As we in Ireland engage in the commemoration of the twentith anniversary of the 1981 hunger strike which claimed the lives of three heroic INLA and seven IRA volunteers, a hunger strike by political prisoners has claimed two more lives. The hunger strike, now having lasted more than 150 days, began late last year to protest the planned transfer of the political prisoners to 'F-type' prisons. Much as was the case with Irish republican and republican socialist prisoners of war when they held political status, the Turkish prisoners maintained their own organisation and command structures within the prisons they had been held in. The 'F-type prisons provide isolation cells intended to destroy the political prisoners collectives. In response to the two most recent deaths on hunger strike, a spokesperson for the Irish Republican Socialist Party's International Department Secretariat had the following to say.

"We in the IRSP recognise that when prisoners take the decision to embark on a hunger strike to the death, they do so in the face of government intransigence, in defense of deeply held convictions, and in support of just and reasonable demands. With our Easter commemorations just concluded, the memory of our own martyred comrades from 1981 -- Patsy O Hara, Kevin Lynch, and Mickey Devine -- is fresh in our minds and so we do not simply have solidarity with the prisoners and their comrades in Turkey, we have genuine empathy as well.

"During the armed attacks on the political prisoners in Turkey, in December, undertaken to force these prisoners into 'F-type' prisons, 30 prisoners were murdered by the Turkish state, with many more were injured and tortured. Despite this, the hunger strike has continued. The European Union and the United States, so swift to lecture certain other nations about human rights, have remained silent in the face of these outrages, making plain that the only rights they are concerned with are the right to profits and the right to rely on Turkey to provide NATO with strategic bases in the Middle East.

"On Easter we read out our own Roll of Honour, paying homage to those who gave their lives in the struggle for Irish national liberation and socialism. It is with equal reverence that we now list the heroic political prisoners who have died in Turkey on hunger strike:

Bulent Coban - DHKP-C (Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front);
Adil Kaplan - TKP(ML) (Communist Party Of Turkey Marxist-Leninist);
Fatma Ersoy - DHKP-C;
Abdullah Bozdag - DHKP-C;
Erol Evcil - DHKP-C;
Nergiz Gulmez - TKP(ML);
Celal Alpay - TKP(ML); and
Tuncay Gunel - TIKB (Union Of Revolutionary Communists Of Turkey)."

In conclusion, the IRSP spokesperson said:

"We call upon the Turkish government to release all Turkish and Kurdish political prisoners it now has incarcerated. Barring that, we hope all those who support human rights and justice to join with us in calling for recognition of these prisoners as political prisoners and for them to be given back the ability to create their own organisation within the prisons, the granting of their just demands, and for them to be treated with the dignity and humanity that is due to all political prisoners."

STATEMENT ENDS