The British State apparatus in the North currently employs the inhumane tactics of selective internment and revoking licences to silence those politically opposed to the Good Friday Agreement. Thousands of ex-POWs and anti-GFA political activists are a knock on the door away from incarceration in Maghaberry Gaol, without evidence, for expressing their political beliefs.
The four decade long legacy of British internment in Ireland is still a very real fact of life for many Republicans who find themselves in Maghaberry Gaol, the IRSP opposes the use of selective internment and revoking licences by the British on ideological and humanitarian grounds, no Government has the right to imprison a person, without evidence, for simply holding a particular set of political aspirations.
Marian Price remains the most high profile of these cases; nearly 15 years after the singing of the Good Friday Agreement she became the victim of British internment. Marian Price was bailed yet that decision was overruled by the British secretary of state, who signs of on all selective internment’s,
Marian’s health, physically and mentally, is deteriorating by the day she is now vindictively imprisoned in the hospital wing, how can she be, as British Secretary of State Owen Patterson claims, “a danger to national security”? Marian’s doctors have all agreed she is too ill to attend court proceedings they have stated that her health cannot improve while she is imprisoned in these conditions. The Justice Minister David Ford receives updates from Marian’s doctors yet seems determined to ignore the advice of health professionals.
The British use selective internment hand in hand with political policing to suppress political opposition to Stormont. Because of this Republicans can never accept the PSNI as a legitimate and fully representational police service purely because they are the institution of “British law” in occupied Ireland. MI5 still have ultimate control of policing strategy and with the emergence of autonomous National Crime Agency “the British FBI” political policing is only going to get worse.
Another weapon in the British judiciary arsenal to oppress political dissent against Stormont is the introduction of “secret evidence” into judicial proceedings of Irish Republicans. This “secret evidence” is covert intelligence information gathered by the establishment on defendants that is not shared to the defence essentially giving the British State Carte blanche to say and do anything free from scrutiny of the defence. The IRSP totally oppose this attack on the Human Rights of Irish Republicans and calls for the immediate release of Sharon Rafferty and everyone else detained by MI5 “Secret Evidence”.
It is in this climate of State oppression the IRSP ask all Republicans to join us on the Falls Road in Belfast on Saturday June 1st, outside Costello House, at 1pm on a White-line Picket to highlight these blatant attacks on the Human Rights of Irish Republicans.
