Irish Republican Info Svc #202 6/23/97 =========== Posted to multiple newsgroups and lists =========== ===== Redistribute *only* with full header and signature! ===== Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Irish Republican Information Service, No. 202 Teach Daithi O Conaill, 223 Parnell Street, Dublin 1, Ireland Phone: +353-1-872 9747; FAX: 872 9757 e-mail: saoirse@iol.ie Republican Sinn Fein homepage: http://indigo.ie/~saoirse View our SAOIRSE homepage: http://iol.ie/~saoirse 'Release Josephine Hayden' web page: http://iol.ie/~saoirse/hayden NEU: 'Fur die Freilassung von Josephine Hayden, irisch-republikanische politische Gefangene': http://iol.ie/~saoirse/hayden/hayden.htm In this issue 1. Release Josephine Hayden campaign 2. Brits to anounce Drumcree decision on July 1 3. Churchgoers forced to suspend Mass at Harryville 4. Loyalists car-bomb attack former prisoner 5. British Labour Minister Backs Scots Guards release campaign 6. British Minister blocked RUC oath move 7. British colonial police arrest child for speaking Irish 8. Casement accused released on appeal 1. RELEASE JOSEPHINE HAYDEN CAMPAIGN THE POW Department of Republican Sinn Fein has reported an encouraging start to the campaign to release, unconditionally, Republican prisoner Josephine Hayden from Limerick prison. Public representatives have been petitioned and it has been pointed out that the scandalous conditions in Limerick jail expose the hypocrisy of some Leinster House politicians who have been highlighting similar conditions endured by Roisin McAliskey and other Irish political prisoners in English jails. What about the plight of those in their own backyard? In addition, international bodies such as the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT), which criticised 26-County jails in its 1994 report, and Amnesty International have been briefed on the case. Pickets are planned on Dublin government departments and embassies abroad over the coming days. Publicity has been obtained so far in the 'Irish Times' (Dublin), 'Irish News' (Belfast), 'The Examiner' (Cork), 'Andersonstown News' (Belfast) and the 'Star' and the 'Sun' (Dublin). Concern has been expressed by Josephine' family at the lack of proper medical attention in Limerick jail. The case of a political prisoner named Seery who died in Portlaoise jail in 1991 due to the lack of prompt medical attention after being brought back prematurely from hospital has been cited as a cause for particular concern. URGENT ACTION CALL: All concerned individuals and groups outside of the 26 counties should protest to the embassies and consuls of the 26-County State and call for the immediate release, on humanitarian grounds, of Josephine Hayden. Within the 26 Counties protests should be made to public representatives to call on the Dublin administration to release Josephine. Posters and leaflets are now available from the Republican Sinn Fein POW Department, 223 Parnell Street, Dublin 1. Please contact her by writing to her at the following address: Josephine Hayden, Republican Prisoner, Limerick Prison, Mulgrave Street, Limerick, Ireland. A German language web page containing information on Josephine Hayden was launched on June 23. It is located at http://iol.ie/~saoirse/hayden/hayden.htm 2. BRITS TO ANNOUNCE DRUMCREE DECISION ON JULY 1 BRITISH Direct ruler Marjorie Mowlam is believed to have told the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition on June 17 that she would announce on July 1 whether or not an Orange parade would be allowed to march down the road on July 6. The Orange Order meanwhile, has served notice to the British police (RUC) of plans to hold numerous marches in Belfast and throughout the Six Counties in the week leading up to July 12. This tactic was used during the Drumcree crisis in July 1996 in order to stretch British Crown Force's resources to the limit. As one local resident commented, these marches are also intended to instill fear and to intimidate the nationalists. The planned Orange parades include one almost every day along the lower Ormeau in east Belfast where a small nationalist community resides and the so-called 'Tour of the North in north Belfast. The RUC stopped an Orange Order parade in Bellaghy, County Derry from proceeding the full length of its route through the nationalist village on Sunday, June 22. Nationalists were hemmed into their own areas and effectively curfewed while the Orange parade took place, protetected by hundreds of armed British paramilitary police (RUC). Further Orange parades in the village are planned for July 1, July 7 and July 12. Speaking in Bellaghy, Robert Overend, Deputy Grand Master of the Orange Order, said that the Bellaghy decision did not mean there will not be a stand-off at drumcree, outside the County Armagh town of Portadown. "The brethren in Portadown are differnt from us," he said. "The brethren in Portadown have no way to turn around. They go one way and come another." He demanded the Orange Order's "cultural rights" to march through nationalist areas where their presence is not wanted. Answering a member of the Orange Order who wrote an article in the 'Irish Times' (Dublin) on June 10 stating that the Orange march along the Garvaghy Road from Drumcree church on July 6 was merely a "church parade", Jesuit Alan McGuckian wrote in a letter to the editor (June 13): "Brian Kenneway fails to appreciate the context that makes a simple 'church parade' on the Garvaghy Road oppressive: namely, the fact that no equivalent Nationalist/Catholic parade would ever be countenanced in an exclusively Loyalist area. It would be simply unthinkable, for example, that a Catholic church parade commemorating 1916 would pass through the Corcrain area of Portadown. "Over many year Catholics 'learned their place' and would never presume such a right. Also, it would never be given them. That is why the Orange presumption of a right to march through exclusively Catholic areas is felt as oppressive and offensive," he wrote. 3. CHURCHGOERS FORCED TO SUSPEND MASS AT HARRYVILLE NATIONALISTS attending Mass at the Church of Our Lady at Harryville in Ballymena, Co Antrim on Saturday evening, June 21 heard Canon Sean Connolly announce that Saturday evening Masses would be suspended until September 6. Canon Connolly said it was a move to ease tensions in the area: "For 41 weeks we have had protests outside the church and there has been tension ongoing in those weeks and it's put the people of that community under a lot of pressure -- not just our parishioners, but the whole community." He said it was for the "greater good of the community" and hoped the gesture would be reciprocated. Twenty-five representatives of the congregation had endorsed the plan at a meeting two days previously, the parish priest said. A spokesperson for the Lower Ormeau Concerned Community said it was "shameful that loyalist protests have forced the suspension of the Saturday night Mass at the Church of Our Lady". Once again pro-British Orange fascists have won a battle in their ongoing expansionist march to kick Irish nationalism out of the Six-County colony. Provisional attempts to achieve a "spirit of accommodation with the loyalists and the British occupying power now means that not only have they abandoned the demand for Irish independence in favour of 'parity of esteem' and become a civil rights party, but now freedom of worship, a most basic civil right has also to be abandoned. The Provisionals' chairperson Mitchel McLaughlin acquiescing further to British and Orange tyranny described the decision as "a common sense move". Speaking in Derry on June 23 British Direct-ruler Marjorie Mowlam said she was "privately pleased at the decision" to suspend services at Harryville. The British who are the occupying power and describe the Six Counties as part of their 'United Kingdom' have failed to protect the rights of Irish people to attend religious ceremonies and failed to stop the loyalist pro-British harassment of Mass-goers at Harryville over a period of more than ten months. But then to confront loyalism might pave the way to breaking the link between them and Britain and give the lie to Britain's claim that they are only honest brokers in the Six Counties instead of a foreign imperial power in Ireland. 4. LOYALISTS CAR-BOMB ATTACK ON FORMER PRISONER BRITISH-backed death squads were responsible for a car-bomb in Belfast on June 21. The attack was on the car of an unnamed former nationalist political prisoner who served a sentence between 1982 and 1986. The 35-year-old man was driving his car in Claremont Street in the south of the city. A device on the underside of the car ignited and it became engulfed in flames. The driver and the passenger jumped out of the car which continued moving. The petrol-tank then exploded, engulfing the whole car. The two men and a passer-by were taken to hospital with minor injuries. No group claimed responsibility for the attack. Billy Hutchinson of the PUP, which represents the loyalist death squad, the UVF, described the attack as a "measured response". The British army carried out a controlled explosion on a suspect device attached to the car of a Provisional councillor in Ballycastle, Co Antrim on June 19. No organisation claimed responsibility for the attack, believed also to be the work of pro-British death squads. 5. BRITISH LABOUR MINISTER BACKS SCOTS GUARDS RELEASE CAMPAIGN A MINISTER in the new British Labour government has pledged his support to the campaign for the release of two British soldiers, jailed for the killing of a teenager in Belfast in 1992. George Foulkes, minister for Overseas Development, announced his support for the early release of Scots Guards James Fisher (27) and Mark Wright (22) in the British House of Commons, in June. Foulkes is the MP for the Scottish constituency in which James Fisher's mother lives. News that a member of the "New Labour" British government favoured the soldiers' early release came the day after the former Six-County British direct-ruler Patrick Mayhew told Belfast High Court that he did not believe they should be released. Mayhew said they ought to serve a "significantly longer term of imprisonment", than the other British soldiers, Privates Lee Clegg and Ian Thain, released early for the murder of Irish civilians in the Six Counties. 6. BRITISH MINISTER BLOCKED RUC OATH MOVE FORMER Six-County 'security' minister, John Wheeler, personally intervened to block a proposal by the Six-County Police Authority to alter the oath of allegiance taken by the British police in Ireland (RUC). The annual report of the Police Authority, published in June, attacked the former Tory government for refusing to act on its proposal to change the oath. One member of the Police Authority told the 'Irish News' (June 19): "Wheeler had a particular problem with this issue. It was almost impossible to talk to him about it. He didn't seem to see why we thought it was important. He is a very British chap and really didn't see how a symbolic gesture like that would help." The Scottish police oath reads: "I hereby do solemnly and sincerely and truly declare and affirm that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of constable." The RUC oath, almost 10 times as long, includes two references to the British queen: members swear to "well and truly serve our sovereign Lady the Queen", and also pledges not to belong to "any association, society or confederacy formed for or engaged in any seditious purpose, or any purpose tending to disturb the public peace, or in any way disloyal to our sovereign Lady the Queen". 7. BRITISH COLONIAL POLICE ARREST CHILD FOR SPEAKING IRISH A GROUP of children were walking along the Westland Street area of Derry city on Saturday, June 14 when they were stopped by armed British thugs who alighted from a British paramilitary police landrover and demanded their names and addresses. When 12-year-old Gearoid O Dochartaigh gave his name in Irish the paramilitary police who appeared to be driving away came back and told Gearoid that if he did not give his name in English he would be arrested. Gearoid from the Little Diamond area has been brought up and educated through the medium of Irish and his mother Eilis O Dochartaigh said "it was perfectly natural for him to give his name in Irish." "There were several eyewitnesses in the street and they came over to see what was happening. When they heard what was going on they told Gearoid to answer whatever way he felt was right." A cousin of the boy came along and she too advised Gearoid to give his name in Irish as he always did. After this long ordeal the colonial police arrested Gearoid with his cousin accompanying him to the RUC barracks. Eilis O Dochartaigh claims that when her son was taken into the Landrover one of the RUC men on board was a fluent Irish-speaker and spoke to Gearoid in Irish as they were en route to the barracks. "Surely my son should not have been traumatised in this way simply for using his native language." Eilis O Dochartaigh said. Even under British law police in the Six Counties may not stop and question a juvenile in the absence of his parents. Further proof that seeking 'parity of esteem' for an Irish identity in a British colony is an absurdity. 8. CASEMENT ACCUSED RELEASED ON APPEAL PATRICK Kane (39), one of the Casement Three, was released by the court of appeal in Belfast on July 20. Kane was cleared of involvement in the killing of two plainclothes British army corporals in Belfast in 1988. Judge McCollum, announcing the unanimous verdict of the court, said they had been persuaded to overturn the verdict of the trial judge by the evidence of Dr Gisli Gudjonsson, a forensic psychologist from Norway. The judges ruled that Gudjonsson's evidence on Kane's mental and psychological state was relevant -- he was said to have the mind of an 11-year-old child -- and admissible. After the appeal verdict Kane said "there are two other men, Mickey Timmons and Sean Kelly, who should be here with me. Justice has been done for me but not for them. "I had to wait nearly nine years. How much longer will Mickey and Sean have to wait before they are freed." Patrick Kane was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1990 along with Michael Timmons and Sean Kelly for "aiding and abetting" in the deaths of undercover British army corporals Derek Wood and David Howes when they were spotted carrying arms at the funeral of a member of the Provisionals. Collectively they were known as the Casement Three after the Casement GAA grounds where the British soldiers were taken before being shot dead. -end- Please circulate the information in IRIS and credit us if reprinting. We welcome your comments and ideas. 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