Són una nació. Ells decideixen.

[lokifan]

Today I taught my advanced English class “police brutality”, and “suppression”, and “ballot box”, and “riot police”. I taught them the difference between “hit” and “beat”. My peacefully-protesting Catalan student was beaten by the police. The EU said this was an internal matter and a girl had every finger systematically broken by police. I’m sick with rage.

Comments

[ruinsplume]

Good for you. Your students are lucky to have a teacher who has the conscience to feel sick with rage.

[lokifan]

Thanks. I wish I could do more; I don't know what there is.

[archaeologist_d]

I don't know what to say but am horrified.

[lokifan]

Yeah, I feel EXACTLY the same way.

[snowgall]

God, I am so, so, sorry.

I visited Barcelona just a few years ago and it was such a beautiful city with such lovely people. To hear about this makes me so angry.

[lokifan]

It's just repulsive. This is every bit as much a reversion to fascism as any European votes for the far-right - and more serious in many ways because it's the state. My Catalan student told us a lot about it on Tuesday and it was appalling. I don't even know what to say about it. And with the scale of the disasters in central and north America, not to mention Trump vs Jong Un, and the EU's unbelievably inadequate response, I feel like the Catalans are getting swept under the rug. Which aside from being gross only makes actual civil war more of a possibility.

[trepkos]

Horrible that you needed to teach this ...

[lokifan]

Yeah. The homework task had been to read an article and then tell the class about it, and obviously I wanted to give the Catalan student space to talk about what had been going on anyway, if she wanted to - so she was telling us (with her voice fraught, almost crying at one point) about her own experiences and the Guardian article she'd read on it, and I was just writing up vocab as she went. Police brutality, ballot boxes, torture, complicit...

[giallarhorn]

Like, I get the idea of respecting a country's sovereignty, but that becomes a very weak (moot) argument when you're part of a union and partaking in human rights violations.

[lokifan]

SERIOUSLY. We don't accept "it's an internal matter" when it comes to human rights violations and nor should we. You don't get to call yourself a democracy while denying the right to self-determination - that's what democracy is. They had riot police trying to force their way through crowds of peaceful protestors and steal ballot boxes!!!