On 8th October, the European and Foreign Affairs Committees of the Dutch House of Representatives will receive a petition for the parliament "to do everything possible to ensure the release of the Catalan political prisoners". Currently, almost 60,000 people have signed it. Representatives of the Catalan National Assembly's (ANC) branch in the Netherlands will be present when it is handed over.
Foreign Friends of Catalonia and ANC - Nederlands have organised a symposium to be attended by president in exile Carles Puigdemont and minister Lluís Puig.
"With our peaceful and positive call for democracy and human rights, we want to touch the heat of the Hague and help with the internationalisation of the conflict the Spanish state has with Catalonia," the organisers write in a statement. "A political conflict which has been judicialised to the extreme and has resulted in having the government elected by the Catalan people in prison and exile."
"We think that a conflict of this scale within the European Union", they continue, "merits maximum attention from the Dutch Parliament, since it puts into crisis the system of democratic values which the current Europe has been built with, and could prove a dangerous precedent for maintaining democratic practices and guaranteeing the European public's human rights."