[bestbits] Spain/Catalunya Developments. Scary

Renata Avila renata.avila at webfoundation.org
Wed Sep 20 14:21:22 EDT 2017


Totally and it is not isolated from increasingly restrictive - repressive
laws and practices the Spanish government has approved and practiced the
last 5 years. And it sets a precedent of what is acceptable if people from
the international community remain silent.

Yes, politics are complicated. Everywhere.

But the defence of human rights is non partisan and a collective
responsibility.

I am curious to read ICANN response and diff positions from our
organisations and spaces.

R



Renata Avila

*Senior Digital Rights Advisor*
renata.avila at webfoundation.org

*1110 Vermont Ave NW, Suite 500, Washington DC 20005, USA* *| *
*www.webfoundation.org* <http://www.webfoundation.org/>* | Twitter:
@webfoundation*

On Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 8:12 PM, Gus Rossi <gus at publicknowledge.org> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> *Context: *Catalunya is holding an independence referendum next month.
> The Spanish Constitution does not recognize any kind of questioning of the
> territorial integrity of Spain. But the Catalan parliament approved having
> a referendum anyway. Today, Spanish police carried out morning raids at
> regional government offices in Barcelona, arresting several Catalan
> officials involved in preparations for the referendum. In addition,
> websites have been shutdown or blocked, and .CAT domain technical staff
> have been detained. Also, the magazines of an important independentist
> association (Omnium Cultural) have been denied delivery by the Spanish
> postal service.
>
> Regardless of what you might think of the Catalan political process,
> independentist movements in Europe, or else, there are some things I wanted
> to bring to your attention.
>
> *The Internet:* Right now, this conflict has definitively spilled over
> Internet Freedom of Expression, human rights, and the right to an open
> Internet:
>
> .CAT domain has been intervened by the Spanish Police (Guardia Civil:
> https://twitter.com/puntcat/status/910446518494269440) All web pages
> under that domain that have information about the referendum have been
> suspended.
>
> The technical staff of .CAT has been detained by the police (including one
> ISOC-CAT member).
>
> This was the webpage calling for the catalan referendum:
> http://ref1oct.cat/. nic.EU is now hosting the webpage, but there are
> reports that Spanish authorities have ordered ISPs to block the DNSs:
> ref1oct.eu
>
> There are large DDoS attacks on some websites (apparently Cloudflare is
> under attack, as per some reports), and there is traffic manipulation by
> the ISPs (DNS blocking on certain domains).
>
> In addition, there has been confiscation of personal goods of the Catalan
> politicians, police searches in newspapers and printing plants, some email.
>
> This is Western Europe in 2017 that we are talking about. We should be
> worried.
>
> ----
> # # #
> # • #
> # #
>
> *Gus Rossi*
> Global Policy Director (202) 861-0020 (x123) | (202) 651 1337
> <(202)%651-1337> (mobile) | @agustinrs <https://twitter.com/agustinrs>
> *Public Knowledge* | @publicknowledge
> <https://twitter.com/publicknowledge> | www.publicknowledge.org
> 1818 N St. NW, Suite 410 | Washington, DC 20036 | CFC 12259
>
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>
>
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