It's absurd that in a Western 'democracy' you'd have the national police out to suppress a referendum and attack peaceful voters.
Good job Spain, you just legitimised the referendum and gave Catalonia a ton of international sympathy.
Good job Spain, you just legitimised the referendum and gave Catalonia a ton of international sympathy.
Even if it's illegal to declare independence, it should never be illegal to vote on anything. I have no stake in the outcome in any way, but at this point I'm rooting for independence. Spain has really proven that they're not worthy of ruling over Catalans if this is how they're treating them during a simple election.
There was a court order to stop that action.
What sort of democracy is it when you can just ignore court orders?
If they wanted to protest then they should've organised protests and demonstrations. If they really wanted to make a point, organise a symbolic voting and have someone face the charges.
To go ahead with the whole thing was reckless. The courts cannot afford to allow themselves to be ignored.
That's the very opposite of the rule of Law!
Marijuana is illegal in many places in the US. It's illegal at the federal level, and even if it's legal in some states, the federal government can still arrest you for having marijuana. But we constantly have votes to try to legalize it at the local or state level, knowing that it's still illegal at the national level.
Having that vote is not illegal, even if following through with the results of the vote is illegal. Courts are not infallible and their orders are not always the best course of action.
Almost every declaration of independence throughout history has been considered illegal. They were reckless. They were against the rule of law. They still happened.
Regardless, a vote is a peaceful action. Responding to that peaceful action with violence is what is reckless and against the rule of law.
I guess there are still some freedoms we take for granted in the US that other countries have not yet granted themselves.
Democracy must be tolerant of peaceful protesting. An "illegal" vote (depending who's lens we are viewing this from), to me, is a form of peaceful protest. Candor, mutual respect, and peaceful organizing are some of a few tools democracies have to solve problems without devolving to unrest and violence. If we assume we highly value avoiding violence (and we should), governments need to tolerate the use of these tools, from time to time.
By banning the use of these more moderate options, the national government is essentially promoting dissenters to even less desirable options so they have at least some form of expression. I think we should be surprised the national government chose to use such force when it had far less invasive means for dealing with the consequences of this vote, e.g., courts.
Spain has separation of powers. The courts declared the action illegal and directed the police to end it.
The organisers knew of the court's decision and still went ahead. That is reckless.
If they wanted to protest they could've organised demonstrations and protests - which are perfectly allowed in Spain.
I don't think the use of public money for the illegal act necessarily sets a bad precedent. The constitution didn't say to go out there and spray rubber bullets at civilians. So how a government can respond to this illegal act is a subjective choice.
Spain could have chosen to use less authoritarian methods to deal with the consequences of this ballot without setting any precedents. It could have been declared unenforceable by a court, which is a more appropriate venue.
Nobody expected them not to react to the referendum. Using cops with clubs instead of lawyers was disappointing.
>that constitution doesn't hold weight in real life
We will see what carries more weight, violence or paper.
Would the US allow the vote to proceed?
It certainly is illegal for any US State to secede, and we fought one of the bloodiest wars in the history of the world over it.
It'd be unconstitutional to interfere in California's referendum process. The referendum wouldn't have any legal force, so why bother interfering anyhow?
Any specific amendments you'd care to share? I haven't heard of any such plans.
The details might vary, but this nation is off the leash now, if in fact a nation that gets in so many wars and brutalizes so many different subsets of its people could ever have been said to have been on one. Our rulers have always distracted us from their predations with shit like this, but as the stories get harder to keep straight the distractions have to get bigger.