International support to Catalonia

… after the violation of its democratic and individual rights. This is how the DOCSBarcelona team addresses colleagues around the world. Here is the mail I received:

Dear colleagues

I contact you on behalf of DocsBarcelona director Joan Gonzàlez, who is in Chile at the moment, and the whole team of the project in Barcelona.

At DocsBarcelona we have been very respectful and neutral in the last years with the political situation in our territory, but the events that are taking place these days in Catalonia deeply disturb us. 

Democracy in our country is at serious risk at the moment. We are suffering from direct repression, with the combined use of security forces, legal action, and attacks on our institutions and our political representatives, through direct economic intervention and the absorption of competences of our legal public institutions.

A group of representatives of the cultural sector and European citizens living in Catalonia have launched a call under the umbrella of the Fundació Catalunya Europa www.catalunyaeuropa.net to raise awareness and mobilize creators, programmers, professionals, politicians and people in charge of the media from all over the world. 

We want to share our concern with you and ask for your support. We would like to alert the international community about the situation we are living in and ask them to help us defend the right for freedom of speech: it is our democracy that is being attacked by all means.

The group’s  first call is towards our close European fellow citizens. But at DocsBarcelona we feel we need to extend it to our whole international professional community, in the US, LATAM and Asia. A community that works some way or another with documentary, a film genre that stands for reality, freedom of speech, respect and personal points of view with no exception.

Therefore, we ask you to:

 Adhere to the call by signing in the following link: https://goo.gl/forms/gzK3tgYziSoHQ9t13

 Address to your international contacts and especially Europeans, encouraging them to do the same. (Attached you’ll find our request in different languages)

 Address your parliaments and governments and request the adoption of measures, especially by European institutions, aimed at stopping the inadmissible and repressive actions of the Spanish State and to protect our rights, that are also yours.

Without a clear international positioning, the Spanish State will continue its useless and painful strategy, trying to turn a political conflict into an issue of public order with a very uncertain ending.

Today, Catalonia needs the international community. We need the support of all of you.

Adhere to this Call and do it as extensive as you can.

Best regards and many thanks,

The DocsBarcelona Team