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Voice of the Troubles: 25 Years After the Irish Hunger Strike
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Part 2
Part 3
25 years ago 10 prisoners in Northern Ireland went on hunger strike. They all died over a period of four months and the longest went without food for 73 days. To Catholic nationalists, these men died for Irish freedom. But to Protestant loyalist, they were common criminals.
The hunger strike represented the peak of the Troubles in Ireland. As they died one by one, thousands took to the streets worldwide to protest. The conflict in Northern Ireland is a depressing example of unresolved conflict, one we see repeated now as as Israel invades Lebanon and American families learn of dying sons and daughters in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bobby Sands (5 May, 66 days)
Francis Hughes (12 May, 59 days)
Patsy O’Hara (21 May, 61 days)
Raymond McCreesh (21 May, 61 days)
Joe McDonnell (8 July, 61 days)
Martin Hurson (13 July, 46 days)
Kevin Lynch (1 Aug, 71 days)
Kieran Doherty (2 Aug, 73 days)
Thomas McElwee (8 Aug, 62 days)
Michael Devine (20 Aug, 60 days)
The first person to go on hunger strike was Bobby Sands.
Sands was born in Abbots Cross, though his family moved from town to town because of intimidation by Protestant loyalists. However, it’s not even clear if Sands was a Catholic. His last name was derived from a paternal grandfather who was a Protestant. Regardless, Sands was forced from his job at gunpoint by loyalists and in 1972 he joined the Irish Republican Army.
Many consider the IRA a terrorist group guilty of atrocities almost too graphic for words. Pulling out teeth, plucking fingernails, removing tattoos with a knife, removing genitals and stuffing them in the victim's mouth. 
Others had concrete blocks dropped on their bodies to break and crush their limbs. In some cases the victims claimed to have been force-fed drugs to keep them conscious in order to prolong the suffering. Bodies were often stripped naked and left on the roadside, some boobytrapped in order to kill other members of the security forces.
These scenes will come to repeat themselves in other parts of the world.
To combat the violence the British government planned Operation Demetrius, or Internment. IRA suspects were seized from their homes in the middle of the night and taken to secret prisons where they were subjected to the so-called “five techniques.” 
The five techniques were wall-standing, hooding, subjection to noise, deprivation of sleep, and deprivation of food and drink. Medical reports later showed that these practices had negative effects on the detainees physical and especially mental health.
The European Court of Human Rights would not call Internment torture but many Irish nationalists did. Both sides of the conflict in Northern Ireland clamored for propriety over the truth. Both sides killed for it while a foreign army tried desperately to keep the peace.
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Musical credits: The Jolly Beggermen, Mark Gunn, Anuna, The Brobdingnogian Barbs, Ray Fisher, and Maire Ni Bhraonain
Posted by 1000monkeys on July 16, 2006 11:37 PM