IRELAND No extraditions THE BRITISH requested that we be extradited to face the due process of the law as applied by their "democratic" institutions. The recognition by your court in April of the political character of the Irish struggle for liberation has been regarded by the British as an affront to democracy. What many people outside of Ireland fail to recognize is that democracy does not exist in the British-occupied North-east of Ireland BRENDAN McFARLANE
At the outset of the current camp. aign for national liberation, in the early 1970s, normal rules of practice for due process of law were dispensed with and replaced by emergency legislation and an unashamedly political system, geared to deal with an insurrectionary situation:
Mass arbitrary arrests of nationalists and republicans; torture in military interrogation centres; internment without trial for indefinite periods (which was employed for more than four years); special non-jury courts, presided over by a single unionist, Britishappointed judge; inordinately lengthy terms of imprisonment for offences of a political nature; "confessions" of suspects, extracted under torture, accepted as concrete evidence by the
"evidence" uncorroborated, leading to the incarceration of hundreds of nationalists and republicans; special prisons (H-Blocks) where we were continuously subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment, kept naked and deprived of books, papers, radio, fresh air, exercise, recreation, human contact, visits with family and friends, for a period of five years.
I personally spent three and a half years naked, on 24-hour per day lock-up, without furniture or bed (just a mattress on the floor and three blankets), and was on a number of occasions subjected to violent attacks by the Loyalist guards, requiring medical attention. After one particularly violent attack, I spent one week in hospital as a result of head injuries received.
I've been hosed down with fire hoses and had my cell flooded on numerous occasions, had snow shovelled through our broken windows as we slept, and had air freshner and urine put in our food on occasions. I 14 also spent regular periods in solitary occasions forcibly held down and scrubbed from head to toe with rough deck-scrubbers. All this was inflicted me and hundreds of republicans) in an attempt to break my resistance to British attempts to force me to accept the label of common criminal as opposed to that of nounce my republican ideals.
The Northern Irish statelet is not a democratic elected entity and never was. It is an artificial state, created
British in 1921, sectarian headcount which gave a minority section of the Irish population, who were pro-British unionist/ loyalist, a guaranteed majority and privileged position within the partitioned six counties, thus securing British control, influence, and strategic interests on the island. This partitionwas completely total disregard for the wishes of the overwhelming majority
Irish people who had voted
The repeated calls today by British and Irish establishment figures for us to desist from armed struggle and the "democratic" process instead, rings very hollow indeed in the light of the nonsense, illegality and non-democratic nature British institutions in North-eastern
Even on those occasions when we did use the electoral process, once it ran to our favour the British changed the legislation governing the procedures. For example, after Bobby Sands had been elected to the British parliament, the British changed the law to prevent prisoners from standing for election. On top of that they chose to completely ignore the democratic wish of 30,000 Irish voters who only for Bobby Sands to be given his proving further that their system of "democracy" is dependent on certain considerations - if it's not acceptable to the British they change
Our electoral successes of recent years have changes in rules - ex-prisoners must be out of prison for at least 5 years before they are eligible to engage in the electoral process. And our elected representatives are shunned by British administrators who simply refuse to discuss any matters with them or with delegations which consist of republican representatives.
Added to all this is the very limited access to the media afforded to our elected personnel, and even when this is achieved, it is a hostile media totally sympathetic to the British administration. Deliberate misinformation is constantly disseminated by the British and is willingly carried, unchallenged, by the vast majority of the media. The taries dealing with the Irish conflict whenever an objective viewpoint has been projected. The truth remains subdued by the British and is indeed the first casualty of the Anglo-Irish conflict. While such a situation prevails our struggle will remain a prolonged one indeed.
seeking our extradition the chief objective is a political one as opposed to a legal wrangle. The same lobbying in the United States to have legislation passed which would enable Irish republicans to be handed over to the British. The granting of extradition by the American and Dutch authorities will in fact give unequivocal recog-
"right" of the British government to occupy the territory of a foreign nation (namely North-eastern Ireland), and to subject our people to further injustice, torture and oppres now an opportunity for your government to demonstrate their support for a people to be free to determine their own future without outside interference. Your own colonial past must surely be an influential factor in arriving at a decision now to advocate and fully support de-colonization of the North-east of Ireland by the British. Furthermore, the just right of the Dutch resistance fighters in struggling against Nazi occupation in all its forms must macy of the Irish struggle for liberagainst an unwanted foreign
Both Gerry Kelly and myself are casualties of that liberation struggle which has continued, with little respite, for more than fifteen years. We have both been involved since we were teenagers, and are now approachgovernment recognized the conflict as political in essence and accorded us political status after our capture. because we continuously attempted to return to the struggle on the streets - we attempted escapes at various intervals.
The final outcome of the extradition proceeding against us will, I believe, rest on international political considerations. While I am not optimistic, I still retain a little hope that your government may yet refrain from kicking an oppressed people in the teeth. It will be a sad irony indeed if the Dutch, who suffered so much under occupation themselves, are now to hand over those whose only crime is to resist occupation in Ireland.