Dateline: SUNDAY MARCH 23, 2003  
Maghaberry Prison, Occupied Ireland
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Five miles outside of Belfast in the Occupied North of Ireland, Irish republican political prisoners at Maghaberry Gaol are living under a deadly “forced integration” policy that appears to be solely designed to guarantee the violent death of any one of them at any time.

Irish republicans prisoners at Maghaberry are being held individually isolated on hostile loyalist landings where they are outnumbered up to 13 to 1, surrounded by hostile loyalist paramilitary prisoners. Groups who would normally not ever associate on the outside are being forced by the Northern Ireland Prisons Service to coexist in close quarters under the auspices of a failed British treaty. All terms of  POLITICAL STATUS have been totally revoked for these Irish republican prisoners, and vicious assaults and death threats are a part of their daily life.  Several Irish prisoners have already been viciously assaulted under these conditions; one very nearly fatally. 

Yesterday  yet another vicious attack was leveled against a republican political prisoner at Maghaberry.  John James Connolly, 28, was taking exercise in the prison yard when he was seriously burned with scalding water thrown from a cell window above. This is yet another in a series of vicious and potentially lethal attacks against republican prisoners that have taken place inside Maghaberry prison in recent months.

Additionally, several Irish political prisoners at Maghaberry were recently visited by Northern Ireland Prison Service officers, who warned them that loyalist death threats had been issued from inside the prison against all of them.

Irish republican political prisoners are being pushed to the brink of endurance under these deadly conditions, and many on the outside now fear that there is no choice left for these men but to take the drastic step of blanket or hunger strike protest.   

PLEASE DON’T LET THESE MEN BEAR THIS BURDEN ALONE.

The Irish Freedom Committee encourages all concerned human rights activists to contact your elected officials regarding this emergency situation, and to remain vigilant as this urgent situation continues. 

DON’T ALLOW MORE BLANKET PROTESTS OR DEADLY HUNGER STRIKES!! 

DEMAND THE RIGHT FOR POLITICAL STATUS TO IRISH REPUBLICAN POLITICAL PRISONERS.

1. THE RIGHT TO SEGREGATION
2. THE RIGHT TO RECOGNITION AS A GROUP
3. THE RIGHT TO HAVE THEIR OWN SPOKESPERSON
4. THE RIGHT TO A WING OF THEIR OWN

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Read more:  IFC REPORT FROM MAGHABERRY PRISON -  02 27 03

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