On May 15, 2011, Marian Price was imprisoned after she held up a piece of paper for a masked man at an Irish republican commemoration. On May 30, 2013, with her health broken, she was finally released.
She was held in solitary confinement even after being transferred from a prison cell to a hospital. All the time she was hospitalized there a prison guard stationed outside her door. She was handcuffed for family visits and even during medical tests.
Juan E, Mendez, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, called for a total ban on solitary confinement lasting more than 15 days on October 18, 2011, when Marian Price had already been in solitary for 156 days. The British government was unmoved.
The prison doctors, independent specialists and even doctors dispatched by the UN, all said she needed to be at home to recover with her family. The British cabinet ministers who run Northern Ireland paid no attention.Marian Price’s health was permanently damaged when she was force fed over 400 times in a prison in Britain. She described the force feeding:
Four male prison officers tie you into the chair so tightly with sheets you can't struggle. You clench your teeth to try to keep your mouth closed but they push a metal spring device around your jaw to prise it open. They force a wooden clamp with a hole in the middle into your mouth. Then, they insert a big rubber tube down that. They hold your head back. You can't move. The force-feeding takes 15 minutes but it feels like forever. You're in control of nothing. You're terrified the food will go down the wrong way and you won't be able to let them know because you can't speak or move. You're frightened you'll choke to death.
The force feeding led to tuberculosis, severe arthritis and life threatening anorexia. During her latest imprisonment, the anorexia returned, the arthritis became so bad she couldn’t open her hands, and she developed pneumonia.
Twice judges ordered Marian Price freed on bail. Twice the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland overruled the judge and ordered her back to prison, saying he was cancelling her license (parole in American terms). All the while he knew perfectly well that she wasn’t on license at all because she had received a full royal pardon.
The buck was passed from the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to the Parole Commission, appointed by the self same Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. They had secret hearings not even Marian Price’s lawyers could attend and refused to release her.
Now the Parole Commission has announced that they have restored her non-existent license after revealing that the intelligence services said she no longer represents "a security threat.” Marian Price is finally home with her family.
The British government did not have a sudden change of heart and decide to be merciful. They knew all along that the “security threat” Marian Price represented was her loud and public insistence that the current peace deal in Northern Ireland is a fraud. She has insisted that Irish people have a right to wage an armed struggle to totally end British rule.
If Marian is at home today, it is because of sustained protests in Ireland and throughout the world. There were protest meetings and demonstrations in virtually every part of Ireland including weekly vigils in Dublin and guerilla theater in Derry every time she was brought to court. Numerous local councils passed resolutions demanding her release including the Belfast, Dublin and Derry councils and the Fermanagh County Council. She won the support of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (the Irish counterpart of the AFL-CIO), the Committee for the Administration of Justice and Sinn Fein and the Social Democratic and Labor Party the nationalist parties in the North.
Internationally organizations as diverse as Amnesty International, the Ancient Order of Hibernians in America, the Brehon Law Society, and British/Irish Human Rights Watch expressed their concern with Marian Price’s case.
In Europe there were public protests from London to Rome and Glasgow to Berlin as well as in Australia and New Zealand. Irish-American writers and musicians including Pete Hamill, Malachy McCourt, Peter Quinn, Michael Patrick MacDonald, Tom English and Larry Kirwan of Black 47 signed on to an open letter to the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland which appeared as an ad in The Irish Echo.
The Prison Crisis Group which was in the forefront of the protest actions stated that:
We do not believe that Marian would be free had it not been for the campaign….Everybody should learn the most important lesson to come out of all this – that grass-roots campaigning can make all the difference.
Marian Price is free but the human rights crisis in Northern Ireland is anything but over. Political prisoners are tried by a non-jury court on charges as vague as”encouraging support for an illegal organization” or “possession of materials of use to terrorists.” In every decade but one since Northern Ireland was created in 1920, people have been imprisoned without charge or trial. All this against the background of a sustained attack on working people’s standard of living.
Martin Corey has been effectively interned for more than three years. The police appeared at his door and took him away to prison in the early hours of April 16, 2010, almost 18 years after he had been released after serving 19 years for IRA activity.
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland declared that he was revoking Martin Corey’s license because he was “a security risk.” After a judge ordered him set free, the Secretary of State sent him back to prison.
The Parole Commission held secret hearings where neither Martin Corey nor his lawyers could see the evidence. They returned him to prison, saying he was “a risk to the public.”
Martin Corey’s lawyers have announced that they will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. But this is a time consuming process that can consume a year or more.
Martin Corey is hardly the only victim of a British miscarriage of justice. Stephen Murney is in prison for taking photographs of the police. When the Craigavon 2, Brendan McConville and John Paul Wooton, tried to appeal their conviction, the police arrested and tried to intimidate a key witness. John Downey flew to London from his home in Donegal this May only to be arrested and charged with a 1982 bombing.
Martin Corey, Stephen Murney, Brendan McConville, John Paul Wooten, John Downey and others are likely to languish in prison without the same kind of sustained grass roots campaign that finally freed Marian Price. There will be nothing easy or automatic about building that kind of campaign. It will take a sustained, patient, effort to build the broadest and most powerful coalition possible.
Irish civil rights leader Bernadette Devlin McAliskey called Marian Price’s release “an important but small victory. But she warned that:
We cannot be complacent. The confidence with which the new administration in N. Ireland is systematically eroding and nullifying the promises of the Belfast Agreement is growing at alarming rate. The combination of refusal to protect fundamental human rights and an arrogant disregard and disrespect for critical and dissenting opinion is the hallmark of the 'New Stormont' just as it was of the old. This reality needs to be acknowledged by those who pulled this 'model' together before it starts exploding before their eyes, even as the export it. Those of us who knew it was flawed need to start working together on the core problems the growing failure presents, rather than simply fire-fighting for one victim at a time.
I think Pauline Mellon deserves credit and public acknowledgement for her contribution throughout Marian's INTERNMENT!
ReplyDeleteI would second that Fenian a cara.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with the previous post. There were many Jonny-come-lately's to this issue, though I accept some members of those groups were involved individually prior to the establishment of those groups. Pauline was always consistent and created the campaign in Derry and assisted in creating it elsewhere, there is no getting away from that, groups claiming they were at 'the forefront' are playing catchup, plain and simple. The outcome of this is that Marian is home, but the campaign in getting her there, from my perspective, was born in the mind of Pauline Mellon.
ReplyDeleteWhilst I appreciate there was a broad spectrum of people who gave support I'm curious as to why Sandy completely neglected the contribution of Pauline among other key people, it's not as if he's not aware of their work.
ReplyDeleteI know that Pauline's not one to float her own boat, but credit where it is deserved. There was barely an event across country that she did not contribute to or organise from start to finish. That's not even taking into consideration her contribution to the international events.
To even begin to consider the level of contribution one only has to look at the website www.freemarian.co.nr, the site ended up with not shy of twenty five thousand hits and put Marian's plight firmly on the world stage. That doesn't even scratch the surface of the work that went on behind the scenes.
The banners, posters, leaflets etc all produced and distributed by Pauline, locally, nationally and indeed internationally aided groups in many different locations in their efforts. Pauline did all this with the support of a small team of Derry based individuals who funded this out of their own pockets.
Others who were not mentioned in the article are Derry based SDLP MLA Pat Ramsey and his assistant Emmet Doyle. Ramsey who only got involved as he put it because Pauline 'badgered him to step in.' something he clearly states in the video of the first public meeting for Marian held in Derry. Monsignor Raymond Murray is another who deserves recognition for his sterling work.
There are many 'unsung' who contributed to the campaign to free Marian, and there are others who are quite content to shout about what they did, but they do say that those who shout the loudest have done the least. In the case of Pauline, Rev Murray, Pat & Emmet to dismiss their contribution intentionally or otherwise is something that I personally felt the need to address, and I'm sure upon reflection Sandy will respect this.
At the public meeting in Derry Monsignor Raymond Murray stated that the British care about their international reputation, a sentiment echoed in a document Pauline received as part of a Freedom of information request from the NIO, this stated that the negative publicity after the meeting in Derry would 'reflect poorly on their office'.
There are other POW's and internees and we must ensure that as individuals or as members of groups that the injustices being meted out against them are not brushed under the carpet by the state and it's partners in the media. And this should be taken as Pauline has done with the campaign to free Marian, to the world stage.
Feargal
While I would not be critical of Sandy given his no-nonsense and can-do approach to matters coupled with a history of tapping into veins of support there is no doubt in my mind that Pauline Mellon played a huge campaigning role which we must not overlook. Nothing is as certain as this: more injustices are on the way and people like Pauline will be crucial to tackling them.
ReplyDeleteThere are numerous people who have not been mentioned , Marty and his good lady , but I would have thought Pauline's name would have been at the top of the list. Sandy has made some good points, of which I'm sure everyone knows that the British are on a witch hunt to arrest and intern as many republicans it can, It's not bothered about any signed agreements with reference to the GFA because it has SF were it and the unionist wanted them to be, under a union flag accepting British policing, they are now becoming the old RUC.
ReplyDelete