Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 5 mins.)
The monthly picket of the Dublin Anti-Internment Committee on Saturday attracted broad support across the spectrum from Irish Republican to Anarchist and revolutionary Socialist. Shoppers and passers-by on Dublin’s busy Henry Street observed the picket with interest, some stopping to engage the picketers in discussion. Several hundred leaflets were distributed explaining that, albeit under another name, internment without trial continues in Ireland on both sides of the British Border.
Just prior to that event, a mostly young Black Lives Matter campaign group had held a lively protest also in Henry Street and the Debenham’s sacked workers’ campaign were demonstrating outside the entrance to the store from which the staff were sacked while they were out due to the pandemic lockdown. The BLM group protest then moved to the Spire and apparently there had been a protest about political prisoners in Belarus outside the GPO, while the Far-Right and fascists gathered to support an Irish Yellow Vests demonstration outside the Custom House on the north quays. Earlier there had also been a protest in Molesworth Street at the auctioning by Whyte’s of a large number of artifacts of Irish history, including a Wolfe Tone’s handwritten notes for his address to the court that sentenced him to hang in 1798.
AGAINST EXTRADITION
As well as about the practice of jailing Republican activists without jail, the picket today focused on the cases of three Irish people being extradited to other states and of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, 36 years so far in a French jail.
A spokesperson on the issue of extradition pointed to, apart from Liam Campbell, another two Republicans: Ciaran Maguire, currently in Port Laoise jail fighting extradition to the Six Counties British colony and Sean Farrell, who was extradited there fairly recently from Scotland. The spokesperson conveyed solidarity greetings to their families and supporters and, in regard to Maguire and Farrell, to stated their attendance in order to “highlight injustice by the British and the the ineffectiveness of the ‘Free State’ Government” in allowing these.
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Liam Campbell is a veteran Irish Republican whom the Lithuanian state seek to extradite to face charges of arms smuggling but he has never been nor is he accused of ever having set foot in that country. For a state to be able to extradite a person who has never been in their country is a serious precedent to set — it would have permitted the USA for example to extradite Julian Assange to face trial there for what a number of their politicians have described as “spying” — i.e exposing many dark secrets of human rights violations through “Wikileaks” In fact the USA military brought prisoners to an illegal jail they ran in Lithuania for which they were heavily criticised. Nevertheless a judge in the Irish High Court has agreed to the extradition and Campbell, currently in custody, awaits to appear in court to be served with the warrant and flown abroad. During this week Donegal Council passed a motion condemning the extradition of Campbell and will be writing to the Government to ask that the extradition be not permitted.
36 YEARS IN JAIL, SEVEN YEARS PAST RELEASE DATE
According to the End Internment FB page, this month’s international focus was on Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, Lebanese but “in a French jail for 36 years now due to fighting in defence of Palestine during the 1982 Lebanon War. 14 January 2013 was the scheduled date for Abdallah to be released and deported to Lebanon after almost 30 years of imprisonment in France.”
(Photo source: Internet)
BIG POWER INFLUENCE
There are allegations that both the extradition demands and the ongoing keeping in jail of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah are influenced by the interventions of other powerful states. It is claimed that Campbell’s extradition to Lithuania is influenced by the UK authorities, although similar charges against Campbell have already failed to have him convicted by a British court. In Abdallah’s case, after a number of legal cases his release date was set for six years ago but the USA objected, the French Minister of the Interior then refused to sign his release papers and Abdallah remains in a French jail.
Commenting on the picket today, a spokesperson for the Dublin Anti-Internment Committee indicated that the organisers were pleased with the numbers attending and the broad spread of political ideology represented there.
“We are an independent committee and we welcome the participation of all who are genuinely concerned with civil rights, in particular the right to organise and to protest to affect change” said the spokesperson. “Today there are Irish Republicans, Anarchists and revolutionary Socialists here, many of them independent activists and we view “that very positively. Indeed there are other bodies that we think should be represented here too – the protection of civil rights is a concern for all democratic people.”
The Dublin Anti-Internment Committee expects to organise another picket on similar issues next month, the details as usual to be announced on the End Internment FB page.
End.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
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