Aisling Gallagher argues that we must stand up against the human rights abuses committed against Marian Price by the British state.
Since her re-internment in May 2011 as a result of “secret evidence” that neither she nor her lawyers have been allowed access to, Marian Price’s health has steadily worsened. In June 2012 this resulted in her being moved from Maghaberry prison to a hospital in Belfast as a result of ongoing health issues. Price’s case has drawn worldwide condemnation, with calls for her release coming from across the globe. Predictably, and as has always been the case with the mistreatment of Irish Republican prisoners, the British press remains largely silent around the issue.
Marian Price came to the fore of the Republican movement in the 1970s as one of the well-known “Price Sisters”. Along with her sister, Dolours, she was part of a team of bombers; Price was arrested and imprisoned for two life terms for her part in the 1973 bombings of London, in which one person died and over 200 were injured. While in prison, she joined a hunger strike in 1975, demanding to serve her sentence in the Six Counties. The hunger strike lasted for over 200 days, during which time the prisoners were force-fed for 167 days, in a practice that is widely recognised as inhumane. Speaking in an interview afterwards, Price said of her ordeal:
“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. They throw whatever they like into the food mixer – orange juice, soup, or cartons of cream if they want to beef up the calories. They take jugs of this gruel from the food mixer and pour it into a funnel attached to the tube. 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.”
It is clear from this statement, given more than thirty years ago, that Marian Price had already suffered enough. She was born and raised in a Belfast where she and her community were third class citizens; where prejudice meant her family and neighbours were never likely to attain a steady job with a decent wage; where gerrymandering strove to stop them gaining political representation; where they lived under the constant threat of Loyalist violence, and then after 1969, under unremitting cruelty at the hands of the British Army. Driven to violent struggle by the repressive British regime, Price spent what were ostensibly the best years of her life in British jails. Once freed, she maintained her commitment to the Republican cause, calling the Good Friday agreement “something I never went to jail for”.
And so, in 2011, when Marian Price was re-interned on trumped up accusations in Maghaberry Prison, some people surely – if naively – thought that it would be a matter of weeks before she was freed again; that a British judiciary system that could provide no evidence as to the reason for her detainment would have learned from their intransigence around Bloody Sunday, collusion and shoot-to-kill, from their mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan, from their errors in over thirty years of occupation in the Six Counties, and over 800 years of oppression of Ireland as a whole, from their arrogance in so much of their far-reaching and recent history; many must have thought that the public outcry would be enough that this woman, who had already experienced torture at the hands of the British state, would not have to suffer anymore.
Anyone who believed that has been, predictably, proved wrong. Britain, for all her false claims to proud small nationhood, still harks after the glory days of her Empire; never has this been clearer than in the last insufferable 18 months. She still desires the position she once held as sovereign of three-quarters of the world – this is evident in the Unionist desperation to cling to the clearly-defunct United Kingdom but it is also obvious in the treatment of Marian Price. She is a symbol of her community, a community that the British ruling elite spent years trying and failing to silence into submission. Marian Price would not be silent, and for her lack of compliance, she must pay the price owed to the British state.
Marian Price has suffered enough. We may not have agreed with her tactics, but we must defend her human rights. Britain has never been a bastion of human rights and fairness; however, the intransigence of the British state is nothing new.
In this last year, the Left in Britain has been excellent at highlighting the human rights abuses carried out on Palestinian prisoners by the Israeli authorities. We should link this to the struggle of political prisoners in Ireland as well as Bradley Manning, Mumia Abu-Jamal and all political prisoners fighting against imperialism. It is the duty of the Left to fight oppression in all its forms. Marian Price is now in hospital, being treated for severe depression as a result of her internment. Her oppression is one that we should have been louder in standing against.
Like Marian Price, we must not be silent anymore; we must refuse to be silent. Marian Price has suffered enough; it’s time we put a stop to it.
Aisling Gallagher, Marian Price, Ireland, British Politics, #FreeMarianPrice, #freemarianprice, #MarianPrice, Marian Price, free marian price,
The considerable historical revisionism in Ireland, past and present is mentored illegitimate scholastic forgery of historical events. The illegitimate distortion of historical records, most notably in the instance of the Irish Holocaust has been achieved to such an extent, making it appear in a more favourable light for the British, that it may as well have been airbrushed from Irish history. Likewise in contemporary events such as the 1981 Hunger Strike that cost 10 lives, history is again being written by the victors with their mentored historical revisionism in Ireland.
It is a serious crime to deny the Jewish Holocaust that cost more than 6 million lives in continental Europe but its encouraged and perfectly legal for the British and west British in Ireland, to deny the British Genocide and war crimes, that cost 6,257,456 lives in the Irish Holocaust.In attempting to revise the Irish past involving war crimes or crimes against humanity,the British techniques include presenting known forged documents, as in the instance of Parnell, Roger Casement to name just a few, while at the same time, they invent ingenious, implausible, reasons for distrusting genuine documentation.
The British revisionists in Ireland to this very day, attribute their own conclusions to historical material and sources, while manipulating statistics to support their given point of view. The most important examples of illegitimate historical revisionism in Ireland, include Irish Holocaust denial and the colossal extent of Irish Slavery in ethnic cleansing conducted by the British, shipping hundreds of thousands on the original coffin ships, almost two centuries previously. Contemporarily, negationism is being practiced with regard to hstoriacl interpretation of the Hunger Strike and events of the 40 year war conducted by the British in Occupied Ireland. While some European countries have criminalized the negationist revision of historical events, the British sponsor many revisionist historians, particularly with regard to their war crimes in Ireland. The British momimize their criminal war activity in Ireland as a form of an Irish joke, to be encouraged with subtle irony.
The article below deals with hate speech and the distortion of history, along with the negationism of historical war crimes.
Hate-Speech Hypocrisy
By William Saletan
Jews have too much influence over U.S. foreign policy. Gay men are too promiscuous. Muslims commit too much terrorism. Blacks commit too much crime. Each of those claims is poorly stated. Each, in its clumsy way, addresses a real problem or concern. And each violates laws against hate speech. In much of what we call the free world, for writing that paragraph, I could be jailed.
Libertarians, cultural conservatives, and racists have complained about these laws for years. But now the problem has turned global. Islamic governments, angered by an anti-Muslim video that provoked protests and riots in their countries, are demanding to know why insulting the Prophet Mohammed is free speech but vilifying Jews and denying the Holocaust isn’t. And we don’t have a good answer.
If we’re going to preach freedom of expression around the world, we have to practice it. We have to scrap our hate-speech laws. Muslim leaders want us to extend these laws. At this week’s meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, they lobbied for tighter censorship.
Egypt’s president said freedom of expression shouldn’t include speech that is “used to incite hatred” or “directed towards one specific religion.” Pakistan’s president urged the “international community” to “criminalize” acts that “endanger world security by misusing freedom of expression.” Yemen’s president called for “international legislation” to suppress speech that “blasphemes the beliefs of nations and defames their figures.”
The Arab League’s secretary-general proposed a binding “international legal framework” to “criminalize psychological and spiritual harm” caused by expressions that “insult the beliefs, culture and civilization of others." President Obama, while condemning the video, met these proposals with a stout defense of free speech. Switzerland’s president agreed: “Freedom of opinion and of expression are core values guaranteed universally which must be protected.” And when a French magazine published cartoons poking fun at Mohammed, the country’s prime minister insisted that French laws protecting free speech extend to caricatures.
This debate between East and West, between respect and pluralism, isn’t a crisis. It’s a stage of global progress. The Arab spring has freed hundreds of millions of Muslims from the political retardation of dictatorship. They’re taking responsibility for governing themselves and their relations with other countries. They’re debating one another and challenging us. And they should, because we’re hypocrites.
From Pakistan to Iran to Saudi Arabia to Egypt to Nigeria to the United Kingdom, Muslims scoff at our rhetoric about free speech. They point to European laws against questioning the Holocaust. Monday on CNN, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad needled British interviewer Piers Morgan: “Why in Europe has it been forbidden for anyone to conduct any research about this event? Why are researchers in prison?
… Do you believe in the freedom of thought and ideas, or no?” On Tuesday, Pakistan’s U.N. ambassador, speaking for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, told the U.N. Human Rights Council: We are all aware of the fact that laws exist in Europe and other countries which impose curbs, for instance, on anti-Semitic speech, Holocaust denial, or racial slurs.
We need to acknowledge, once and for all, that Islamophobia in particular and discrimination on the basis of religion and belief are contemporary forms of racism and must be dealt with as such. Not to do so would be a clear example of double standards. Islamophobia has to be treated in law and practice equal to the treatment given to anti-Semitism. He’s right.
Laws throughout Europe forbid any expression that “minimizes,” “trivializes,” “belittles,” “plays down,” “contests,” or “puts in doubt” Nazi crimes. Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic extend this prohibition to communist atrocities. These laws carry jail sentences of up to five years. Germany adds two years for anyone who “disparages the memory of a deceased person.”
Hate speech laws go further. Germany punishes anyone found guilty of “insulting” or “defaming segments of the population.” The Netherlands bans anything that “verbally or in writing or image, deliberately offends a group of people because of their race, their religion or beliefs, their hetero- or homosexual orientation or their physical, psychological or mental handicap.” It’s illegal to “insult” such a group in France, to “defame” them in Portugal, to “degrade” them in Denmark, or to “expresses contempt” for them in Sweden. In Switzerland, it’s illegal to “demean” them even with a “gesture.”
Canada punishes anyone who “willfully promotes hatred.” The United Kingdom outlaws “insulting words or behavior” that arouse “racial hatred.” Romania forbids the possession of xenophobic “symbols.” Jews have too much influence over U.S. foreign policy. Gay men are too promiscuous. Muslims commit too much terrorism. Blacks commit too much crime. Each of those claims is poorly stated. Each, in its clumsy way, addresses a real problem or concern. And each violates laws against hate speech. In much of what we call the free world, for writing that paragraph, I could be jailed.
Libertarians, cultural conservatives, and racists have complained about these laws for years. But now the problem has turned global. Islamic governments, angered by an anti-Muslim video that provoked protests and riots in their countries, are demanding to know why insulting the Prophet Mohammed is free speech but vilifying Jews and denying the Holocaust isn’t. And we don’t have a good answer. If we’re going to preach freedom of expression around the world, we have to practice it. We have to scrap our hate-speech laws. Muslim leaders want us to extend these laws.
At this week’s meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, they lobbied for tighter censorship. Egypt’s president said freedom of expression shouldn’t include speech that is “used to incite hatred” or “directed towards one specific religion.” Pakistan’s president urged the “international community” to “criminalize” acts that “endanger world security by misusing freedom of expression.”
Yemen’s president called for “international legislation” to suppress speech that “blasphemes the beliefs of nations and defames their figures.” The Arab League’s secretary-general proposed a binding “international legal framework” to “criminalize psychological and spiritual harm” caused by expressions that “insult the beliefs, culture and civilization of others." President Obama, while condemning the video, met these proposals with a stout defense of free speech.
Switzerland’s president agreed: “Freedom of opinion and of expression are core values guaranteed universally which must be protected.” And when a French magazine published cartoons poking fun at Mohammed, the country’s prime minister insisted that French laws protecting free speech extend to caricatures.
This debate between East and West, between respect and pluralism, isn’t a crisis. It’s a stage of global progress. The Arab spring has freed hundreds of millions of Muslims from the political retardation of dictatorship. They’re taking responsibility for governing themselves and their relations with other countries. They’re debating one another and challenging us. And they should, because we’re hypocrites.
From Pakistan to Iran to Saudi Arabia to Egypt to Nigeria to the United Kingdom, Muslims scoff at our rhetoric about free speech. They point to European laws against questioning the Holocaust. Monday on CNN, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad needled British interviewer Piers Morgan: “Why in Europe has it been forbidden for anyone to conduct any research about this event? Why are researchers in prison?
… Do you believe in the freedom of thought and ideas, or no?” On Tuesday, Pakistan’s U.N. ambassador, speaking for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, told the U.N. Human Rights Council: We are all aware of the fact that laws exist in Europe and other countries which impose curbs, for instance, on anti-Semitic speech, Holocaust denial, or racial slurs. We need to acknowledge, once and for all, that Islamophobia in particular and discrimination on the basis of religion and belief are contemporary forms of racism and must be dealt with as such. Not to do so would be a clear example of double standards. Islamophobia has to be treated in law and practice equal to the treatment given to anti-Semitism. He’s right.
Laws throughout Europe forbid any expression that “minimizes,” “trivializes,” “belittles,” “plays down,” “contests,” or “puts in doubt” Nazi crimes. Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic extend this prohibition to communist atrocities. These laws carry jail sentences of up to five years. Germany adds two years for anyone who “disparages the memory of a deceased person.” Hate speech laws go further. Germany punishes anyone found guilty of “insulting” or “defaming segments of the population.” The Netherlands bans anything that “verbally or in writing or image, deliberately offends a group of people because of their race, their religion or beliefs, their hetero- or homosexual orientation or their physical, psychological or mental handicap.”
It’s illegal to “insult” such a group in France, to “defame” them in Portugal, to “degrade” them in Denmark, or to “expresses contempt” for them in Sweden. In Switzerland, it’s illegal to “demean” them even with a “gesture.” Canada punishes anyone who “willfully promotes hatred.” The United Kingdom outlaws “insulting words or behavior” that arouse “racial hatred.” Romania forbids the possession of xenophobic “symbols.” What have these laws produced? Look at the convictions upheld or accepted by the European Court of Human Rights. Four Swedes who distributed leaflets that called homosexuality “deviant” and “morally destructive” and blamed it for AIDS.
An Englishman who displayed in his window a 9/11 poster proclaiming, “Islam out of Britain.” A Turk who published two letters from readers angry at the government’s treatment of Kurds. A Frenchman who wrote an article disputing the plausibility of poison gas technology at a Nazi concentration camp. Look at the defendants rescued by the court. A Dane “convicted of aiding and abetting the dissemination of racist remarks” for making a documentary in which three people “made abusive and derogatory remarks about immigrants and ethnic groups.”
A man “convicted of openly inciting the population to hatred” in Turkey by “criticizing secular and democratic principles and openly calling for the introduction of Sharia law.” Another Turkish resident “convicted of disseminating propaganda” after he “criticized the United States’ intervention in Iraq and the solitary confinement of the leader of a terrorist organization.” Two Frenchmen who wrote a newspaper article that “portrayed Marshal Pétain in a favorable light, drawing a veil over his policy of collaboration with the Nazi regime.”
Beyond the court’s docket, you’ll find more prosecutions of dissent. A Swedish pastor convicted of violating hate-speech laws by preaching against homosexuality. A Serb convicted of discrimination for saying, “We are against every gathering where homosexuals are demonstrating in the streets of Belgrade and want to show something, which is a disease, like it is normal.”
An Australian columnist convicted of violating the Racial Discrimination Act by suggesting that “there are fair-skinned people in Australia with essentially European ancestry … who, motivated by career opportunities available to Aboriginal people or by political activism, have chosen to falsely identify as Aboriginal.” My favorite case involves a Frenchman who sought free-speech protection under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights: Denis Leroy is a cartoonist.
One of his drawings representing the attack on the World Trade Centre was published in a Basque weekly newspaper … with a caption which read: “We have all dreamt of it ... Hamas did it”. Having been sentenced to payment of a fine for “condoning terrorism”, Mr Leroy argued that his freedom of expression had been infringed. The Court considered that, through his work, the applicant had glorified the violent destruction of American imperialism, expressed moral support for the perpetrators of the attacks of 11 September, commented approvingly on the violence perpetrated against thousands of civilians and diminished the dignity of the victims.
Despite the newspaper’s limited circulation, the Court observed that the drawing’s publication had provoked a certain public reaction, capable of stirring up violence and of having a demonstrable impact on public order in the Basque Country. The Court held that there had been no violation of Article 10. How can you justify prosecuting cases like these while defending cartoonists and video makers who ridicule Mohammed? You can’t. Either you censor both, or you censor neither.
Given the choice, I’ll stand with Obama. “Efforts to restrict speech,” he warned the U. N., “can quickly become a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities.” That principle, borne out by the wretched record of hate-speech prosecutions, is worth defending. But first, we have to live up to it.
William Saletan's latest short takes on the news, via Twitter:
