RSF sppech at 8th International Symposium Against Isolation

international | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Monday January 04, 2010 08:36 by RSF - Republican Sinn Fein

Speech by Josephine Hayden

Ireland is just like all countries fighting for a socialist government where revolutionary organisations have to take on the state as well as outside interference and occupation. The same struggle is being waged by socialist revolutionaries in countries such as Cuba, Palestine, Venezuela, Iraq, the Basque Country and of course Turkey (to name but a few) as is being waged in Ireland. We here today share a common bond, a struggle against imperialism. James Connolly wrote that “an injury to one is an injury to all” so we must show solidarity with each other and stand together. Isolation [as the conference is so aptly named] is a powerful tool of the oppressor. We must not let the oppressor have that tool. We must wrest it back from him and use it to become stronger. Isolation can led to despair and we all know where despair leads to. This we cannot let happen.

Speech by Josephine Hayden

at 8TH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM AGAINST ISOLATION in London, December 19, 2009

My name is Josephine Hayden and I am general Secretary of Republican Sinn Féin, Ireland. I am an ex-POW living in Dublin, Ireland. I am here with other representatives of Republican Sinn Féin Ireland, including our newly elected President Des Dalton, our foreign affairs bureau representative Dieter Blumenfeld from Austria and our comrades from London and Scotland and of course Ireland.

We bring you greetings from our Organisation and from the Continuity IRA POWs in Maghaberry Jail in the Occupied Six Counties and Portlaoise Jail in Co Laois in the 26 Counties. We send greetings to political prisoners all over the world [and I must mention the one Irishman held in Lithuania].

For those of you that don’t know, Ireland was occupied for centuries by Britain and finally partitioned by Britain in 1921 under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The 1920 Act created two jurisdictions in Ireland, six of the nine counties of Ireland were held under British rule and are still occupied and governed from London, and the 26 Counties, known as the Free State – how free it is, is debatable – or as it is commonly called the Republic of Ireland.

Though declared a Republic in 1916 by Padraig Pearse, James Connolly etc Ireland is not a Republic. We are still fighting for that Republic and that is why we still have political prisoners in Ireland today.

Ireland is just like all countries fighting for a socialist government where revolutionary organisations have to take on the state as well as outside interference and occupation. The same struggle is being waged by socialist revolutionaries in countries such as Cuba, Palestine, Venezuela, Iraq, the Basque Country and of course Turkey (to name but a few) as is being waged in Ireland. We here today share a common bond, a struggle against imperialism. James Connolly wrote that “an injury to one is an injury to all” so we must show solidarity with each other and stand together. Isolation [as the conference is so aptly named] is a powerful tool of the oppressor. We must not let the oppressor have that tool. We must wrest it back from him and use it to become stronger. Isolation can led to despair and we all know where despair leads to. This we cannot let happen.

The life of a revolutionary is not an easy one. Without doubt it brings more pain than gain in many cases but the effort must be made and the work put in. A belief in what you are doing and the ability to take what’s thrown at you by the state and the media is a must! In our type of work it is inevitable that we end up with political prisoners and political prisoners by their very nature are perceived by states as a threat to the status quo of the ruling class. So naturally all act of resistance or dissent against the state will be dealt with in a savage manner. We see it all the time on the TV and internet – we now have instant pictures of state repression as it is happening, except for the like of China, Russia and a few other places who allow no access to outside media. (The media are often more sympathetic to other countries rather than their own – if its far away enough it can be respectably called ‘resistance’)

Shoot-to-kill policies, long prison sentences, torture of prisoners, intimidation of families, the loss of employment and character assignations are commonplace. For the most part and with very few honourable exceptions, the media – all media - is in the pocket of the state. They allow themselves to be shamefully used to denigrate those fighting against the corruption and brutality of the capitalist systems. They mouth the platitudes of the politicians who try to justify draconian laws passed to allegedly “fight terrorism” and blacklist as many people as possible. The USA id particularly good at that but the British are not far behind them.

Ireland has suffered under the British for centuries. When the Irish Republican Army (IRA) decide to take on the British state in the Occupied Six Counties (in the north-east of the country) in the late 1960s/early 1970s they were but a handful of men with a handful of guns, but with tons of bravery and courage. When the British army arrived in 1971, allegedly to protest the Nationalist population, they were not long about showing their true colours. They turned their guns on the nationalists they were allegedly there to protect from the British backed loyalist Unionists. Brian Faulkner introduced a new law giving the authorities the power to indefinitely detain “suspected terrorists” without trial under the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act. This of course was used exclusively against the nationalist population and 400 people were detained without trial for varying periods of time, most of whom were totally innocent but whom the bulk of the media labeled “terrorists”.

Since them legislation has been updated to a point where one has almost no automatic rights anymore in any part of Ireland.

During the following years thousand of men and women, and in some cases children, were incarcerated and from this came the hunger strike of 1981 in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh just outside Belfast in Co Antrim. I’m sure everyone here has heard of Bobby Sands who led the second hunger strike against the criminalisation of political prisoners which culminated in his and nine more deaths. Bobby Sands was just one of the men, and women, took on the might of the British Army, and when we see today the British army in Afghanistan and Iraq, that is the same army that the IRA fought in Ireland. For many years there were up to 50,000 British soldiers in the Occupied Six Counties, a tiny area where there are still 5,000 troops deployed.

The savagery that was meted out to nationalist POWs in particular and to nationalists in general was appalling. (Some books in the hall tell their horrific story). And though some of the media in Ireland and other countries was certainly sympathetic to the hunger strikers, most of them condemned the men, and the women in Armagh jail, roundly. They labeled them terrorists, and said they deserved everything the got and ‘they even deserved to die – after all they were starving themselves to death so really it was their own fault’.

But the men refused to be criminalized and paid a terrible price. And the people were kinder than the media and the British government and the Free State administration. They came out in their thousands in France, Italy, Switzerland and Portugal, Athens, Belgium, Australia, the USA, England, Wales, and of course Ireland. Cuban President (at the time) Fidel Castro paid tribute to Bobby Sands and a memorial stone stands in Cuba to the memory of the men. In Iran a street is names after Bobby Sands, and a member of the Iranian embassy in London attended the funeral, while a telegram was sent from the Islamic Republic of Iran. Such support from the international community was very much appreciated in Ireland, and it showed the international dimension to the Irish struggle for all –Ireland independence.

Unfortunately the lives of 10 men was the price paid on that occasion for political status. How easily it was sold just 17 years later. The Stormont Agreement was signed in April 1998 which ended political status. That was the price paid [by comrades of Bobby Sands] for entry into the sectarian halls of Stormont and the British Establishment, who now implement British rule in Ireland and are paid handsomely to criminalize the current POWs (political prisoners) in Maghaberry Jail outside Belfast.

Republican Sinn Fein supports the Continuity IRA prisoners in Maghaberry and Portlaoise prisons who share our aims and ideals for a 32-County Socialist Republic.

The men in Portlaoise in the 26 Counties (the Free State) have political status to a certain extent now, but are still guarded by the Free State soldiers who are positioned on the roof and around the prison and as is of the case the prison is surrounded by barbed wire. {Limerick prison was surrounded by razor wire} But the conditions now in Portlaoise were hard fought for and many a man died young after a series of hunger strikes there which did secure as I said political status to a certain extent.

Maghaberry however is under British rule and once again are enduring torturous conditions. They are once again demanding free association; an end to controlled movement and the right to organise their own wing. Medical neglect is a problem in both prisons as indeed it is too for Irishmen held in jail in England.

Currently only three prisoners are allowed out of their cells at any one time and they can be on lockdown at the whim of the governor, as they were recently (second week in November) for four days without fresh food or water, personal or legal visits, mail or phone contact.

Many released political prisoners are denied entry to countries like the USA and Canada where they are on a blacklist. Republican Sinn Féin is a banned organisation in the USA. We even had people banned from entering England and indeed part of their own country – the occupied six counties!

We have special non-jury courts where the word of a superintendent of the Gardaa Siochána (police) is enough to get you sentenced when charged under The Offences Against the State Act. This Act has been updated and expanded over the years as many other new draconian laws are enacted. The police are now allowed to enter your home and place of work to plant surveillance equipment and the information gathered can be used in court.

Our struggle goes on, your struggle goes on, we resist the normalization of the unnatural, we resist the criminalisation of our political prisoners and we resist the isolation of political prisoners.

But in particular more must be done by all of us to fight against the jailing of children, the scandal of child prisoners has never been adequately addressed and it is an area we must become more aware of and do something about.

I will finish with the same quote I spoke last year from a friend:

“By their stance against tyranny the political prisoners assert the humanity of the oppressed. By our active support for them we elevate ourselves and the world above inhumanity”.

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