Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network denounces the detention of Asier and Youssef, two internationalist activists from the Basque Country committed to the defense of the Palestinian people, by the Spanish National Police in yet another episode of the growing repressive offensive targeting those who organize, inform, and act in defense of Palestine and its legitimate right to resistance.
These detentions cannot be understood as isolated incidents. They form part of an increasingly evident strategy of political persecution directed against organizations, collectives, alternative media outlets, activists, and individuals committed to the struggle for the liberation of Palestine. While the Zionist regime continues carrying out a genocidal campaign against Gaza, intensifies its aggressions against the Palestinian people throughout occupied Palestine, from the river to the sea, and expands its attacks against the peoples of the region, it is those who denounce these crimes who end up being persecuted, monitored, interrogated, or detained.
In this process, the apparatuses of the Spanish state are playing an increasingly active role in the criminalization of solidarity with Palestine, aligning themselves with the policies promoted by the United States, the European Union, and the Zionist regime in an attempt to isolate and silence the international solidarity movement. The persecution of activists, journalists, communicators, and solidarity organizations is not aimed at combating any real crime; rather, it seeks to generate fear, discourage mobilization, and send a warning to those who refuse to remain silent in the face of genocide.
It is revealing that, in the face of one of the most thoroughly documented processes of genocidal extermination of our time, police, judicial, and media resources are directed not against those who finance, arm, justify, or conceal these crimes, but against those who raise their voices to denounce them. Solidarity with Palestine is being portrayed as a threat, while those responsible for occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide continue to act with complete impunity.
Nor can the role played by certain media outlets and propaganda platforms be ignored. For months, they have publicly targeted Asier and Youssef, spreading unsubstantiated accusations, promoting smear campaigns, and helping to create a climate of political persecution. These media outlets do not act as neutral observers or defenders of freedom of information; they function as instruments of a broader operation aimed at criminalizing any expression of solidarity with Palestine and stigmatizing those who denounce the crimes of Zionism and imperialism.
Asier and Youssef carried out public work involving information, analysis, and dissemination concerning the Palestinian cause and the political and geopolitical realities of West Asia. Their work consisted of bringing facts, events, and perspectives to society that are often silenced or distorted by the mainstream media. The persecution of those who inform, investigate, analyze, or disseminate content related to Palestine constitutes a direct attack on the right of peoples to receive truthful, pluralistic, and critical information.
When informing becomes grounds for persecution, it is not only the rights of communicators that are violated; the right of society to understand international developments and to form its own opinions is also undermined. The right to information, freedom of expression, and open political debate are fundamental pillars of any society that claims to be democratic.
Recent actions against activists, communicators, and analysts raise an issue of enormous democratic significance. What happens when informing about Palestine, analyzing international political developments, or giving a voice to actors involved in regional conflicts comes to be treated as a security problem? What happens when the exercise of freedom of expression and the right to information cease to be protected and begin to be persecuted? When certain political positions are no longer challenged politically but instead become the target of police, judicial, and media operations, what is at stake is not only solidarity with Palestine, but the most basic democratic freedoms.
The accusation of “terrorism” has become a political tool designed to delegitimize inconvenient positions and restrict public debate. Under this logic, internationalist solidarity, anti-imperialism, support for national liberation movements, and the defense of the right of peoples to resist are presented as crimes, when they form part of a legitimate historical and political tradition recognized even by international law.
We recall that the United Nations General Assembly, through Resolution 3070 (XXVIII), reaffirmed the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples subjected to colonial domination, foreign occupation, and subjugation by all means available to them. The Palestinian people are no exception. Attempts to criminalize support for their national and collective rights constitute a direct attack on internationally recognized fundamental principles.
This concerns the right of peoples to resist occupation, colonialism, and aggression; the right of societies to inform themselves, debate, and show solidarity without fear of reprisals; and the right of popular organizations to act without being persecuted for political reasons.
The detention of our comrades is not merely an attack against two solidarity activists. It is an attack against the entire Palestine solidarity movement, against freedom of expression, against the right to information, against the right to political organization, and against the right of peoples to stand with those who resist occupation, colonialism, and genocide.
The persecution of Asier and Youssef is intended to send a message to the entire Palestine solidarity movement: that informing, organizing, and taking a stand against genocide may have consequences. Our response must be exactly the opposite: more organization, more solidarity, and a deeper commitment to the struggle for the liberation of Palestine.
On behalf of Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, we express our full solidarity with Asier and Youssef, with their families, friends, and comrades, as well as with the entire Palestine solidarity movement in the Basque Country. We reject any attempt at intimidation directed against those who organize against genocide and reaffirm that repression will not succeed in isolating the Palestinian cause or breaking the internationalist commitment of peoples in struggle.
We will not ask permission to be in solidarity, nor will we accept that those who justify, finance, or conceal the destruction of a people decide which forms of solidarity are legitimate and which deserve punishment.
We will not renounce denouncing genocide, occupation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing; identifying those responsible; or defending the Palestinian people’s right to resistance, liberation, and return. The detention of our comrades also constitutes an attack on the right to inform and to be informed, on freedom of expression, and on the right of peoples to know the reality of Palestine and West Asia beyond the narratives imposed by centers of political, military, and media power.
Because silence in the face of injustice is a form of complicity. Because when human rights become the object of persecution, defending them ceases to be an option and becomes an obligation. Because the criminalization of solidarity is not confronted by retreating, but by expanding networks of support, denunciation, and resistance. Because in the face of the fear they seek to impose, our response must be more organization, greater awareness, and stronger internationalist solidarity.
Freedom for Asier and Youssef.
End the criminalization of solidarity with Palestine.
Defending Palestine is not a crime. Reporting is not a crime.
Long live internationalist solidarity.
Long live the Palestinian resistance.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
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