Terrorism Against the Media: testimonies from journalists in the Basque region.

Panellists: Gorka Landaburu, Cambio 16 magazine; Aurora Inchausti, El Pais; Juan Palomo, Antena 3 TV; Fernando Berridi, Diario Vasco; José Javier Uranga, Diario de Navarra.
Session chairman: Hilario Pino, News Presenter, Tele 5

The ETA sent Gorka Landaburu a letter bomb. "They destroyed my hands to a certain extent. They destroyed by right my, my hearing has been affected. But I have to continue ahead, we have to defend a jewel, and that jewel is freedom of expression – one of the pillars of democracy."

Aurora Inchausti of El Pais and Juan Palomo of Antena 3 TV walked out of their home with their one-year-old son one day last November and found a two-kilogramme bomb on their doorstep. Fortunately, it didn't explode.

"It was a bomb meant to kills us – not only us, but our neighbors. They couldn't care less if two people were killed or 22 or 22,000 – they're just interested in their own lives," said Mr Palomo.

Ms Inchausti said: "there are many, many journalists who have had to change their way of life because there name has appeared in the papers of a terrorist group, or was written by a coward on a wall near their homes. This is difficult for any journalist, and there are many who have to abandon their home, their profession, their families – all of them advised by the police to leave their cities. We who are still here believe we have the obligation to tell what happened to them. We are here and we're telling you this story."

José Javier Uranga was shot 25 times when he stepped from his car in the Diario de Navarra parking lot one day in 1980 – a young man with a machine gun blasted him until he fell, and then a young woman continued shooting while he was on the ground.

Miraculously, he survived. Even more miraculously, after a long and arduous recovery, he returned to the newspaper.`

"I was given the opportunity to leave but I thought, if I abandoned this, the ETA would have achieved their objective," said Mr Uranga, a Golden Pen of Freedom laureate. "It woujld have been the same as if they killed me. I went back to the newspaper."

Despite the injuries and the near-death experiences, these journalists are the lucky ones. They were here to tell their stories.

José Luis Lopez de la Calle and Santiago Oleaga Elejabarrieta were not. They were both murdered by the ETA. Their widows were in the audience at the conference to hear the testimony. They were given a standing ovation by the gathered journalists.