Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The imprisonment by the Spanish Government of nine Catalan leaders, including the former Vice President of Catalonia, Oriol Junqueras, is an affront to democracy. Essentially, nine innocent people have been condemned to jail for peacefully exercising their right to democracy and self-determination. Their crime, it seems, is organising a referendum to allow their people to democratically decide their future. Sadly, the world witnessed shocking scenes of brutality by the Spanish police in the aftermath of that referendum. We now see the same repression being used in response to those protesting against these trumped-up sentences. Prison and repression are not the answer to the political crisis in Catalonia; dialogue is. It is not good enough for the European Union to brush this matter off or to describe it as an internal matter. We all remember the days when the British Government used to describe the Troubles in the North of Ireland as an internal matter.

That approach did not work then and it will not work now. The international community, especially the European Union, has an obligation to ensure that Catalonia can pursue the legitimate cause of self-determination. The European Union-----

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