Law of Citizen Security, the
Gag Law, is part of a major package of legal reforms, including the reform of
the penal code and the anti-terrorist pact that represent the greatest cut back
in democratic rights in Spain since the Franco dictatorship.
This
law not only introduces new infractions – many of which violate basic
constitutional rights such as the right to freedom of expression, the right to
assembly, the right to protest, and the right to freedom of information-but it
increases fines for existing offenses.
The law is known as the Gag Law (Ley Mordaza) because
it is clearly designed to target and repress social movements. It has been
unilaterally proposed and passed by the Popular Party, with the opposition of
all the other parties in government, using their absolute majority. This law is
their answer to the demands of millions of Spain’s citizens to have a greater
say in the decisions that govern their lives. Instead of listening to the
people, who in their millions have participated in over 87,000 protests in the
last two years, they have opted to try to silence them, and close down the
space available for protest, by making certain forms of protest illegal and
imposing disproportionate fines.
To give you some examples, and so you can see that
these sanctions are targeting many new forms of protest since the 15-M movement
in Spain:
–
We will now be subject to up to 600 Euros fine for holding an assembly in the
open air,
–
Up to 30,000 Euros for protesting in front of parliament, stopping an eviction,
unauthorized use of photographs or videos of police, or passive resistance to
authority such as a sit in.
– And up to 600,000 Euros for protesting
within or in the immediate area surrounding any infrastructure that
provides basic services, in such a way as to create a risk to life or people. But there
is no legal specification of “risk” or “the surrounding area” in the law, so it
is open to interpretation. This type of infraction includes protests
within any telecommunication infrastructure, since many journalists
have protested against the political manipulation of news and broadcasting.
It is really about controlling the use of public space
by citizens and silencing critical voices. The law also makes returning
migrants at the border legal, which violates their right to seek asylum.
The language of the law is very ambiguous as well,
which makes it open to abuse. This is not just the view of No Somos Delito, Human
Rights experts from the United Nations have determined that this law violates
Spanish citizens human rights and "unnecessarily and disproportionately
restricts basic freedoms such as the collective exercise of the right to
freedom of opinion”, and the Commissioner of Human Rights at the Council of
Europe has also expressed concern and opposition, as has Amnesty International
and other groups.
The irony of this law is that it is justified by
alleging that citizens are demanding “greater security”. In fact, security
issues are about twelfth on the list of public concerns, Spain is the third
least violent country in the entire European Union, and less than 1% of
protests in Spain have any sort of incident-99% are peaceful. And the state
already has at its disposal a set of laws to handle any major disturbances.
In
any event, none of the proposed measures increase security, in fact they reduce
it, because they make citizens more vulnerable to criminalization for
exercising their basic human rights, like peacefully protesting or holding a
meeting outdoors.
AT: Do you believe that the
law marks the end of protests in Spain, what is the future for protests when
the law comes in?
CFF: The future is scary for
protesters in Spain. But the
purpose of the protest is to send a strong message to our government that we
will not give in to fear, we will continue to exercise our democratic rights. We
will defend our right to protest by protesting and by continuing to work to get
the law repealed. That right is absolutely fundamental in any democracy worthy
of the name.
But let’s not forget why people are protesting in the
first place, and why they feel they need to do that on the streets: people took
to the streets in Spain on 15-May 2011 demanding Real Democracy Now, because
they felt democracy had been hijacked by corrupt political elites who did not
represent them, who did not let them participate in politics, and who refused
to listen to their needs in the context of a devastating economic crisis that
has left millions of people in really dire circumstances.
Political elites essentially refused to respect the
duty to represent popular will which is essential to their democratic mandate.
The demand for the right to protest is part of a greater demand for the right
for the people to be heard in a system that has very few mechanisms available
for political participation outside voting for the same two parties every four
years.
Thanks to Guadalupe Bohoyo of No Somos Delito (NSD) for her assistance in preparing this interview, and thanks to NSD for permission to use photos and videos.
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