fionntan
14th August 2010, 13:47
Letter from inla hungerstriker
LETTER FROM INLA HUNGERSTRIKER
Friends,
Greetings everyone. Today, Sunday, brings to end for me three of the strangest and most disturbing weeks of my entire life. It is extremely difficult still to fit them together to describe the experience they have given me. Yet I feel assured that you all understand what I am trying to say. Three weeks without food leave me in no doubt as to what the next few weeks hold for me. Last Wednesday brought an end for Joe McDonnell the suffering he had endured throughout his 61 day hunger for justice. I saw him in the last agonising hours of his life, weak and in pain yet immensely brave in the face of death and wonderfully strong in spirit.
His example encouraged me in more ways than one. Not only did it strengthen my spirit and deepen my resolve but it also fired me with a burning anger that those who are to blame not only for death and the deaths of the four other hunger strikers, but also for all the terrible evils and injustices inflict upon on oppressed people. Must we live in the shadow of the tyrant in the chains of slavery? And must we die to shake the shackles from our limbs and tastes the fruits of liberty? Surely it is not too much to ask for freedom and lasting peace in our native land and surely it is not too much to ask to be treated as what we truly are -- soldiers of Ireland and of the Irish people.
How many more will die in these H Blocks before Thatcher and her henchmen are satisfied? None of my comrades who have gone before me wanted to die -- they had too much to live for. I do not wish to die for I too have too much to live for. Yet in what manner must we live? If we have not our dignity then what have we? I am what I am -- a human being -- a man with feelings and emotions. Yet in the eyes of my oppressors I am nothing. As each day slips by I will keep uppermost in my mind the unquenchable spirit and magnificent example of those already buried in martyrs graves and find, in the risen Irish people, my source of resistance and strength.
Bua no bas.
Michael Devine
Republican Socialist P.O.W. on Hunger Strike.
(Saoirse, p.5, August 1981)
LETTER FROM INLA HUNGERSTRIKER
Friends,
Greetings everyone. Today, Sunday, brings to end for me three of the strangest and most disturbing weeks of my entire life. It is extremely difficult still to fit them together to describe the experience they have given me. Yet I feel assured that you all understand what I am trying to say. Three weeks without food leave me in no doubt as to what the next few weeks hold for me. Last Wednesday brought an end for Joe McDonnell the suffering he had endured throughout his 61 day hunger for justice. I saw him in the last agonising hours of his life, weak and in pain yet immensely brave in the face of death and wonderfully strong in spirit.
His example encouraged me in more ways than one. Not only did it strengthen my spirit and deepen my resolve but it also fired me with a burning anger that those who are to blame not only for death and the deaths of the four other hunger strikers, but also for all the terrible evils and injustices inflict upon on oppressed people. Must we live in the shadow of the tyrant in the chains of slavery? And must we die to shake the shackles from our limbs and tastes the fruits of liberty? Surely it is not too much to ask for freedom and lasting peace in our native land and surely it is not too much to ask to be treated as what we truly are -- soldiers of Ireland and of the Irish people.
How many more will die in these H Blocks before Thatcher and her henchmen are satisfied? None of my comrades who have gone before me wanted to die -- they had too much to live for. I do not wish to die for I too have too much to live for. Yet in what manner must we live? If we have not our dignity then what have we? I am what I am -- a human being -- a man with feelings and emotions. Yet in the eyes of my oppressors I am nothing. As each day slips by I will keep uppermost in my mind the unquenchable spirit and magnificent example of those already buried in martyrs graves and find, in the risen Irish people, my source of resistance and strength.
Bua no bas.
Michael Devine
Republican Socialist P.O.W. on Hunger Strike.
(Saoirse, p.5, August 1981)