We present our annual report on institutional violence
REPORT ON INSTITUTIONAL VIOLENCE 2019
IRÍDIA’s Service for Attention and Reporting in Situations of Institutional Violence (SAIDAVI) offers free legal and psychosocial assistance to people who suffer from situations of institutional violence within the framework of the Catalan penal system. That is, those situations in which public institutions violate the rights of people through the exercise of physical or psychological force, causing an impairment to their physical, mental and / or moral integrity. Specifically, addresses the violations of rights committed or permitted by agents of the security forces, penitentiary officials or private security agents, when they act by delegation of the security functions that are the responsibility of the State.
During 2019 the department attended a total of 248 cases, of which 87% have been due to situations in the context of protest. With 21 new cases, we now carry out the legal defense of 52 cases: cases from the 1-O (October 1st police violence) such as that of Roger Español, in which our team managed to identify the agent of the National Police Force who shot him, cases that occurred in public spaces carried out by personnel of private security companies, and cases within spaces of deprivation of liberty, both police stations, CIEs and in prisons, where we have detected situations of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by security officials.
During the fall of 2019 we experienced a very serious human rights situation in Catalonia and it was especially intense for SAIDAVI. Our lawyers and psychologists treated more than 200 injured people in the context of the social mobilizations that took place in the city of Barcelona and the metropolitan area as a protest against the Supreme Court ruling.
Many of the actions of both the Mossos d’Esquadra and the National Police were irregular, causing injuries to hundreds of people due to unjustified charges, the use of the highly dangerous “carousel” technique, and harassment and humiliation by agents with the intention of punishing or intimidating the affected people.
El servei va atendre un total de 53 persones que presentaven lesions per l’impacte de bala de goma i de foam i 18 per cops de porra al cap, algunes d’elles de molta gravetat, i 5 periodistes agredits en el context de manifestacions mentre exercien la seva tasca professional, vulnerant el dret de totes a la llibertat d’informació.
The service attended a total of 53 people who had injuries from the impact of rubber bullets or foam bullets and 18 from blows of batons to the head, some of them very serious, and 5 journalists attacked in the context of protests while exercising their profession, violating everyone’s right to freedom of information.
We continue working to ensure that similar situations do not occur in the future, such as the prohibition of rubber bullets throughout the State, the correct identification of agents or the use of video surveillance cameras in places of deprivation of liberty, and all this and more is what we demand from administrations with our annual reports on institutional violence.Since we were born in 2016, we are assisting more people each year and in 2019 we comprehensively managed more than double the number of cases than the previous year, including legal representation.