Letter 

Statement of solidarity with Turkish comrades

Dear Editor

In view of the inhuman attitude of the right-wing Turkish government to their political opponents and political prisoners, I feel that it is my duty to issue a solidarity statement with the prisoners now on hunger strike.

I was born in County Mayo, Ireland, May 2 1915, and was weaned into the anti-imperialist struggle at an early age. My youthful memories recall the Irish patriots who refused to be criminalized by their oppressors, the British Empire of hell. Twenty-two Irish patriots went to their graves on hunger protest and many others died broken in health as a result of their protest.

The first to die was Tomas Ashe, in September 1917. He was followed by many others throughout decades of struggle; the most recent were Bobby Sands and his comrades who made the supreme sacrifice, in 1981. The then British Prime Minister, Butcher Thatcher, presided over their long agonizing deaths, which brands her forever as a war criminal.

The inhuman Turkish jailers now join this miscreant in infamy. They should be targeted internationally with the demand that political status should be granted to all their political prisoners.

I close with a quote from Terence McSweney, who died in a British dungeon in 1920 after over seventy days of hunger strike:

It is not those who can inflict the most, but those who can endure the most, who will eventually triumph.

In solidarity,

George Harrison, New York

FOURTHWRITE, PO BOX 31, Belfast BT127EE