Letter from Martin Galvin to Irish News RE: POW’s
A chara
Thirty years ago Republicans were in the midst of a Hunger Strike which would claim the lives of ten heroic patriots. This protest of last resort followed years of “naked brutality”, in which the Blanket men and Armagh women were beaten and brutalized, often during mirror searches or strip-searches.
Many supporters of the H-Block Armagh prisoners, Cardinal O’Fiaich foremost among them, did not endorse the armed campaigns of the IRA or INLA. However, they unapologetically backed these prisoners on humanitarian grounds, and pointed out that Republican political prisoners had been charged under special laws, tried before special non-jury courts, and declared guilty by Diplock judges. Even hostile commentators acknowledged that most Republican prisoners would never have been imprisoned but for the age-old struggle against British rule in Ireland.
For many of us who supported the Hunger Strikers, it is deeply troubling today to see Republican prisoners in Maghaberry made suffer the very same tactics of “naked brutality”, which the British used in their failed attempt to criminalize Brendan Hughes, Bobby Sands and their fellow Republican prisoners.
Today’s Republican prisoners and their families must take little comfort that such vicious policies may be sourced in London, but are now relayed through a compromised justice minister, jointly picked by the DUP and Sinn Fein. David Ford’s Thatcher-like cries of “no concessions” are hardly softened by the fact that Sinn Fein gifted him with the post he now uses to renege on the settlement signed and agreed last August.
How can Sinn Fein, —- especially party members, who personally suffered prison beatings and wrongful convictions, —- show us less interest in safeguarding Republican prisoners from brutality, than the DUP or David Ford in brutalizing them?
It must be asked, is Sinn Fein, on the same humanitarian basis as Cardinal O’Fiaich among so many others backed the Blanket men, unwilling to halt strip-search brutality meted out to break Republican prisoners in Maghaberry? Worse, are they unable to do so, despite the Stormont posts they hold and their arrangement with Ford? Surely the legacy of the Hunger Strike and Blanket protest must come to more than this!
Sincerely,
MARTIN GALVIN
