CONGRESS OF THE PROGRESSIVE UNION OF PUBLIC PROSECUTORS

The Progressive Union of Public Prosecutors (UPF) demands the banning of xenophobic parties and a Public Prosecutor’s Office against racism.

CONGRESS OF THE PROGRESSIVE UNION OF PUBLIC PROSECUTORS

May 24, the Congress of the Progressive Union of Public Prosecutors (UPF) adopted the following resolutions against racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and human trafficking.

Associations promoting racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and human trafficking are illegal; therefore the UPF considers it necessary to demand that the authorities in charge of security create special police units responsible for the prevention, investigation, and persecution of these illegal associations.

The UPF demands the use of all legal instruments. In particular, that the judicial Police officers act under assumed identity and acquire and carry objects, effects, and instruments of crime as well as decide to confiscate them with authorization from the investigating Judge or the Head Prosecutor under Article 282 of the Criminal Procedure Act, for  being investigations concerning the activities of organized crime.

The UPF demands that the State Public Prosecutor’s Office attend to this form of criminality and provide a response which considers these groups as organized crime, for the purpose of the appropriate response by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, either through a specialized Public Prosecutor, or in parts of the local Public Prosecutors, under the coordination and responsibility of a Board Attorney.

The UPF demands that the State Public Prosecutor impart the necessary instructions to the Prosecutor of the Supreme Court in order to exercise all legal actions to ban these parties or associations under the provisions of the law of parties. The Fundamental Law 672.002 of June 27 establishes in Article 9, Paragraph 2, that a political party will be declared illegal when its activity violates the democratic principals, particularly when it seeks to damage or destroy the regime of liberties or to prevent or eliminate the democratic system through one of the following behaviors, carried out in a serious and repeated manner: (A) to systematically violate the fundamental rights and liberties; (B) promoting, justifying, or exonerating attempts against the life or integrity of a person or persons; or (C) the exclusion or persecution of people on the basis of their ideology, religion or beliefs, nationality, race, gender, or sexual orientation. Under Article 11.1, the Public Prosecutor’s Office is entitled to seek a ban of these political parties.

Reform Directive of the European Union

The UPF requests that, in its entrance into effect, the reform directive establish the minimum time necessary for the proposed actions.

The UPF requests the modernization of the Public Administration in cases of immigration so that its bureaucracy and inefficiency do not create as the only solution the application of sanctions against foreign citizens.

The UPF condemns the attempt to waste public resources to “protect” society from those seeking work rather than to prosecute offenders.

The UPF shows its satisfaction with Spain’s ratification of the European Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, which appears to be imminent, according to the news spread.

Taking into account that, until now, the Spanish legislature has not fulfilled its obligation to put into effect the international instruments in the scope of the United Nations – in particular the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish the Trafficking of Humans, especially Women and Children (Palmero, 2000) – which are already ratified and in force since 2003, we trust that incorporation of this new Convention into our Law will serve to rectify the criminal policy followed so far, which gives preference to the prosecution of smuggling immigrants and the defense of the State’s right to control migratory flows,  and is relegated to ignore the urgent need to categorize in an independent and distinct manner the human trafficking – for their sexual exploitation, labor, or extraction of organs – as a crime against humanity which threatens the most basic human rights, putting the victims in a situation of unbearable vulnerability and exclusion and constitutes one of the criminal modalities of international relevance.

Likewise, we should emphasize that no reform in this case can be effective if the putting into force of the sort of laws called for in the aforementioned Protocol is not accompanied by the legal measures necessary to establish a general system of assistance and protection to trafficking victims, both in regards to their involvement in criminal proceedings against their exploiters and in regards to achieving the necessary physical, psychological, and social recuperation, providing even the possibility of their integration into Spanish society.