Teach Dáithí Ó Conaill, 223 Parnell Street, Dublin 1, Ireland
Phone: +353-1-872 9747; FAX: +353-1-872 9757; e-mail: saoirse@iol.ie
Date: 20 Feabhra/February 2007
Internet resources maintained by SAOIRSE-Irish Freedom
http://saoirse.info
In this issue:
1. RSF to protest against presence of British royals in Dublin
2. Girl injured by occupation forces
3. Brendan `The Dark` Hughes dies in Belfast.
4. Mother of Francis Hughes dies.
5. New call for public inquiry
6. Nationalist family to quit home following threats
7. Solidarity with the Basque Country Week events in Dublin
8. Maze escapee in Texas prison lockdown
9. Catholic civil servants claim unfair treatment
10. Three protesters found guilty
11. Ian Paisley jnr resigns
1. RSF to protest against presence of British royals in Dublin
REPUBLICAN Sinn Féin will protest the presence of Anne Windsor at Croke Park on Saturday, February 23 in Dublin. Those opposed to the ongoing subjugation of the Irish people by a foreign military power are asked to assemble opposite Quinn’s Public House, where the Clonliffe and Drumcondra Roads meet, at 3.30pm.
On February 16, Des Dalton, Vice President of Republican Sinn Féin issued the following statement:
“Republican Sinn Féin will be actively protesting at the presence of a representative of the British Crown in Croke Park on February 23. Such a visit must be seen for what it is, part of the normalisation of British rule in Ireland.
“Anne Windsor will visit Croke Park not as a private individual but as the representative of the British Crown. This is an institution which claims sovereignty over six of the nine counties of Ulster, enforcing that claim with an army of occupation. For this reason no representative of the British Crown is welcome in any part of Ireland.”
National Publicity Officer, Richard Walsh, said on February 20: “Republican Sinn Féin are opposed to the visit of Anne Windsor to Croke Park on Saturday, just as we are opposed to the visit by her mother, Elizabeth Windsor – the English Queen, to Armagh City on Easter Thursday. These visits all form part of an insidious plan by the Dublin Administration to copper-fasten English rule in Ireland.
“Despite the comments of Dermot Ahern, members of the British Royal family are not welcome in any part of our country so long as the British occupation of Ireland continues. This will be demonstrated by our protest outside Croke Park.
“The political union between our country and Britain was designed to last ‘in perpetuity’, despite the wishes of the Irish people. These wishes were clearly expressed in 1918. True Republicans are determined to secure the permanent expulsion of the English invader from our shores so that the Irish people may finally enjoy freedom and peace.”
Anne Windsor was the Colonel-in-Chief of the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment of the British Crown Forces (29th/45th Foot) until it became the 2nd Battalion of the Mercian Regiment (Worcesters and Foresters) last August. In 1916, the 178 (Forester) Brigade was sent to Dublin in an attempt to suppress the Easter Rising.
The last visit to Ireland by a reigning British monarch was by George V in 1911.
2. Girl injured by occupation forces
A STATEMENT from Richard Walsh RSF PRO on February 14 said: “The fact that a 15-year-old girl was seriously injured as a direct result of British military activity near Portglenone, Co. Antrim, shows that the continued British presence remains a threat to the Irish people.
British military activity has increased substantially across South Derry and North Antrim in recent months. Helicopters constantly fly at low altitudes in the area. In this instance a horse was startled and threw the girl off, subsequently falling on top of her”.
3. Brendan `The Dark` Hughes dies in Belfast.
Brendan `The Dark` Hughes, died on February 16 in Belfast after a short illness aged 59.
Over 2,000 people followed his coffin which was draped in the Tricolour and topped with black beret and gloves. His body was carried from his home on the Grosvenor Road to St Peter`s Cathedral in the Divis Street area of the city.
Hughes was Officer Commanding (OC) the IRA in the Maze during the battle over POW status and the men`s refusal to wear prison uniform. He led the dirty protest - when the men wore nothing but a blanket and smeared their cell walls with their own excrement.
The resulting hunger strike led by Hughes was called off after 53 days when one of the men, Sean McKenna, was near death. Bobby Sands took over as OC and in 1981 ordered another hunger strike which first claimed his own life and then nine more Republicans.
Hughes was released from jail in 1986 but became disillusioned with the direction of the Provisional leadership in the run up to the Stormont Agreement in 1998 and dismissed them as `the Armani suit brigade` and as ‘professional liars’. He accused them of betraying core Republican principles and their working class background.
4. Mother of Francis Hughes dies.
Margaret Hughes (nee McElwee), mother of hunger striker Francis, died at her home in Bellaghey, Co Derry on February 19. She is survived by her husband Joe. Margaret Hughes was immensely proud of her son and fully supported him in his fight for political status.
Francis Hughes died after 59 days on hunger strike in 1981, the second hunger striker to die, Bobby Sands the first. Eight more men were to die before the hunger strike ended.
5. New call for public inquiry
THE family of murdered North Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane marked the 19th anniversary of his killing with renewed calls for an independent public inquiry into British state collusion in the atrocity.
The prominent human rights lawyer was gunned down in front of his wife and young children on 12 February, 1989. In the years since the murder, NGOs who have investigated into the circumstances have concluded that “very” senior British officials must have had foreknowledge of the murder.
International human rights lawyer Richard Harvey, a key member of the family’s legal team, said it was “unconscionable” that successive British Governments have all failed to conduct an independent inquiry into the murder. Another key member of the Finucane legal team, Michael Mansfield QC said the significance of the murder can never be underestimated: “The extent to which collusion existed between Britain and Loyalist paramilitaries is deeply shocking and all the more so when employed in the murder of an officer of the court to stop him from doing his job and to deter others from doing theirs.”
Speaking on his father’s anniversary, February 12, Pat Finucane’s eldest son Michael said his family’s legal team would ensure the inquiry would not be reduced to a “state vehicle for suppression”.
“The British government promised to establish an independent inquiry following the recommendations of Justice Peter Cory,” he said. “Britain then delayed the establishment of the inquiry to pass new legislation that gives control to its own ministers. Our legal team are tasked with ensuring the inquiry will not be reduced to a state vehicle for suppression. Secret justice is no justice at all.”
6. Nationalist family to quit home following threats
A NATIONALIST family-of-five are leaving their home in the Co Antrim village of Stoneyford after a warning from the RUC/PSNI that loyalists were about to launch a bomb attack on their home.
The bomb threat is the latest act of loyalist intimidation in the village, which has already forced three nationalist neighbours to leave the area in the last two years.
On February 11 the British colonial police visited the nationalist family, who were too frightened to be named, to warn them of an imminent loyalist attack on their home, the latest in a series of attacks and death threats against the family.
In December 2007 the RUC/PSNI warned them that loyalists were planning to murder them. In the same month loyalists attempted to abduct the family’s 13-year-old son as he and a friend walked through the village. In November 2007 part of an engine block was thrown through the living room window of the family’s grandmother’s home in another part of the village. In July 2006 the family were intimidated from a previous house in another part of Stoneyford.
In May 2006 two other nationalist families fled Stoneyford after sectarian attacks on their homes. In April 2004 nationalist man Ed Nolan and his fiancée fled their home after it was attacked eight times in two months. In the most high-profile case a nationalist-owned bar in the village was forced to close after it was targeted by loyalists 80 times. In 1999 the personal details of more than 300 nationalists were discovered inside Stoneyford Orange Hall. In April 1998 nationalist man Ciaran Heffron was shot dead by LVF gunmen in nearby Crumlin.
A prominent loyalist, who is accused of being behind the Stoneyford intimidation, was arrested and questioned over both incidents but released without charge. British Police Ombudsman Al Hutchinson is currently investigating a series of complaints alleging RUC/PSNI failures to stop the attacks on nationalists in Stoneyford.
Confirming his family’s decision to quit the village, the father-of-three said: “People in the village want to live together. Catholic and Protestant kids mix happily here. We had kids from the local Protestant band in our house on a regular basis. The ordinary police on the beat know who’s behind this intimidation and want him put behind bars but for some reason he seems to be untouchable. I don’t want to leave Stoneyford but I just can’t put my family through any more.”
7. Solidarity with the Basque Country Week events in Dublin
Picket:
GPO, O’Connell Street, D1.
Saturday 23rd February, 12 noon – 1pm
Show solidarity with the Basque people in their struggle for independence. Take a stand against banning of parties and other repression and denial of civil rights by the judiciary, torture of suspects by police and dispersal of prisoners out of the Basque country and away from their families.
Screening DVDs: 1) “Nomadak TX”; 2) “Askapena”
Teachers’ Club, Parnell Square West, Tuesday 26th February, 7-9pm.
Watch documentary on two Basque musicians travelling around the world and meeting other cultures with their unique Txalaparta percussion instrument.
See Askapena’s brief film against repression.
Dublin Irish/ Basque Committee
irishbasques@hotmail.com www.irishbasquecommittees.blogspot.com
8. Maze escapee in Texas prison lockdown
MAZE escapee Pól Brennan will remain in a Texas immigration holding facility until at least March 11 after he was forced to ask a U.S. immigration judge to postpone a hastily scheduled bail hearing last week so that his San Francisco-based lawyer could fly down to represent him.
Speaking by phone from the US Department of Homeland Security’s Port Isabel Processing Center near Los Fresnos, Texas, Pól Brennan said that he was only notified about the 9am hearing on Wednesday February 6 the previous night. The short notice meant that Jim Byrne, his San Francisco-based lawyer, had no chance of attending due to prior legal commitments in San Francisco. So Byrne advised Brennan to ask for a continuance, which was granted.
Pól Brennan was detained at a US immigration checkpoint 100 miles from the Mexican border on January 27 when a border patrol guard noticed that his US-issued work permit had expired. He and his American wife had been driving to visit friends in Texas.
A computer background check revealed that he was one of 38 IRA prisoners who escaped from Long Kesh in September 1983. US authorities have known of his whereabouts ever since the FBI arrested him in 1993 in Berkeley, California living under a false name.
After spending about five years in US jails as Britain sought his extradition in federal courts, he was finally released in 1998. Two years after the 1998 Stormont Agreement, Britain dropped its extradition case against Brennan, and two other Maze fugitives living in San Francisco - Kevin Artt and Terry Kirby.
Pól Brennan has since worked as a the San Francisco Bay area carpenter while waiting to see if the US will deport him for using an alias to enter America in 1983. He also has a pending political asylum application.
Brennan was moved to solitary confinement on February 1. He was first informed that the move was for his own safety and that other detainees - most of whom are from Mexico, and South and Central America - may try to attack him if they learned of about his IRA past. However, on February 11 he was given an official form stating that his solitary confinement stemmed from the fact that he is considered a danger to others, and to the security of the facility.
Whenever Pól Brennan is allowed to leave his cell to shower, he’s in the constant company of two US immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. He is permitted one 30 minute visit with his wife per week, to which he is brought in leg-irons and handcuffs - restrictions he said he hasn’t seen imposed on any other detainee. He spends most of his days “pacing the cell,” as the facility has no library to draw reading material from, nor does he have a TV or radio in his cell. He is allowed mail, and can have one book sent in to him at a time from outside the centre. But it must be paperback, and sent directly from a publisher.
9. Catholic civil servants claim unfair treatment
Three Catholic civil servants in Belfast have begun a legal challenge to their removal from high-ranking posts within the Stormont Assembly.
Lawyers for the three claim a cross-party body of Stormont MLA’s, chaired by the DUP, treated them differently to a senior Protestant colleague. Just weeks after the establishment of the DUP-Provisional led administration at Stormont, three of the Assembly’s top secretariat staff - Joe Reynolds, Clare McGivern and Tom Evans, who had been on secondment - were sent back to their original departments with salary losses of up to £14,000Advertisement. Tom Evans said a negative review, which prompted their departure, had damaged his reputation and career.
Lawyers for the three accused theStormont Assembly Commission of acting in bad faith and with indecent haste.
10. Three protesters found guilty
ON Wednesday February 13 three men, Dominic McGlinchey, Rab Jackson and Cathal Larkin, were found guilty at in Belmullet district court, of blocking the free movement of traffic on a public thoroughfare. The charge related to the men’s participation in a series of ‘sit-down’ protests outside of Shell’s controversial gas refinery site in Ballinaboy, county Mayo on November 9th 2007.
All three were given the probation act and directed to contribute various sums, totalling seven hundred euro, to the Ballyglass lifeboat charity.
The presiding judge, Mary Devins, deferred decision for all three men on a more serious charge of obstructing the Gardaí in the course of their duty. Instead she initiated a ‘consultative case stated’ to refer the matter to the High Court in Dublin for clarification on Section 19 (3) and 19 (4) of the Criminal Justice Act 1994. Judge Devins felt that it was unclear if this legislator had intended for this legislation to be used in public order situations such as the one that occurred in Ballinaboy.
With regard to both charges Judge Devins noted a number of points including the apparent selectivity of only three individuals facing charges from a protest that the Gardai themselves estimated to be made up of between 60 and 150 people. She also commented on the fact that while each of three Garda witnesses ‘noticed’ (her emphasis) the alleged actions of each of the three accused none of these same witnesses were ably to state with any certainty what the other 60 to 150 protesters were doing on the day.
11. Ian Paisley jnr resigns
IN a statement read outside Stormont Castle insisting he was not resigning because of wrongdoing, Ian Paisley jnr declared: “Personal criticisms, unfounded allegations, innuendo, attacks on me personally (have been) followed by ombudsman’s reports that have cleared me.
“The criticism has been a distraction and has got in the way of the activities of this government and more importantly it has gotten in the way of the activities of my political party.”
Ian Paisley Junior had been under fire since last September over his links to north Antrim developer Seymour Sweeney who was behind a failed bid to build a privately run visitors’ centre at Six-County top tourist attraction, the Giant’s Causeway.
DUP sources said there was an air of inevitability about his resignation after concerns were subsequently raised about his lobbying of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Stormont Ministers over a controversial land deal involving DUP supporter Seymour Sweeney in Ballee, near Ballymena, and fresh allegations about the setting up of his constituency office.
Meanwhile the DUP are refusing to disclose how many of it s representatives employ relatives. So far the SDLP, Alliance Party, UUP, the Provisionals and the Green Party all admitted they employ relatives.
Francis Hughes was involved in the 1980 mass hunger strike before becoming the second prisoner, after Bobby Sands, to go on hunger strike the following year.
