What is POLITICAL STATUS?

Throughout the long history of Ireland's struggle for an end to British military rule, the Irish people have stood behind their prisoners of war and have given them unquestioned support.  On numerous occasions in recent history, Irish republican prisoners have fought from behind bars for the right to POLITICAL STATUS.  Countless Irish prisoners have suffered unimaginable torture on hunger and thirst strike, and many have ultimately lost their lives, in the struggle to obtain these rights on behalf of their comrades and future internees.  What are these rights?

In the years following the War of Independence, when Irish republican turned against Irish republican at the bidding of British interests;  those who were arrested and imprisoned for resistance to the British Army and its lackey Free State forces were imprisoned under appalling and barbaric conditions throughout Ireland, and were uniformly denied any terms of Political Status.  

In 1976, in an effort to "criminalize" widespread resistance to increasingly barbaric British policy in Occupied Ireland; a new policy was introduced  revoking Special Category Status to those prisoners arrested for acts of political resistance.  These prisoners, tried and convicted in Special Courts under special  laws, would from then on be treated as ordinary criminals and would be forced to wear a convict's uniform.  This was resisted immediately by Irish Republican prisoners of war. The first man to be sentenced to the H-Blocks following the denial of Special Category status, Ciaran Nugent, proclaimed "They'll have to nail them to my back".  Ciaran Nugent spent the next three and a half years with nothing but a blanket to wrap himself in, and all furniture removed from his cell.  Over the next five years hundreds more Republican POWs would join the "Blanket Protest" under increasingly barbaric conditions.

Finally, after enduring over four years on the Blanket Protest,  including two on the "no wash" protest, and subjected to unimaginable barbarities; the Republican prisoners in the H-Blocks decided to embark on a hunger strike to secure five basic demands:

  • The right not to wear a prisoner uniform 

  • The right to free association with Republican political prisoners

  • The right as political prisoners not to do prison work

  • The right to organize their own educational and recreational facilities

  • The right to one weekly visit, letter and parcel

After an abortive attempt in 1980, which ended with unfulfilled British Government promises that Special Category Status would be returned;  the Irish Republican prisoners undertook a sacrifice of the greatest magnitude, which would martyr ten men and would sully the name of Britain forever.  Ten young men, led by Bobby Sands, a member of Margaret Thatcher's own Parliament, slowly and painfully starved themselves to death in a bid to bring a return to Political Status for all Irish Republican POWs.  One after another ten men joined up to the strike and wasted into a painful and horrible death, as Britain looked the other way.  Finally, shamed in the eyes of the world, Britain was forced to recognize the Five Demands and the Hunger Strike was brought to an end.

With the signing of the 1998 Stormont Treaty with Britain, Irish Republicans who are imprisoned for resisting British rule are once again being criminalized.  Although they are arrested for political crimes, and are charged and sentenced under special laws and in in special courts; they are being DENIED the right under the terms of this British-inspired Treaty to be treated as political prisoners.

Irish Republican prisoners at Maghaberry Prison in the Occupied Six Counties are enduring a particularly brutal form of state hostility,  which in recent days seems increasingly designed to guarantee the death of one or more Irish prisoner.  At Maghaberry Prison, Irish Republican prisoners have no shared quarters and no wing of their own; and are being housed intermingled with Loyalist paramilitary prisoners who have made numerous death threats to them, and who outnumber them nearly eight to one.  Several of these Republican POW's have been brutally and viciously attacked over the past year, in one case requiring seventeen staples and fifteen stitches following a brutal attack with an iron.

This situation has reached crisis level quite some time ago, and Americans of good conscience cannot ignore this situation any longer.

The demands for Maghaberry Prison today:

 1.  Immediate segregation
 2.  Group representation 
3.  The right to elect a spokesperson for each republican group
4.  The provision of a separate wing

Please join the Irish Freedom Committee in demanding an immediate return to Political Status!!!  Human Rights are not a PRIVILEGE.

How can I help??

More information:

International Human Rights Charters on the Treatment of Prisoners of War

 

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