The Observatory has been informed by reliable sources about the acts of stigmatisation, harassment and criminalisation against Mr. Iñaki Rivera, director of the Observatory of the Penal System and Human Rights (OSPDH) [1] and the System of Registration and Communication of Institutional Violence (SIRECOVI) - organizations which defend the human rights of prisoners and victims of institutional violence [2].
According to the information received, Mr. Iñaki Rivera has been summoned to testify on September 18, 2019, as a defendant before the Court of Instruction in Barcelona. The citation has been produced following a complaint by the prison commission of the Comisiones Obreras trade union, which has accused Mr. Iñaki Rivera of defaming prison officials during a Catalan public television interview (in the TV3 channel [3]) in which the existence of ill-treatment in prisons was discussed. Another prison officers trade union, CSIF, has requested that Mr. Iñaki Rivera retract his comments made during the same television program, which if not adhered to, would trigger a second criminal process for defamation against him which is yet to be formalized. Today, the judicial process is in an initial phase, and therefore the exact nature of the charges that the Prosecutor and the investigating Judge will consider are uncertain. The Spanish Criminal Code punishes public defamation with a sentence that can reach up to two years in prison.
The Observatory views these judicial proceedings against Mr. Iñaki Rivera in the context of hostility, aims to discredit, criminalize and enact reprisals as a consequence of Mr. Iñaki Rivera longstanding work on denouncing ill-treatment and torture in prisons. Following the participation of Mr. Iñaki Rivera in the aforementioned television program on November 29th, 2018, the campaign of attacks against him by some unions connected to the prison system intensified [4]. In addition to judicial harassment against him, Mr. Rivera has received serious disqualifications and stigmatization evidenced in prison officials preventing Mr. Rivera’s from entering prisons in Catalonia.
The campaign has further increased in the context of the presentation in November 2018 of a SIRECOVI report on institutional violence [5] in which at least 106 cases of institutional violence in Catalonia between December 2016 and September 2018 were recorded, of which 67.9% would have occurred against people in custody in prisons.
The Observatory denounces the existence in Spain of a trend towards the improper use of criminal law against statements and messages protected by freedom of expression, including critical observations regarding the actions of State police bodies or other officials and representatives of the State, by resorting to criminal definitions such as hate crime, defamation or exaltation of terrorism. These facts have a clear intention and inhibitory effect, negatively impacting the exercise of rights such as freedom of expression and assembly, which has been denounced on numerous occasions by civil society organizations [6], as well as by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in judgments such as the Toranzo Gómez case c. Spain (application No. 26922/14).
In reference to the above events, the Observatory urges the Spanish Government and the Autonomous Government of Catalonia to take all necessary measures to ensure the physical and psychological integrity of Mr. Iñaki Rivera and the rest of the members of the OSPDH and SIRECOVI, as well as to ensure that acts of harassment are not carried out against him, including at the judicial level.
Background:
This campaign of attacks against Mr. Rivera, the OSPDH and SIRECOVI should be added to a long list of serious attacks against him since 2004 including insults, disqualifications, threats and acts of harassment in retaliation for his legitimate work on defending human rights through the reporting of cases of torture and/or ill-treatment against persons deprived of liberty.
This campaign of attacks has been followed with concern by the Observatory, as well as by various international mechanisms. In 2015, the United Nations Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment expressed concern about allegations of retaliation including against members of the OSPDH for reporting acts of torture by officials of the Quatre Camins [7] penitentiary centre. Likewise, in the list of issues prior to the presentation of the seventh periodic report of Spain to the UN Committee Against Torture, the State is requested to report on the investigations that have been carried out on the allegations of reprisals against members of the OSPDH, as well as for the alleged obstruction of his work monitoring the human rights situation in penitentiary centres in Catalonia [8].
