Prisoners Rights, the mark of a civilised society

by Siobhan O’Dwye

Republican prisoners in Maghaberry Gaol are in the sixth week of a dirty protest as part of their campaign for segregation from Loyalist prisoners and for political status. The very words dirty protest and political status invoke bitter and sad memories of the late seventies and early eighties. However, the republican prisoners and their families today are facing a very different set of political circumstances than pertained then – that of the political and military defeat of mainstream republicanism.
The prisoners are faced with a situation where they are sharing wings and landings with Loyalist prisoners. There have been a number of incidents of republican prisoners being beaten, scalded and their food tampered with and a number of death threats have been made against them. The Prison Service continue to deny that the prisoners are subjected to beatings or have anything to fear but their words mean nothing, as they also denied the brutal treatment meted out to the Blanket Men. The setting up of a Commission to look into the situation in Maghaberry while welcome, does not fill me with any confidence that Britain has any real interest in resolving the situation.

The families are also subjected to fear and humiliation every time they visit the Gaol as they are singled out for special attention from the “sniffer dog” to force them to take closed visits, which are usually refused;parcels, books, papers for the prisoners are often mislaid or take weeks to arrive; the families must share the visiting areas and waiting rooms with known Loyalist paramilitaries and visits are often cancelled after they arrive at the prison having travelled long distances with young children. Republican prisoners have agreed to undergo drug tests in order to prevent their family members and in particular, the children having to undergo the humiliating and frightening experience of being faced with this large sniffer dog. By refusing, the Prison Service has shown that they are not interested in facilitating proper family contact for prisoners but only in enforcing a degrading regime.

The hostile treatment of these prisoners can also be related to the New World Order. The fact that hooded and manacled men are seen on TV screens in Guantanamo Bay, having been flown half way across the world without a trial or even being charged, means that many people have forgotten the meaning of Justice, Democracy or Human Rights or are at least willing to turn a blind eye. There has been no mass movement to demand that those men be freed or at least charged and tried in a court of law and there is little or no outcry against the treatment of our own republican prisoners and their families here. This is the main difficulty that the prisoners, their families and supporters face – how to separate the impact on ordinary people of the “war on terrorism” from their right to demand that there is at least a right to due legal process and to be treated in a humane manner. Bernadette McAlliskey said recent ly,that while she didn’t agree with the ideological position of republican prisoners in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and up to today, that did not stop her standing with their families and friends to demand that they be treated with dignity and respect.

I would ask people who oppose the way that the “war on terrorism” is being used to wipe away the few remaining legal safeguards left to ordinary people and to impose a system of fear and oppression across the West as well as in the targeted countries of the Middle East, to stand up now for the rights of republican prisoners and their families. The republican prisoners in Maghaberry and elsewhere would not be in prison if it were not for the political situation in Northern Ireland. It is an unfashionable and scary truth for many people who prefer to think that the capitulation of mainstream Provisional Republicanism is actually a victory and that those who oppose the new regime can be easily labeled Terrorists and Dissidents and therefore deserve all they get.

To invoke another memory from the past it is time to get up off our knees and to dissent loudly from the brutal oppression of whole groups of people by the US and Britain and to stand again with the republican prisoners, their families and supporters against a criminalisation policy that is just wrong. We have the power to stand against the New World Order and there is no better place to start than in our own back yard with our own people.

FOURTHWRITE, PO BOX 31, Belfast BT127EE