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Support Message from 'Solidarity with Hunger Strikers in Turkey' to Turkish Martyrs Commemoration in London - July 2001
The year 2001 has special significance to people in Ireland, especially between the months of March and August of this year. It was during this time, twenty years ago, that ten of Ireland's political prisoners were to die in defence of their status as imprisoned revolutionaries.
The ongoing hunger strikes in Turkey at this time have reminded many in Ireland of the prison protests that occurred here in the late 70s and early 80s. Beginning in 1976, the British government, in an attempt to pacify its political prisoners, began phasing out the Special Category Status that they had enjoyed. In it's drive to deny the political nature of the prisoners detention, the British government endeavored to force the revolutionaries to wear criminal uniforms and carry out menial and often degrading prison work. The revolutionary prisoners, who had been arrested under special laws, interrogated in special interrogation centres and sentenced in special non-jury courts, resisted this criminalisation policy.
Just as incarceration in the regime's prisons, where the state is at itís most powerful, narrows the options of its detainees, under the new regime, the prisoners' options were narrowed further. Ultimately, this led firstly to the blanket protest whereby prisoners refused to wear prison uniform and then to the hunger strikes of 1981. The prisoners' options, therefore had been narrowed to two choices: To live as criminals or face a slow death as political prisoners.
The Irish hunger strikes were eventually to lead to the deaths of ten committed revolutionaries. As first Bobby Sands, then Francis Hughes, Raymond McCreesh, Patsy O'Hara, Joe McDonnell, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Kieran Doherty, Thomas McElwee and Mickey Devine died one by one, the Irish people, particularly the working class, were galvanised into action in their support. Large street protests that shook the establishment followed, the prisoners' funerals becoming massive expressions of popular support as thousands walked behind the martyrs coffins. Many of the activists currently involved in our organisation remember those days well, carrying black flags in mourning and giving the governments of the day no peace as the hunger strikers died.
On the 17th day of the hunger strike that was to end with his death on the 66th day, Bobby Sands, reflecting on the path he had taken, was to write:
'If they aren't able to destroy the desire for freedom, they won't break you. They won't break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show. It is then we'll see the rising of the moon."
While the death of Bobby Sands was to shake the world, news of his passing travelling around the globe, it is an injustice without measure, that the current hunger strike protests in Turkey against the F-Type prisons go almost unreported. We recognise therefore, that struggle has an international character, and, just as Ireland received support from progressives from all parts of the world including Turkey, during the campaign for political status in the prisons, it is Ireland's duty to extend practical solidarity to the struggles of other lands.
It is regrettable but fitting, that the black flags are once again carried in protest on the streets of Dublin, this time, not for the Irish martyrs of 81, but for their sisters and brothers in struggle many miles away in Turkey.
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