A Hunger for Justice
By Denis O'Hearn
May 6, 2006
Twenty-five years ago, on May 5, 1981, IRA prisoner Bobby Sands died
after sixty-six days on hunger strike. He was protesting to be
recognized as a political prisoner, calling the world's attention to
some of the most horrific conditions ever experienced by prisoners. He
and a hundred of his comrades--jailed in Britain's notorious H-Block
prison in Northern Ireland--had spent years in total lockup, naked with
nothing but blankets to cover themselves, with no reading materials or
even the simplest comforts of life.
In the last agonizing days of his life, Bobby Sands saw delicious irony
in being elected as a British MP, a member of the "mother of all
parliaments," the very heart of the enemy he was dying to defeat. He
never complained, even when all manner of politicians and churchmen
came into his isolated hospital cell, where his friends were not
allowed to visit, and tried to cajole and trick him off of his protest.
Margaret Thatcher, who ultimately held his life in her hands, had said,
"the lady is not for turning." So Bobby Sands knew that he would die.
He knew that others would follow. In the end, ten Irish hunger strikers
died that summer of 1981.
News of Bobby Sands's death spurred protests by thousands in major
cities of Europe. Motions of sympathy, minutes of silence and days of
mourning were declared in many national parliaments and several US
states. The Hindustan Times wrote that Margaret Thatcher "allowed a
member of the House of Commons, a colleague in fact, to die of
starvation. Never had such an incident occurred in a civilized
country." And the New York Times editorialized that Bobby Sands "bested
an implacable British prime minister."
The Undertones performed their hit song "It's Going to Happen" on the
BBC's most popular show, Top of the Pops. Their guitarist had written
the song to commemorate the hunger strikers. The Grateful Dead stopped
their show at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. A band member said some
words about how much Bobby Sands meant to him and to the world. Jerry
Garcia sang "He's Gone," dedicated to Bobby Sands.
Pedram Moallemian and his teenage friends wanted to sneak into the
British embassy compound in Tehran and replace the British flag with an
Irish one. Then they decided to change the name of the street on which
the embassy was situated. Moallemian made signs in Persian--"Bobby
Sands St."--out of white construction paper and with blue magic markers
and covered the street signs in front of the embassy. The next evening,
the teenagers discovered that others had made more signs with the new
name. Eventually, the Tehran city government renamed the street
permanently and the embassy had to move its door around the corner so
that its letterhead would avoid bearing the name of Bobby Sands.
In Cuernavaca, Flora Guerrero Goff and hundreds of supporters, behind a
banner that read "Bobby Sands, vivirás para siempre" ("Bobby Sands, you
will live forever"), blockaded a major British exhibit that was to be
inaugurated by the British ambassador to Mexico, causing its
cancellation.
In Havana, Fidel Castro put the Irish hunger strikers in rather high
company when he claimed, "Tyrants shake in the presence of men who are
able to die for their ideals, after sixty days of hunger strike! Next
to this example, what were the three days of Christ on Calvary, as a
symbol down the centuries of human sacrifice?"
On Robben Island, Nelson Mandela led a group of young prisoners from
Umkhonto we Sizwe on a hunger strike that was directly inspired by
Bobby Sands. Among other things, they demanded that their young
children be able to visit them. After six days Mandela successfully
negotiated an agreement with the prison authorities that enabled
children as young as 3 to visit the island.
In Cerro Hueco prison in Chiapas, Arturo Albores Velasco organized the
first hunger strike in that prison's history. After twelve days, from
July 20 to August 1, 1981, while the Irish hunger strike continued,
Velasco's strike won the release of twelve prisoners in Chiapas. It was
a key episode in the early history of a movement that would soon emerge
on the global scene as the Zapatistas.
Twenty years later in Turkey, when hundreds of political prisoners went
on hunger strike, they sent secret messages planning their action and
their campaign. The code word in their secret communications for the
coming hunger strike was simple: Bobby Sands.
The legacy continues today. According to a senior reporter at Radio
Liberty, hunger strikes have become more and more common throughout
Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia. The highest public
profiles went to recent hunger strikes by leftists in Turkey and by the
Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji. Less well known are a spate of hunger
strikes in Belarus or the hunger strike by Russian workers who cleaned
up after Chernobyl but were not given the higher pensions they were
promised in return by their government. These strikes may not have
"quite the iconic imprint" as the 1981 H-Block hunger strike, says the
reporter, but they do take their inspiration from Bobby Sands and his
comrades.
The US government remembers Bobby Sands. At Guantánamo, when more than
a hundred prisoners went on hunger strike to demand their rights in
late 2005, the US authorities were thinking about May 1981. They knew
that they could not afford to let a single prisoner die on hunger
strike. They force-fed the prisoners for hours, reportedly on a special
"feeding chair" with thick tubes that they stuck down the prisoners'
noses, without anesthetic. A report by the Working Group on Arbitrary
Detention of the UN Commission on Human Rights found that the
Guantanamo doctors "violated the [prisoners'] right to health, as well
as international ethics for health professionals." The report indicated
that the doctors and prison authorities might be guilty of torture. All
to avoid creating another Bobby Sands at Guantanamo. All to avoid more
of those damning editorials and protests.
Back in Belfast, Bobby's comrades remember him not for how he died but
for how he lived. In Belfast on March 9, what would have been his
fifty-second birthday, hundreds of fellow ex-prisoners and others
gathered to remember him. Laurence McKeown, the last hunger striker,
whose mother took him off of his strike after he went into a coma on
his seventieth day, held a rapt audience in laughter and tears as he
told stories about his time in prison with Bobby. Bik McFarlane, who
took over as the prisoners' commanding officer when the hunger strike
began, sang "Song for Marcella," which he wrote in prison to
commemorate Bobby Sands, twenty years ago.
Bobby Sands died is remembered by many. Others follow his example, even
though they do not know the name of the man whose lonely protest set
the stage for their protests today.
