Jordi Cuixart | |
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Born | Jordi Cuixart i Navarro 22 April 1975 |
Nationality | Spanish |
Occupation | Businessperson & activist |
Known for | Former president of Òmnium Cultural (December 2015 - February 2022) |
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Jordi Cuixart i Navarro (born 22 April 1975) is a Spanish businessman and cultural activist from Catalonia. He was the president of Òmnium Cultural,[1] a non-profit cultural organisation founded in 1961 with more than 190,000 members and 52 local branches in Catalonia,[2] from December 2015 to February 2022.[3]
As part of his role in the pro-independence demonstrations prior to the Catalan independence referendum of 2017, he was imprisoned from October 2017 until June 2021 under charge of sedition brought by the Spanish prosecutor's office. In October 2019, after two years of pre-trial detention, Cuixart was sentenced to nine years of prison for sedition.[4] Amnesty International believes his detention and sentence constituted a disproportionate restriction on his rights to free speech and peaceful assembly, and urged Spain to free him.[5][6] The NGO Front Line Defenders [7] and the Council of Europe[8] consider Jordi Cuixart a human rights defender. He repeatedly said that “as a political prisoner my priority is not getting out of prison, but the solution of the political situation and struggle for democracy and human rights [9] ”. He was freed in June 2021 following a government pardon.[10][11]
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The situation of human rights defenders in Council of Europe member States