BRITAIN STILL TORTURES OLD FENIANS OCCUPIED IRELAND

Thomas J. Clarke ‘The Grand Old Fenian’

‘I and my fellow signatories believe we have struck the first successful blow for Irish freedom. The next blow, which we have no doubt Ireland will strike, will win through. In this belief, we die happy.’ Thomas Clarke, ‘Message to the Irish People’

Early Life

Thomas J. Clarke, the first signatory of the 1916 Proclamation, was born on the Isle of Wight to Irish parents on 11th March 1857. His father was a sergeant in the British Army and the family moved to Dungannon, County Tyrone when Clarke was about seven. For the rest of his life, Clarke would consider himself a Dungannon man.

Clarke was a deeply committed and seasoned revolutionary. A veteran member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood [IRB], Clarke joined ‘the Fenians’ or ‘the organisation’ when he was just eighteen. Clarke soon volunteered for active service and took part in the Fenians’ ‘dynamite campaign’. This campaign had been organised by O’Donavan Rossa to take the war for Irish freedom to England, the ‘belly of the beast’, by blowing up public buildings and infrastructure in England. In 1883 Clarke was ordered to blow up the famous London Bridge. However he was arrested before he could carry out the operation and put on trial under the alias ‘Henry Wilson’. Clarke was sentenced to penal servitude for life for his republican activities and went on to spend over fifteen years in British prisons.

Released under the general amnesty for Fenian prisoners in 1898, Clarke left prison determined to continue the fight for national liberation. He moved to Brooklyn in the USA where he worked under the great Fenian leader John Devoy as a member of the IRB’s sister organisation Clann na Gael. While in America, Clarke married Kathleen Daly, a niece of John Daly, a well-known Fenian who had sworn Clarke into the IRB and had also been imprisoned with him.

Re-organising the IRB

Clarke firmly believed in the old Fenian saying that ‘England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity’. In 1907 he sensed that a European war was inevitable and believed that republicans should use that opportunity to strike another blow for Irish freedom. He returned to Ireland and settled in Dublin, where he opened a tobacconist shop at 75A Parnell Street.

The tobacconist shop soon became a hotbed of republican activity as Clarke immersed himself in the underground work of the IRB, which by this time was lead by an old guard which lacked the required pro-activity. Clarke immediately came into conflict with this group and made it clear that he had no time for ‘armchair revolutionaries’.

Working with a younger generation of IRB activists, such as Seán Mac Diarmada and Bulmer Hobson, Clarke began a total reorganisation of the IRB. These younger men, along with Denis McCullough, had become disillusioned by the inactivity of the IRB and decided to do something about it. They established the ‘Dungannon Clubs’ as a way of attracting a new generation to the struggle for an Irish Republic. The clubs openly functioned as republican debating societies but all the while the organisers were recruiting the promising members into the IRB. To this younger generation Clarke was the embodiment of what a Fenian should be. His return to Ireland and his setting about the re-organisation was a signal to them of a change in the fortunes for the IRB.

Mac Diarmada and Hobson soon forged a close relationship with Clarke, becoming his protégés. Together the three men drew up a plan for increasing the influence of the Fenians by directing IRB members into other nationalist organisations such as the GAA and the Gaelic League.

Clarke was the engine driving the re-organisation of republican forces at this time. He was a deeply committed revolutionary, determined to ensure that a generation would not pass without striking another blow for Irish freedom.

The Irish Volunteers

In 1913, the re-organised IRB were in a position to take advantage of the rising national sentiment. In November the IRB organised a public meeting in the Rotunda, Dublin to form an open military organisation, the Irish Volunteers. Clarke took no position in the new organisation, but other IRB members such a Mac Diarmada, Hobson and Éamonn Ceannt were elected to key positions. This ensured the central influence of the IRB in the new overground organisation.

By 1914 the IRB’s supreme council was largely controlled by Clarke and the ‘young turks’ of Hobson, Mac Diarmada, Patrick McCartan, John Mac Bride and Denis McCullough. The re-organisation of the IRB which had begun in 1907 was now complete and the organisation now began to pursue all options for launching a revolution in Ireland.

Hobson’s support for a proposal to accept twenty-five members of the Irish Parliamentary Party on to the provisional committee of the Volunteers, however, led to a major falling out with Clarke who viewed the move as extremely dangerous. From that moment on Hobson became persona non grata in leading IRB circles, but remained a member of the organisation.

The Military Council and preparations for the Rising

Clarke and Mac Diarmada were by now inseparable. As Treasurer and Secretary of the IRB, the two men ran the organisation. Together they began drawing up a plan for a military rising in Ireland. Under their leadership, leading members of the Volunteers had been recruited into the IRB including Joseph Plunkett, Thomas MacDonagh and Patrick Pearse, and the IRB now dominated the Volunteer executive.

In 1915 Clarke and Mac Diarmada established a secret military council to organise preparations for a Rising and co-opted Plunkett, MacDonagh, Pearse, and later James Connolly onto the Council.

Tom Clarke’s many years of republican activism had led to this point. He more then any other of the IRB leaders can be described as the driving force behind the Easter Rising. After each setback, whether it was failure of the dynamite campaign or imprisonment, Tom Clarke had dusted himself off and started again. Now, thanks to his never failing efforts a Rising was planned that would take advantage of the European war and strike a blow against the British Empire.

When the veteran Fenian leader O’Donovan Rossa died, Clarke became chief organiser of his funeral. Clarke aimed to use the funeral to mobilise the Volunteers and heighten their expectation for imminent action. Under Clarke’s direction O’Donovan Rossa’s funeral became a rallying point for a rejuvenated revolutionary republicanism. Clarke was proposed as the main speaker but he refused. He said,‘No, the young men must come forward’, and he asked Pearse to give them main oration. Clarke had chosen wisely. In a now famous speech, Pearse set the tone for what was to come.

The Easter Rising

Clarke and Mac Diarmada took an important decision and outlined their plans for a Rising to James Connolly, who had been planning something similar. Connolly agreed whole heartedly with the planned Rising and was co-opted onto the military council. The Irish Citizen Army would now join the Volunteers and the IRB in battle for the freedom of Ireland. The date of the rising was set for Easter Sunday 1916. Orders were issued to all Volunteer and ICA companies for general maneuverers on that day. This was the signal that the insurrection was to begin.

When the news of Eoin MacNeill’s infamous countermanding order to Volunteers reached the military council on Easter Sunday morning, Clarke immediately proposed that the rising should go ahead as planned. He argued that once the fighting began in Dublin, Volunteers around the county would inevitably join in.

However the other leaders disagreed and voted instead to postpone the Rising until 12pm on Easter Monday. The next twenty four hours would be spent rallying their troops and salvaging what plans they could.

When the Rising began, Clarke was stationed in Republican headquarters at the GPO in Dublin. Clarke was chosen by the Provisional Government to be the first signatory of the Proclamation of the Republic. This was testament to the respect held for Clarke in republican circles. He was viewed as an inspirational leader, a man of action and, importantly, as a symbol of the unbreakable spirit of the republican struggle. Although Clarke held no formal military rank, those stationed in the GPO garrison looked to him for direction and he played a key role in directing the fight throughout Easter week.

Clarke was opposed to the eventual surrender of the republican forces, supporting instead a proposal by Commandant Sean McLoughlin to fight their way to safety down Moore Street. However the Military Council agreed to a proposal from Pearse to cease hostilities in order to prevent further loss of civilian life. The Rising was over, but the struggle for national liberation had been reborn.

Arrest and execution

Arrested and court martialled along with the other republican leaders, Tom Clarke was the first of the leaders to be executed by British firing squad. It is said that the largest intelligence file of all was the file on Tom Clarke, a fitting testament to a life lived in the service of Ireland. Clarke’s life work had come to fruition. He had successfully re-organised the IRB to a position where it was ready to strike a blow for Irish freedom and had seen an independent Irish Republic proclaimed in arms. Although the Rising had not been a military success, Clarke gave his life happy in the knowledge that the next generation would take up the fight for freedom and that this time it would be continued until victory.

Thomas J. Clarke, the veteran, unrepentant Fenian, and one of the main architects of the 1916 Rising was executed on May 2, in Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin.

Fuair sé bas ar son na h-Éireann.

This article was borrowed from Eirigi 

SECRET BRITISH CONCENTRATION CAMP TORTURE

The British created the first concentration camps in South Africa, in 1899.
. They created them for political opponents, specific ethnic or white South African groups, where the British murdered 27 000 women and children. Civilians or other groups of people, usually selected by the British according to some general criteria, rather than individuals, incarcerated after due process of law fairly applied by a judiciary. The most notorious concentration camps, were later created on the british model by the the Nazis , which were utilized to implement the Holocaust.

Ever since the Nazi concentration camps were discovered, the term has been understood to refer to a place of mistreatment, starvation, forced labor, and murder. Today, this term is not used by the British government in order to sanitize their activity, using instead terms such as "detention facility," and so forth, regardless of circumstances. In many cases, British concentration camps such as Maghaberry in British occupied Ireland today, have poor living conditions, resulting in many deaths.

In a"concentration camp,"  the British government can "concentrate" groups of people, who are in a time of insurgency, potential supporters of  insurgents, who are then placed in such a facility, where they are not provided with any information or reason for their predicament. Concentration camps single out specific portions of a population based on their race, culture, politics or religion. Usually, these people are not the majority but are categorized as causing social, economic, and other problems to the majority. The function of British concentration camps are to separate this "scapegoat" population, from the majority population. 

British concentration camps have been used for almost a century, but never have yielded a positive result. The British structure is based on domination and subordination of smaller ethnic groups after the British invade a country. This form of imposed dominance, creates cultural conflicts and rifts that are extremely difficult to repair. Currently in British Occupied Ireland, the British Tories have broken the Irish Peace Process and reintroduced "selective internment," generally of old men and women, from the war the British started over 40 years ago with internment at that time.

Martin Corey is a 62 year old man, who is now in Maghaberry prison for 3 years. The rationale for his internment without trial, is based on closed material, that neither Martin or his legal team are allowed to see. The British government as in the instances of the Birmingham six and the Guildford four, have again paid considerable sums of money, to fabricate evidence, which neither Martin or his legal team are allowed to see. Neither is Martin or his lawyers, allowed to know the length of his internment, which at his elderly age may mean that he dies innocently interned.


Martin's lawyer, Peter Murphy, say he is being denied the right to a fair trial. "It's like internment all over again in the sense that he hasn't been given the chance to defend his position.When we ask questions about the nature of the allegations and evidence against our client we are told nothing.

In any criminal court you can meet your accuser, you have a chance to cross-examine them, and you have a chance to defend yourself because you're given the detail of what the allegations are against you.We don't have any of that, so our client is in a very difficult situation in that he's sitting in prison not knowing why he's there."

His lawyers are challenging the British Viceroyal to bring charges against him, to allow details of the allegations he faces to be heard in in a fair trial in open court.During hearings held by the commissioners, an unidentified witness gave evidence from behind a curtain and Martin Corey's legal team were not given any details of any allegations against him.


In July last year, a judge ruled that Martin Corey's detention was a breach of the Human Rights Act and said he should be released on unconditional bail but that was overturned by order of the unelected English Viceroyal with handpicked judges, then rubber stamping this supremacist, sectarian, repression of British Occupied Ireland

His lawyers are now preparing to take his case to the European court. They say he is being denied the right to a fair trial."We're looking for a ruling from the European Court that anybody is entitled to defend themselves and to be given the right to defend themselves before the courts. In order to be able to do that they should be given the information upon which, in this particular occasion, Mr Corey is being held in jail.

"He should be given reasons as to why he is being detained in custody and given reasons why the secretary of state believes he is a risk to society, so that Mr Corey can go along and properly defend himself before the court. Everybody has the right to defend themselves, and we believe we are not being given that right."


His lawyer Mr Murphy said "During the three years he has been in prison he hasn't been charged with anything.Those responsible for keeping Martin Corey in prison should initiate a proper investigation and, if needs be, charge him.

"In laying down this challenge, I do not believe that this will ever be done, because we don't believe the criminal standard could ever be met in a criminal trial in this case.This is an indefinite situation at the moment, there's no timescale, Martin Corey can be left languishing in jail for the rest of his life if the secretary of state wishes, without being told why."

The case is being monitored closely by the human rights group the Committee on the Administration of Justice.The CAJ director, Brian Gormally, said it supports the decision to take the case to the European Court.

"We are concerned about it because Martin Corey is being held on the basis of secret evidence that he is unable to challenge, that is basically an affront to the rule of law in our view..The European Convention of Human Rights says nobody should be detained without a proper court hearing. In our view, secret, closed material proceedings are not proper court proceedings."On April 16th, 2013, Martin Corey hadspent three years in Maghaberry Prison without any charges ever being placed against him. Police never questioned or interviewed Martin regarding any incident, occurrence or event relating to his internment. Serious questions must now be asked about what exactly the British Government are the British Government hiding?

So who exactly is Martin Corey ?A close friend of Martin's, Jim McIlmurray wrote the following: "I am in a better position than most to know if he was ever involved in any activity that could be deemed illegal or “a threat to National Security”, a phrase often utilized by faceless, nameless individuals in the courts. I can say without fear of contradiction that Martin is an innocent man. Everyone should make their voice be heard and call upon the Secretary of State to either bring charges against him or release him immediately.

Martin Corey is an old man who served 19 years of his life in Long Kesh as a republican prisoner for an offence 40 years ago. He was released in 1992 and began rebuilding his life. He is a popular figure from a well respected, hard-working family in the town.

It was a proud day for Martin when he was granted a loan to purchase his own mechanical digger. After a time, he gained the contract as the parish grave digger, covering several cemeteries in the greater Lurgan area. Many people, myself included, will recall his compassionate approach and professionalism during the time of families' bereavement.

In all the time I have known Martin, I have only known his interests to be his family, his friends and his love of coarse fishing.

On Friday, April 16th, 2010, the police arrived at his O’Neill’s Terrace home and told him they had a warrant for his arrest. Martin was brought to Lurgan PSNI station and later that day transferred to Maghaberry prison. It was stated he broke the terms of his Life Licence release. When his solicitor requested to know what Martin was alleged to have done, he was told it a matter of National Security and the subject of closed file information.

For the past three years, his solicitor and barristers have challenged his unlawful detention on numerous occasions in the High Court. On Monday, the 9th of July, 2012, a High Court judge, Justice Seamus Tracy, who has a background in the European Human Rights Courts, ordered Martin’s immediate release, stating that his Human Rights had been breached under sections 4 and 5 of the European Human Rights act and that there were no charges for which he should answer. I waited for 4 hours outside Maghaberry with Martin’s family that day, only to be told at 4:15pm that the then current Secretary of State, Owen Patterson, had overruled the High Court judge and blocked Martin's release. I was 25 yards away from Martin when I received that call. I watched him step out of the prison van at the reception centre and watched him walk back to the van to be returned to his cell. As he got into the van, he paused and starred at me and that will always be one of the hardest and cruelest moments I have ever witnessed in my life.


Martin has a legal entitlement to an annual Parole Board review every twelve calendar months to reevaluate the reasons for his continued detention. I have been accepted to speak on Martin’s behalf; however, every date set for a hearing for Martin last year was followed by a cancellation by the Parole Board, citing numerous excuses. Martin hasn’t received a parole review in 18 months, an action deemed illegal by the Court of Human Rights in Strasburg. We are currently awaiting a date to take this case to the High Court for a judicial review.


Martin has been subjected to a number of incidents during his time in Maghaberry Prison. These incidents include waiting over three weeks for an emergency dental appointment; of note, a veterinarian would have a legal obligation to report a pet owner for cruelty if he found an animal to be suffering for that period. Also, Martin's request for compassionate leave to attend the funeral of his brother was denied by both the Prison Service and the Courts without any reasons given. He was only granted leave to attend 1 hour before the service started after a request was made to the Justice Minister on humanitarian grounds. I had to make three requests to the Prison Ombudsman to intervene in cases concerning material submitted by myself for Martin for use in his cell crafts. The prison staff either confiscated the printed image materials or refused to provide them to Martin. The Prison Ombudsman upheld all three decisions in Martin’s favour, ruling against the Northern Ireland Prison Service and determining that the material must be provided to Martin.

Martin’s case has been in the High Court in Belfast several times over the past three years, without any finding of criminal offence with which to charge him. Had Martin been charged with possession of an illegal firearm during his arrest three years previously, he would have been released six months ago. There is no other name for his illegal detention other than internment without trail.

As a close friend of Martin's, I am in a better position than most to know if he was ever involved in any activity that could be deemed illegal or “a threat to National Security”, a phrase often utilized by faceless, nameless individuals in the courts. I can say without fear of contradiction that Martin is an innocent man. Everyone should make their voice be heard and call upon the Secretary of State to either bring charges against him or release him immediately.

I speak to Martin by telephone on a daily basis and visit him regularly in Maghaberry Prison, and can assure everyone that his spirits remain high despite his total lack of confidence in the judicial system in the North of Ireland. He thanks everyone for their continued messages of support .

We are currently awaiting a date to attend the Court of Appeal in London to challenge his illegal detention. If unsuccessful there, we will take his case to the European Courts of Justice. We will continue our presence at the Belfast High Court to request the Parole Board to give an explanation as to why Martin has been denied his legal right to an annual Parole Review."

Jim McIlmurray

Friend and spokesperson for Martin Corey

EVILUTION EMPIRE EVILUTION EMPIRE

Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture

I found Cruel Britannia utterly gripping. Ian Cobain's writing has poise and measure, allowing space for these horrific truths to seep in, under the skin. I will not forget what I have learnt from this book, and I will be telling others about it for years to come. --P J Harvey

I am not prone to gasp and nor would I describe myself as naive. But the scale of torture in the British security services, as revealed by Ian Cobain in this admirably researched book, took me aback... Absorbing and devastating - Observer

Cobain's account is a reminder of why the default assumption, for every journalist dealing with authority, must be: Why is this liar lying to me? ? For the reader, it is a reminder of why we need journalist. As this quietly reported history of torture shows, Cobain is a fine one - Sunday Times

From the London Cage a secret World War II interrogation centre through to the Cold War, the Troubles and the death of Baha Mousa in Iraq, what d been done under the aegis of the British state will shock anyone who cherishes civilised values - --Metro

A deeply disturbing book which implicates both the British Government and the Security Services. It is like rolling a hand grenade into the heart of the Establishment. --Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Mercer

I am not prone to gasp and nor would I describe myself as naive. But the scale of torture in the British security services, as revealed by Ian Cobain in this admirably researched book, took me aback... Absorbing and devastating - Observer

Cobain's account is a reminder of why the default assumption, for every journalist dealing with authority, must be: Why is this liar lying to me? ? For the reader, it is a reminder of why we need journalist. As this quietly reported history of torture shows, Cobain is a fine one - Sunday Times

From the London Cage a secret World War II interrogation centre through to the Cold War, the Troubles and the death of Baha Mousa in Iraq, what d been done under the aegis of the British state will shock anyone who cherishes civilised values - --Metro

A deeply disturbing book which implicates both the British Government and the Security Services. It is like rolling a hand grenade into the heart of the Establishment. --Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Mercer

About the Author

IAN COBAIN was born in Liverpool in 1960. He has been a journalist since the early 1980s and is currently an investigative reporter with the Guardian. His inquiries into the UK's involvement in torture since 9/11 have won a number of major awards, including the Martha Gellhorn Prize and the Paul Foot Award for investigative journalism. He has also won several Amnesty International media awards. Cobain lives in London with his wife and two children. This is his first book.

Originally Published on 4 Apr 2013

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• Category

  News & Politics
  
  
  

  Britain is attempting to opt out of a European initiative enabling anyone to delete their personal details from online service providers – a power known as the "right to be forgotten".

  The clash between Brussels and the Ministry of Justice has erupted in the final stages of negotiations over the EU's General Data ProtectionRegulation, which aims to rebalance the relationship between the individual and the internet.

  The debate reflects growing tensions between freedom of expression and privacy as increasing numbers of people complain that their online reputation is being corroded by outdated, inaccurate or malicious information that cannot be removed. In France, the number of complaints concerning the right to be forgotten rose 42% last year. A Guardian project has unearthed hundreds of cases of people alarmed at the mishandling of their data or personal information.

  The UK's chief objection to the EU move is that unrealistic expectations will be created by the right's expansive title because the controls proposed will be relatively modest in their impact on the way data spreads, or is traded, across websites.

  The right to be forgotten, article 17 of the Data Protection Regulation, has been developed by the EU justice commissioner's office primarily in response to complaints about the way social media, such as Facebook, retain and handle information. Although the terms of the regulation have not yet been finalised, its current form provides for punitive fines – up to 2% of global turnover – for companies that refuse to comply with requests to erase customers' personal details.

  Viviane Reding, the EU justice commissioner, said: "At present a citizen can request deletion only if [data is] incomplete or incorrect. We want to extend this right to make it stronger in this internet world. The burden of proof shall be on the companies. They will have to show that data is needed.

  "This piece of legislation is one of the biggest market-openers of the last few years. It eliminates 27 conflicting rules [one for each EU state] and replaces them with ... a mechanism for the whole continent. This means saving €2.3bn (£1.9bn) a year.

  "[But] the British government have asked us not to do this and [would prefer] two laws: one for Britain and one for other people, meaning there would be separate layers of complication. I have exchanged letters with [the UK justice secretary] Chris Grayling on this, which is rather like Kafka. Britain is meant to oppose red tape; here Britain wants a supplementary layer of red tape. It's crazy. The UK wants 27 rules – one for each country."

  In a letter to Grayling dated 8 March, Reding wrote: "You raise the possibility of specific rules for SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises] which operate nationally rather than cross-border.

  "I am surprised to learn that it would be the intention of the UK to introduce a new layer of complexity, cost and risk of non-compliance by having one set of obligations for domestic operations and one for cross-border operations."

  The UK is lobbying for the changes to be part of a directive, which would give the government more flexibility about how it is adopted, rather than being contained in a more prescriptive internal market regulation.

  Reding, who is from Luxembourg and also a vice-president of the European commission, stressed the new right to be forgotten would "not be absolute" and would be assessed in relation to other rights, such as freedom of expression, retention of medical records or data for tax purposes. It would, for example, permit students who post embarrassing pictures of themselves on social media sites to remove them at a later date. If those images had spread to a third party, however, the right of removal would be significantly diluted: the site that initially held them would be required to contact other sites to which it is linked informing them that a request had been made to erase information.

  "[There will be] no power to remove it from third parties but if a company has given it to another [firm] without asking if they can sell it, then the individuals' rights will be re-enforced."

  The right will not apply to journalistic archives, comments on articles or posts by bloggers, who will be exempted on the grounds of freedom of expression. Material posted by other people – friends or antagonists – would also remain unaffected: there is an exemption in data protection regulations for material of a "personal or household" nature.

  Reding added: "The European rules [will] apply to every company … which operates in the internal market. The EU is a large market with 500 million citizens. If you want to take advantage of this goldmine, then apply the rules. Facebook and such providers like the one-stop shop. They like the fact that the rules are the same everywhere. There's no opt-out. This is an internal market regulation. It's a decision that will be taken by majority rule."

  The case of the Austrian law student Max Schems, who battled Facebook for months to recover his personal data and eventually received 1,222 pages of material in 2011, is emblematic of the problems Reding believes need addressing. Facebook subsequently altered its data-retention policies as a result of the case.

  Ireland, where Google and Facebook's European headquarters are based, holds the presidency of the EU. It has said that enacting the data protection regulation is a key priority for its presidency, which ends in June.

  The UK's Information Commissioner's Office agrees that the new regulation will shift the balance between consumers and "data controllers". But it cautions: "Our concern is about how difficult (or impossible) this may be to achieve in practice and how it could lead individuals to believe falsely that they can achieve the absolute erasure of information about them.

  "We know from the efforts of well-resourced and motivated individuals that it can in fact be impossible to remove information from the internet once it has been posted. We are concerned that this right, as billed, could mislead individuals as to the degree of protection the law can offer them in practice."

  The London-based lobby group Privacy International is similarly sceptical. Anna Fielder, one of the organisation's trustees, said: "We think the right to erasure is essential and that's likely to stay; the right to delete your information once you have left a service provider. If you left a bank you wouldn't like them to keep your data for ever.

  "But it's no more than a right to delete your data. It's got so many exceptions. It's specifically targeted at Facebook users. For example, photos of drunken teenagers. [Facebook] should try and make all the people who have shared the data remove it as well. [But] it's not a compulsion. It has so many exceptions: freedom of expression, public interest in public health and scientific research."

  The MoJ said: "The UK does not support the right to be forgotten as proposed by the European commission. The title raises unrealistic and unfair expectations of the proposals.

  "We are also concerned about potentially impossible requirements for data controllers to manage third-party erasure; the 'reasonable steps' required by the draft regulation would promise much, but deliver little."

  Stewart Room, a privacy specialist at the law firm Field Fisher Waterhouse, said article 17 covers where consent is withdrawn for information being held. "This is intended to address the idea that a kid may stick something on Facebook and later on there should be a way of taking it down.

  "In Silicon Valley, there's a lot of venture capital going into tech companies that can achieve erasure of data. There's a lot of demand in the market for cleansing online information."

  Richard Allan, Facebook's director of policy for Europe, Middle East and Africa, said: "The core concept that you as a data subject should be able to delete your personal data is absolutely reasonable. It's something we implement on our service.

  "[But] we have concerns about about the workability and consequences of a mechanism where organisations start sending each other instructions about data that needs to be removed. Our worry is that it will take up resources and won't be effective."

  Individuals, he said, should approach data controllers directly to ask for material to be removed. Facebook, which has a billion users, has a social reporting mechanism that allows users to request that material is taken down from other accounts on the site, Allan said. "Our users like the mechanism.

  "We think the most responsible service providers will offer the right to erasure. Where people are dealing with irresponsible service providers it may be that the national data protection authorities take action."

  A different legal development that could be equally far-reaching emerged in a UK court of appeal judgment this year in the case of Tamiz vs Google, which ruled that, in principle, the internet search engine may also be a publisher and therefore liable to defamation proceedings for material on a blog hosted on one of its platforms.

BRITISH STILL EXPORT TORTURE TECHNIQUES FROM LABORATORY OCCUPIED IRELAND

Britain's Abu Ghraib

In many a time, in many a land,

With many a gun in many a hand,

They came by the night, they came by the day,

They came with their guns to take us away,

With their knock on the door, knock on the door,
Here they come to take one more.

Look over the oceans, look over the lands,
Look over the leaders with blood on their hands,
And open your eyes and see what they do,
When they knock over there friend, they're knocking for you,
With their knock on the door, knock on the door,
Here they come to take one more.

Words and Music by Phil Ochs and Appleseed Music ASCAP

'They can jail the revolutionary
but not the revolution'
— CHE GUEVARA.

British Occupied Ireland with the treatment of political internees such as Marian Price, Martin Corey and many others, has become a human-rights-free zone.The quarantine of many Irish political prisoners is a familiar concealment. When placed in a human rights context, British Occupied Ireland is often described in terms of the British government‘s denial of human rights to political prisoners but equally important the denial of their Irish humanity and identity.

British Occupied Ireland has been a laboratory for their dehumanization, while they use their media, such as the BBC world service, to refer to prisoners of conscience, as terrorists, to ostracize them from what it means to be human and allow the British the physical and mental treatment of Irish political prisoners, abhorrent to human beings.Thus they accomplish through cultural erasure, through the creation of the terrorist narrative; legal erasure and physical erasure through torture.

While the dimensions of dehumanization are distinct, they are interrelated. All are connected by law and specifically by human rights.The British have created the preconditions for state power activity, so brutal, as to deprive Irish political prisoners of the ability to be human or have any human rights.They stand exposed to the violence of the British state, unmediated, unprotected by any human rights, reducing political internees to a state of bare life without humanity. What is evolving is the Irish have no right, to have rights, a vacuum enabling extreme British state violence, placing the internment of Marian Price, at the center of a struggle not just for rights, but for humanity that includes you and me.

On the 18th January 1978, the Government of the Republic of Ireland brought an application against Britain, before the Commission of International Human Rights in Strasbourg (ii) that various interrogation practices--in particular the so-called 'five techniques', which included wall- standing, hooding and deprivation of sleep and food--and other practices to which suspects were subjected amounted to torture and inhuman or degrading treatment contrary to Article 3...The Commission unanimously found that the five techniques did constitute a practice of torture and that other practices amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment.

On the same day the Parker report was published on 2 March 1972, the United Kingdom Prime Minister stated in Parliament, that its torture techniques in British Occupied Ireland would not be used ever again in future. The Prime Minister's statement, directives expressly prohibiting the use of the techniques, whether singly or in combination, which were then issued to their forces by the Government. 

At a hearing before British Courts on 8 February 1977, the British Attorney-General declared that the 'five techniques' would not in any circumstances be reintroduced either collectively or individually. Yet still the torture goes on worldwide with Marian Price and others secretly interned without trial in British Occupied Ireland, while hundreds more claims are in the pipeline as Iraqis become aware that they are able to bring proceedings against the UK in the London courts.

British troops face fresh charges of Iraq war torture and killings

Allegations to be unveiled in high court of 'systemic' policy of abuse from 2003 to 2008

• 
  

• Ed Vulliamy
• The Observer, Saturday 19 January 2013 22.00 GMT

A still from video of a British soldier screaming abuse at hooded Iraqi detainees played to the public inquiry into the death of of Baha Mousa. Photograph: PA

Britain will face fresh charges of breaching international law over the alleged torture and killing of prisoners during the war in Iraq, which began almost exactly 10 years ago. The allegations will be unveiled in the high court, when Britain will stand accused of a "systemic" policy of abuse committed over five years, from 2003 to 2008.

At a hearing scheduled over three days from 29 January, lawyers for 180 Iraqis who claim they are victims of abuse, or that their family members were unlawfully killed, will place a file of statements before two judges presiding over the court in London accusing British soldiers and intelligence officers of unlawful interrogation practices. These include hooding and the use of "stress positions", sexual abuse, beating and religious abuse of illegally detained prisoners. In some cases, the testimonies allege, the torture led to the death of the prisoner.

The statements were compiled during meetings with victims and relatives, mostly in Lebanon, by human rights lawyer Phil Shiner of the Public Interest Lawyers group, based in Birmingham.

The court will rule on whether the abuses were isolated incidents of which commanders, senior ministry officials and politicians were unaware, as the government insists, or "systemic" and authorised as policy. The MoD contends that any general problems of detention and interrogation were dealt with by an inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa, an innocent hotel worker killed while in British custody in Basra in 2003, and continuing internal investigations by its own Iraq Historic Allegations Team.

But the author of a book on the killing of Baha Mousa, Andrew Williams – a law professor at the University of Warwick – says: "What happened to Baha Mousa, and how the army and the government responded to his death is emblematic of a whole system in operation … a callous culture that … permeated far up the command chain, both military and government".

Shiner says of his evidence that the Baha Mousa inquiry "may have shone a torch into a dark corner" but what is before the court next week is more like "a stadium in which we will switch on the floodlights.

"We've got the training materials", he says, "we've got the policy documents. Violence was endemic to the state practices and part of the state practices".

His counsel team, led by Michael Fordham QC, will present five so-called "state practices" they claim were "unlawful, right to the top", including illegal interrogation techniques taught at the army intelligence facility at Chicksands, north of London, unlawful detention and unlawful use of lethal force

Shiner's files are deeply shocking. Insults to Islam and sexual depravity feature frequently in the statements: a soldier is alleged to have masturbated over a prisoner, another to have committed sodomy with his finger; female interrogators are claimed to have stripped and feigned seduction in exchange for "information".

Most of the alleged incidents took place while prisoners were in custody, though some occurred during "strike operations" on people's homes, with suspects and their families allegedly subjected to abuse and crude violence. Prisoners who died in custody were invariably said to have done so due to "natural causes", despite beatings and kickings.

The hearing comes just weeks away from the 10th anniversary of the Iraq invasion, and will be counted as a measure of how far Britain can reckon with its own legacy in Iraq. South African archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu last year urged in this newspaper that the then prime minister Tony Blair and others should be prosecuted by the international criminal court over the legality and conduct of the invasion.

"This is the crucial moment of decision", says Williams. "This is our last chance to get to the truth of what happened. This is what we demand of others, but we do not demand it of ourselves. What kind of message does that give the world about who we are?"

• This article was amended on 20 January 2013 to correct errors in the editing and production process that attributed quotes from Phil Shiner to Prof Andrew Williams

MARIAN PRICE DESTROYED BY BRITISH INTERNMENT TORTURE

http://www.irishresistancebooks.com/guineapigs/guineapigs.htm

Marian Price could not attend her latest court hearing because she is too ill. Her lawyer said, that she is unable to give instructions to her legal team, with her physical and mental health continuing to deteriorate. Her lawyer raised concerns about Marian being examined by anymore experts from the prosecution and defence, claiming she has been examined by 16 doctors already. Marian’s case was adjourned for another four weeks of internment without trial. Marian will have been politically interned for 19 months, camouflaged as remand, for what are in essence farcical hearings.

The dehumanization of internees such as Marian Price, through the infliction of pain and torture, has not only damaged her body and mind, it is as Elaine Scarry wrote, world-destroying, "It is the intense pain that destroys a person‘s self and world, a destruction experienced spatially as either the contraction of the universe down to the immediate vicinity of the body or as the body swelling to fill the entire universe. Intense pain is also language destroying; as the content of one‘s world disintegrates, so the content of one‘s language disintegrates; as the self disintegrates, so that which would express and project the self is robbed of its source and its subject. Thus, physical erasure also eliminates the intelligible voice, reducing human speech to the primordial expression of pain, a state anterior to language."

In addition to these erasures of the body, mind and self, British torture achieves a third form of physical erasure, by the very fact
of the political prisoners‘ torture, requiring concealment. The retreat of torture from respectability by international standards, means that the British must perform it in hiding, primarily with censorship. However they also conceal their involvement in rendition, as they hide their activity in subcontracted assassination, with more curtains over their already, shrouded victim's bodies.

While their prolonged stress positions, as well as other conduct constituting cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment may not always rise to the level of torture, they nevertheless were found guilty of such, by the International Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg regarding their activity in Ireland. The physical erasure of British torture is self-evident, and therefore needs only brief comment.

In secret courts, with identity blacked out on their transcripts, judges will not countenance torture complaints, they will have none of this conduct, deeming it unacceptable and defendants will receive a final warning, oblivious to international law. In such courts they do not want to hear the words, such international law again. The British are not concerned about international law, they will insist on it, by having someone like Marian Price removed from the hearings, so that their secret services and military can consider classified evidence against her in secret. 

If we accept the integrity of human rights law and its independence from any state sovereign, then it follows that there can never belawlessness such as there is in British Occupied Ireland, only gross violations of human rights law.British habeas-corpus-stripping provisions, are a core breach of human rights law, besides the many liberty concerns with regard to the Geneva Conventions. British attempts at unilateral re-interpretation of sections international law, have no constitutional rights whatsoever

British Occupied Ireland with the treatment of political internees such as Marian Price, Martin Corey and many others, has become a human-rights-free zone.The quarantine of many Irish political prisoners is a familiar concealment. When placed in a human rights context. British Occupied Ireland is often described in terms of the British government‘s denial of rights to political prisoners but equally important the denial of their Irish humanity.

British Occupied Ireland has been a laboratory, of their dehumanization, while they use their media, such as the BBC world srvice, to refer to prisoners of conscience, as terrorists, to ostracize them from what it means to be human and allow the British the physical and mental treatment of Irish political prisoners, abhorrent to human beings.Thus they accomplish through cultural erasure, through the creation of the terrorist narrative; legal erasure and physical erasure through torture.

While the dimensions of dehumanization are distinct, they are interrelated. All are connected by law and specifically by human rights.The British have created the preconditions for state power activity, so brutal, as to deprive Irish political prisoners of the ability to be human or have any human rights.They stand exposed to the violence of the British state, unmediated, unprotected by any human rights, reducing political internees to a state of bare life without humanity. What is evolving is the Irish have no right, to have rights, a vacuum enabling extreme British state violence, placing the internment of Marian Price, at the center of a struggle not just for rights, but for humanity that includes you and me.

Through resistance, political space will open but the mere resistance, the assertion of self against state violence, is self and life-affirming. Resistance is a way of staying human. This, then, is the work that rights do, when pushed to the brink of annihilation, they provide us with a rudimentary and perhaps inadequate tool to maintain our humanity. Thus by paying particular attention to the value of human rights and arguing the importance of rights, it becomes a mode of resistance, to state violence.

Irish political prisoners themselves, have a long track record of participating in direct forms of resistance in many forms, including dirt strikes and hunger strikes, as a form of prisoner resistance, with lawyer rights-based litigation and the hunger strikes, sharing an understanding of the relationship between rights, violence, and humanity. While sometimes the resistance of lawyers and of prisoners may not be enough to win the prisoners‘ freedom, it is still essential when British state violence is so extreme, as to attempt to extinguish our humanity.

Victimized
Demoralized
Brutalized
Dehumanized
Before the sickening images can take a political toll
The right-wing spin machine plays damage control

Marian Price is just one of several Irish people currently politically interned in British Occupied Ireland during which time lawyers have not been allowed to see any of Britain's ‘alleged’ evidence.

• She has been kept in solitary confinement in a ‘male’ high security prison
• She is effectively interned without a trial, sentence, or release date.
• She has not been given any timescale for any investigation.
• She has not been allowed to see the evidence that the state claims to have
• Her release has been ordered on two occasions by judges. However, on both occasions the British Vice royal has overruled those decisions.
• The Vice royal claims they ‘revoked Marian’s license, ’despite Marian never being released on license. She was given a Royal Pardon.
• Marian’s Royal Pardon has ‘gone missing’ from the home office (the only time in history). The British Vice royal has taken the view that unless a paper copy can be located – it must be assumed that she does not have one. It is generally agreed that MI5 shredded her majesty's pardon.
• Despite no ‘license’ existing for her release from prison in 1980, it is the non-existent licence that is being used to keep her in prison.
• She can only be released by Theresa Villiers the current Vice royal responsible for Marian's internment.

Recently the charges against Marian were thrown out of court because of a lack of evidence. Now the very same charges have been re-instated against Marian again before the same Judge.

In secret courts, being introduced by the back door, through legislation in the House of Lords, MI5 the British secret services are pushing for secret trials, with secret evidence by secret witnesses, that the defendant's appointed lawyer is not allowed to know, see or refute. The length of sentence is also kept secret, under penalty of a long jail sentence by Britain's Official Secret's Act. This trial of Marian Price is believed to have already happened in secret, with the public hearings and showtrial being simply a public rubber stamp, for the injustice against Marian Price in of British Occupied Ireland.

In an interview with Suzanne Breen, Marian Price described being force-fed:

Four male prison officers tie you so tightly 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.

This ordeal lasted six months for the political prisoner of conscience Marian Price

The British government is using the 11 September attacks and the ‘war on terror,’ as an excuse for draconian repressive measures, which politically interns Irish citizens. There is no requirement on the part of the British, to disclose evidence with their odious activity. Since internment breaches the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the British government claims there is a ‘national emergency,’ despite a peace process, as an excuse for opting out of that part of the ECHR. Using this, the British government, continues to intern Irish citizens, simply on bigoted or sectarian perceptions of paranoia and suspicion.

Gareth Pierce, a lawyer who successfully campaigned for the release of the Guilford 4 after 10 years of campaigning has commented, that the bureaucrat "is giving himself/herself the powers of a dictator". Detentions without trial and house arrest, have often been used by brutal dictatorships, who learned their techniques from their former British colonialistmasters.This internment in British Occupied Ireland is a thin end of a wedge. At some stage, anti-irish measures, will also be extended to Britain itself, to includes political activists, trade unionists, etc.

There has been considerable opposition to internment, from within the British legal profession, with Ian MacDonald QC, who was-appointed to a panel of lawyers, to represent suspects in secret courts, resigning, saying; "My role has been altered to provide a false legitimacy to indefinite detention, without knowledge of the accusations being made and without any kind of criminal charge or trial. Such a law is an odious blot on our legal landscape and for reasons of conscience I feel that I must resign".

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, commenting on the publicly apology of a British Minister, to those wrongly convicted of Guildford pub bombings, stated; "On the day when the prime minister apologises for past miscarriages of justice, his government is paving the way for many future injustices. The proposals are the latest in a long line of assaults on the right to a fair trial". These are often used to harass trades unionists and ordinary Irish people. Civil liberties have been eroded to such an extent in the British police state with internment without trial, non-jury ‘Diplock’ courts, and interrogation methods of the British, that civil rights no longer really exist.

Changes in the law, in relation to the British Occupation in Ireland, are then absorbed into general British law, with the right to silence, emasculated to extend into all domestic law in the UK. All of these measures being used against Marian Price and the Irish today, represent a threat to trade unionists, socialists and anyone who may protest against government and big business. What is used against the Irish today, is used by the British government, against others tomorrow. As the Tory government attacks living standards, jobs, services, workers, it is also bringing in laws tested on the Irish, that will be used to repress resistance to those Tory attacks on ordinary people's living standards.

The argument that internment is odious or human rights do not apply, because of a ‘state of emergency’ since 11 September 2001, is a very handy one for a Tory government, who wants to suppress all political opposition, particularly workers’ struggles. We need to stick together with principles before personalities, to argue against the British government’s use of the fear and the terrorist narrative, to push through these secret courts and totalitarian measures. Socialists, trade unionists, in tandem, with the Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English people of no property, along with civil rights campaigners, need to continue to fight all these repressive laws together, while resisting agents of division.

The political internment of Marian Price, is a clear a breach of Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights and of Article 5 of the Convention. The Convention protects the individual from being subject to torture including inhuman and degrading treatment Article 3 and also the right to liberty and security of the person Article 5. Those in detention are also protected by the United Nations Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners and by common law doctrines and the rules of natural justice, as developed by the domestic courts

The basis of Marian Price's release from prison in 1980, was a Royal Prerogative of Mercy.In the absence of the documents concerned, a decision cannot be made either by the by the British Vice-royal or the Parole Commissioners, regarding the grounds for her detention, especially when she was originally granted bail by the courts.

No legal authority can take a decision based on the contents of a document it has not seen or make inference, concerning the apparent contents of a documen,t the prosecutors mislaid or destroyed.

In cases such as Marian Price, where secret evidence is being relied upon by the British Vice-royal or supposed anonymous parole commissioners, without any safeguards in place, for the protection from abuse of the political internee, there is in this instance, a clear case of political internment without a fair or transparent trial.

The point of abuse of process, is long past, in the instance of Marian Price and the European Courts are the only peaceful route to justice in this matter of British abuse of Human Rights.

All Irish citizens and British commoners of the UK are afforded the protection of the European Convention on Human Rights as given partial effect in domestic law under the Human Rights Act 1998. This includes the human rights of political internees in British Occupied Ireland