Category: Human Rights

The Many Executions of Roger Casement.

On By rebelbreezeIn 1916 Rising, British imperialism, Colombia, Executions, History, Human Rights, Ireland, irish history, Latin America, National Liberation, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

Reproduced with permission of the author; edited to format for Rebel Breeze.

Just 110 years ago on August 3rd 1916 the Irish revolutionary Roger Casement was executed at Pentonville Prison in England, hung by the neck till dead.

However, it was not the only execution of Roger Casement, he has been executed many, many times, by diverse types ranging from the British State to right wing sections of Irish society and the West Brits that populate the Irish media and Dublin’s chattering classes et al.

Of course when I say executed many times, I am not referring to his physical execution, that only happened once, though the British Empire was an expert in cruelty and came as close as you possibly can to multiple physical executions.

One of its favoured methods was for a long time the sentence of Hung, Drawn and Quartered which entailed being hung till nearly dead, brought down, disembowelled whilst still alive and then decapitated: the pinnacle of British civilisation up until 1870.

But I refer to the assassination of his character which still continues to this day.

Roger Casement portrait, hanged for his revolutionary work in Pentonville Prison, London, on 3rd August 1916.
(Image sourced: Internet)

Casement was a British diplomat for much of his life but his activism in Ireland and his later role in the lead up to the 1916 Rising brought him to the attention of the British authorities that he worked for.

He was an internationally recognised figure praised by all and sundry for his work in Congo and also in Latin America for his work on abuses in the rubber industry.

Executing someone who was ostensibly one of their own was not as easy as executing the other leaders of the Rising and so the rumour mill of the Black Diaries was produced to denigrate his character at the time.

In the 1980s, some Republicans of the Sinn Féin variety reclaimed Casement as a gay icon.

Whether Casement was gay or not would be largely irrelevant to a modern Irish audience, but it was not so at the time. Gay sex was illegal and gays were pursued ruthlessly.

Even Alan Turing who played a key role in Britain’s war against the Nazis by cracking their codes was hounded and prosecuted. Were it not for Turing the course of WWII may well have been very different, but not even that could save him.

Casement who rose up against the British Empire could have expected nothing but the worst from the British. However, alongside the allegation based on the forged Black Diaries that he was gay is also the allegation that he was a pederast.

It is beyond the scope of this article to refute all the fabricated allegations against Casement of which there are many, though Angus Mitchell’s updated biography Casement is thorough in refuting the Black Diaries and the campaign against him.[1] 

I was struck by the fact that Casement was under watch from German intelligence during his time there and yet they never recorded any of the behaviour Casement’s enemies ascribed to him, including during his period in Germany.

Why so many attempts to assassinate his character? Well, they needed to do so to justify his execution and have stuck to their murderous guns ever since.

But also, there are many myths about the 1916 leaders that portray them as insular, reactionary irredentist nationalists when in fact they were very open to other cultures and had a broad international perspective not only on culture but also on politics.

Casement’s internationalism, his outward looking view is a matter of public record. His stature as one of the great humanitarians of the 19th and 20th centuries is almost unassailable.

That the rebellion against the British Empire in Dublin could be linked to Casement’s work exposing the atrocities of the Belgian state and royal family or his work in South America in also exposing the atrocities of rubber companies cannot be tolerated.

Not by those who believe in the civilising mission of the White Man’s Burden as the reactionary vile poet Rudyard Kipling put it.

Casement is the only leader of the Rising who is both known internationally, and whose writings are available in various languages. His writings about the Amazon rubber industry are rarely out of print in South America.

The attempts to smear him got more “sophisticated” over the years as concerns about him being gay no longer had the same force and so his work is attacked. He has been accused of racism, being in effect an imperialist, despite all evidence and even part of the problem in the rubber industry.

The Murdoch press in 2010 even stated he was no humanitarian, though that particular press group is given to lying as a matter of course, one of the most infamous cases being the accusations they levelled with gay abandon at the Liverpool fans during the Hillsborough disaster.

But the Murdoch press’ accusations are not any less “serious” than some of the “academic” tripe produced by others.[2]

Casement makes for uncomfortable reading for many. You cannot consider his life, his work and the 1916 Rising without taking into account the international context, international politics and empire in all its nauseous rotten elements.

He inspired other anti-colonial leaders and his speech from the dock was such that it was referenced by independence leaders around the world.[3] 

“When languishing as a political prisoner in the 1930s, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, commented how ‘it seemed to point out exactly how a subject nation should feel.’”[4] 

His base in La Chorrera, Putumayo in modern day Colombia[5] still recalls Casement and they refer to Ireland simply as Roger’s Country.[6]

The debates about Casement are not about Casement per se, but rather his politics and what he did and sought to do in relation to the British Empire’s occupation of his homeland. Some of those who denigrate him would be happy for all of Ireland to become part of the British state again.

Roger Casement statue on Dún Laoghaire waterfront, erected August 2021. (Photo sourced: Internet)

On one level it does not matter whether he was gay, in the modern Ireland it is hardly an issue, his alleged racism and paedophilia would still be an issue however.

All of these are attempts by a state that cannot come to terms with how one of their own (initially), a man of world renown stature could rise up against their putrid empire.

As we go forward, we have not seen the last of the attempted executions of a man whose fame outlives that of all those who opposed him, argued against him, executed him physically, intellectually and ideologically.

As Angus Mitchell has pointed out about forgeries that they need to be controlled as the British did to a point that we cannot be even sure that the partial release in the 1950s and the later releases are the same documents.

The Black Diaries display the same signature. A consensus that was genuinely secure would not need the regular re-litigation it receives, nor the marshalling of reviews to maintain that consensus.

It would also not require the assurance of the Guardian correspondent that the forgery theory has been discredited when he knows full well that is not the case…

A genuine source needs neither secrecy nor maintenance. The Black Diaries have acquired both – concealed in their handling and defended ever since by a consensus that must be continually reasserted. The endless fascination is not evidence that the mystery is deep.

It is evidence that someone, somewhere, is still doing the work of maintaining the mystery and claiming it as history.[7]

What we can be certain of is that Roger Casement stood up to the empire, he fought against it and that his work is as relevant to modern Ireland and indeed the world as it was then and that is the biggest crime that Casement committed.

One we should be proud of on the 110th anniversary of his execution by the British, that led to multiple executions of his legacy at the hands of the British Establishment, West Brits and other apologists for empire.

End.

Note: You may wish to read other articles by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh on his substack https://gearoidloingsigh.substack.com/

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NOTES

[1] Mitchell, A. (2026) Casement. Haus Publishing. UK.

[2] For an analysis of these “debates” see Gerry Fitzpatrick’s articles on Casement. https://socialistdemocracy.org/RecentArticles/RecentReviewRogerCasementAndHistoryPartOne.html;https://socialistdemocracy.org/RecentArticles/RecentReviewRogerCasementAndHistoryPartTwo.html;https://socialistdemocracy.org/RecentArticles/RecentCasementAndHistoryPartThree.html ;

[3] See Roger Casement: Speech from the dock. https://www.nootherlaw.com/archive/casement-speech-from-the-dock.html

[4] Mitchell, A. (1916) 16 Lives: Roger Casement. O Brien. Dublin para 21.108

[5] The Putumayo region in which Casement travelled straddled the borders of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Land borders have changed since then, particularly after the 1932-34 war. His base was then and still is now in Colombia, some of the other parts are in Ecuador and Peru and others have changed between the countries.

[6] Irish Times (30/07/2016) Why Roger Casement is still remembered by the people of the Amazon. Sorcha Pollak. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/why-roger-casement-is-still-remembered-by-the-people-of-the-amazon-1.2737575

[7] Mitchell, A. (2026) Casement Debasement. Village 88. https://www.academia.edu/170403173/Casement_Debasement

TOXIC LOYALISM IN IRELAND – WORSE THAN DANGERS OF 12th JULY BONFIRES

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Human Rights, Indigenous or Original People, Ireland, irish history, National Liberation, Political Analysis, Popular Resistance, Racism, Religious Sectarianism, Traditions & Folk Custom2 Comments

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

If it turns out that the fire destruction of homes in Greenisland, Carrigfergus was caused by Loyalist bonfire embers,1 there may be renewed calls to ban the construction of such bonfires in the cause of safety.

Or even to prevent the deaths of people from Loyalist bonfire tower construction.2

If so, such calls will miss the main point, which is that Ulster Loyalist bonfires are an expression of sectarianism and racism. It is Ulster Loyalism itself which is toxic and more lethal than any mismanaged fire. That is what is expressed in burning Irish Tricolours, Palestinian flags, images of Irish individuals, representations of migrants and of Islam.

A Loyalist bonfire with Irish Tricolour and Palestinian flags to be burned along with images of the popular rap group Kneecap and an attempt at some message aimed at them in Irish. The rejection of SDLP and Alliance colonial political parties is clear, while that of Sinn Féin is taken for granted. (Photo: Niall Carson/ PA Wire).

The record of Ulster Loyalism is as the communal enforcers of settler colonialism upon the indigenous Irish. When the United Irishmen, mostly led by Protestants, were organising in unity with Irish Catholics for Irish independence, the Orange Order was founded in 1795.

At that time it was not controlling the indigenous Irish that was of greatest concern to the British ruling class as much as the Republican Protestants, in particular the Republicans among the Presbyterians and the Orange Order targeted them too with propaganda and intimidation.

Once the threat of Protestant Republican rebellion was contained through intimidation, repression and emigration, the Orange Order concentrated on the majority mostly Catholic indigenous Irish, with general repression and periodic pogroms, continuing after Partition of Ireland in 1922.

The colonial Statelet institutionalised in law and practice discrimination against Catholics, enlisting the help and support of the majority of the Protestant working class, with the result of the worst housing and generally lowest wages in the UK – for workers of both communities.

The Loyalists mobilised against the Civil Rights campaign in the Six Counties, a campaign led by liberal Protestants as well as Catholics. During three decades of war that followed, Loyalist militias with British colonial army and police help, carried out bombings and sectarian murders.3

At this time of year people concerned for their safety or just peace of mind temporarily leave areas near to those under Loyalist control and not only in the Six Counties colony but in parts of Scotland too.

A REACTIONARY FESTIVAL

Unionist and liberal propaganda tell us that some of the bonfires are just good community fun, without flags, politician faces, migrant boat or mosque replicas on top. But the historical excuse for the marking of the 12th of July is the victory of William of Orange’s forces at the Boyne in 1690.

Loyalist mural probably in Belfast depicting at top gable end King William at the Battle of the Boyne. (Photo source: https://petermoloneycollection.com/category/events-people/king-billy/)

The Unionists celebrate this chiefly because they perceive it as a victory of Protestant forces over Catholic but also because it facilitated the destruction of the remnants of the Gaelic Order, breaking the power of Irish resistance in Ulster and completed the British conquest of Ireland.

Even without a single representation of person, country or religion on top of the bonfires, their very nature and what they intend to celebrate is reactionary, sectarian and colonial.

Most Ulster Protestants are probably unaware that although William was a Protestant and James II a Catholic, from whom Irish Catholics hoped to gain relief from repression, the Battle of the Boyne was actually part of the Nine Years War with William fighting for the League of Augsburg.

And one of the supporters of that League was none other than Pope Innocent XI because of what he and the League saw as the threat of King Luis XIV of France. The News of William’s victory at the Boyne was celebrated with high mass in a number of Catholic countries.

This year’s Loyalist Bonfire in Moygashel, Co. Armagh, with a representation of a Mosque to be burned on top and a placard calling for ‘secure borders’ against emigration. (Photo sourced: Sky News)

Loyalism has gone on to extend its hatred of Catholicism to Islam, of indigenous Irish to migrants from other lands, for example in the recent riots in Belfast.4

‘ONE MILLION PROTESTANTS IN A UNITED IRELAND’

We are frequently counselled to tolerate Ulster Loyalism, told that we must make Loyalists welcome into a united Ireland, that we need to accept their culture on equal level with others and are also subtly threatened with the potential violence of ‘One million Protestants’ if not accommodated.

The culture of Loyalism is toxic. It is intolerant, racist, homophobic, sectarian and violent. Might as well ask black people or native Americans to accept the Ku Klux Klan – after all, the KKK too have a community culture and they live in the USA along with everyone else.

A united 32-County Ireland should of course accept everyone as citizens. That is not at all to say that it should tolerate religious sectarianism, racism or homophobia. On the contrary it should oppose those evils through education and if necessary through application of the law.5

As for the implied threat of “one million Protestants”, that is to assume that all are sectarian Loyalists or at least that such are in leadership over the rest. Not all those reared in Six Counties Protestantism are Loyalists nor in fact even necessarily Unionists.

Removing the military, ideological and structural support for Unionism and Loyalism and also the control exercised by Loyalists on sections of communities will reduce Unionism and its most virulent expression, Loyalism, to a much smaller core who will have to make their choice.

Adjust to get on with your fellow citizens, or leave.

End.

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FOOTNOTES:

1https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/fire-which-destroyed-homes-likely-caused-by-embers-from-nearby-bonfire-1925794.html

22026 https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2026/0711/1582923-bonfire-death/

2022 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-62111760

3According to Wikipedia, Loyalist paramilitaries killed 1,027 people during the 30 Years War, approximately 30% of all conflict-related deaths. 911 according to https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/violence/sutton.htm (a biased source) including 33 in the no-warning Dublin and Monaghan Bombings of 1974.

4https://www.politico.eu/article/anti-immigrant-terror-takes-northern-ireland-back-darkest-chapters/

5In the wording of the 1916 Proclamation: “The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty to all …”

SOURCES:

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/fire-which-destroyed-homes-likely-caused-by-embers-from-nearby-bonfire-1925794.html and https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2026/07/12/fire-that-destroyed-antrim-homes-likely-caused-by-embers-from-nearby-bonfire/

2026 https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2026/0711/1582923-bonfire-death/

2022 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-62111760

IRISH STATE REPRESENTATIVES DECLINE TO CONDEMN SLAVERY

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, History, Human Rights, Imperialism, Ireland, Political PrisonersLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

On 25th March 2026 the Irish State’s UN representative declined to vote in favour of the UN Declaration of the Trafficking of Enslaved Africans and Racialized Chattel Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime against Humanity.1

The voting patterns reveal much about the world and the position within it that is occupied by the Irish state. The total voting membership present was 193, out of which 123 voted YES, i.e. in favour of the resolution. But where was the Irish State? It abstained, along with 51 other states.2

The Western Powers, its chief the United States and including Australia, Canada and all western Europe, including of course all EU states, abstained.

But most of the eastern European states also abstained: Albania, Armenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine.

Voting YES in Eastern Europe were Azerbaijan, Belarus and the Russian Federation,

In Africa, including North Africa, all states voted YES for the motion.

In East Asia, China, Mongolia, North Korea and South Korea voted YES but Japan followed the Western Powers in abstaining (Taiwan is not a UN member state).

In S.E. Asia only Cambodia abstained, the rest of the states in the region voting YES.

In Central Asia, all UN member states voted YES.

In Western Asia (previously termed ‘the Middle East’), only Oman abstained, all other states in the region voting YES, i.e. in favour of the resolution.

In the Western Pacific only Palau and in the Southern Pacific, only Fiji abstained (along with Australia and New Zealand, as noted earlier, as medium powers within the Western Bloc).

In Latin America, only Paraguay abstained and as we’ll see, Argentina voted No to the motion. All other Latin American countries vote in favour.

Yes, Argentina actually voted against the motion, one of only three states voting NO, the other two being the United States and Israel.

The Irish state’s excuse for their abstention included3 “ … concerns regarding certain legal references and assertions that are either inaccurate or inconsistent with international law.”

While the Minister’s response seems to indicate concern over terminology and legality, the Irish representative’s abstention coincided with the whole of the EU, as the Minister indicated but also with most European states and with the Western Powers.

Or in line with the ‘Global North’, in other words. And against the votes of the overwhelming majority of the states of the ‘Global South’. Ireland is geographically located in Western Europe but as a neo-colony (and direct colony in the Six Counties), Ireland belongs much more to the Global South.

In declining to join the vote for the Declaration, the representatives of the Irish State not only aligned themselves with the Western Powers and took a shameful stand in modern times but also went against the history of the Irish people and even of the Irish bourgeoisie itself.

In one of the two recorded writings of 5C St. Patrick, he wrote fiercely denouncing Coroticus, the British Celtic leader who was raiding Ireland and taking slaves.4

Cromwell in 1649 after his sack of Drogheda had Irish men and women sent as slaves to English colonies in Virginia and Barbados.

Yes, I say SLAVES. Although later Irish people were transported to the British colonies as contracted indentured servants, bound to their master for up to 10 years, the notion that Cromwell managed some kind of servant recruiting service among surviving captives in 1649 is ludicrous.5

Irish patriotic songs are full of hostile references to symbolic slavery, for example The Soldiers’ Song: No more our ancient sire land/ Shall shelter the despot or the slave and Who Fears to Speak of ‘98: He’s all a knave or half a slave/ Who slights his country thus …

Many Irish Republicans of the late 18th Century including the United Irishmen abhorred slavery and boycotted sugar because it was harvested by slave labour from sugar cane on colonial plantations.

Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847), better known for campaigning for an end to the anti-Catholic laws of the English occupation, was nevertheless a tireless campaigner against chattel slavery. Escaped slave and campaigner Frederick Douglass recorded hearing him mentioned by Irish labourers in the US.

Douglas came to Ireland to escape slave-catchers, staying from 31 August 1845 to January 1846, being welcomed into upper class private houses across Ireland and to address meetings and congregations. In Dublin, Douglass attended a Repeal Association meeting to hear O’Connell speak.

Frederick Douglass (Photo sourced: Internet)

At the meeting at Conciliation Hall on September 29, 1845, learning that the famous abolitionist was in the crowd, O’Connell invited Douglass to join him on stage and to address the audience, which experience made a deep impression upon Douglass’ life.

Although Irish migrants enlisted in the US Army and fought in wars of conquest, in the US-Mexican War (1846-1848) a significant number had deserted to form the St. Patrick’s Battalion and fought on the Mexican side against the USA.

Mexico had abolished slavery in 1829 while many states in the US still upheld it, including Texas which the US had conquered earlier from Mexico.

The Young Irelanders received the Irish Tricolour from women activists of the 1848 French revolution in Paris. They supported the Second French Republic and its Abolition of slavery.

Although John Mitchell, one of the Young Irelanders’ leaders, espoused the Confederacy other Young Ireland leaders supported the Union in the American Civil War (1861-1865), including Thomas Meagher as Captain in the 69th New York Militia, later as Brigadier-General in the Union Army.

Thomas Francis Meagher as Union Army officer and Governor of Montana.
(Photo sourced: Internet)

The vast majority of Irish young males who survived emigration to the US from 1845 to 1866 fought in the Union Army in the American Civil War, which is to say on the anti-slavery side. The Fenians in the USA too, as an organisation, mostly fought on the Union side.

The Irish capitalist bourgeoisie, now the neo-colonial Gombeen class, has degraded so much, sunk so far that it cannot even stand by its own weakly progressive strands, never mind by the principles of the earlier Irish Republican bourgeoisie or those of the democratic populace today.

end.

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APPENDIX

First modern abolition of slavery

Vermont Republic (later a State in the USA) 1777

Second

Republic of France 1794 but reinstated briefly by Napoleon 1802

Third

Haiti Revolution and Independence (1791), 1804.

Fourth

Mexican Republic, 1810-1829

Fifth

UK 1833/ 34 (but the UK undermined the US Union during the American Civil War by building warships for the Confederacy, contraband smuggling and raids from Canada. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trent_Affair)

Sixth

USA 1865 at end of American Civil War

FOOTNOTES

1https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/4106660

2Ibid.

3https://www.oireachtas.ie/ga/debates/question/2026-04-14/284/ Written response by Minister for Foreign Affairs to Eoin Ó Broin TD.

4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOsHlDbKC2s

5Unlike the case of the imported black slaves, their slave status continuing on to their children if occurred at all, would have been rare unless of course the children were visibly part-African.

SOURCES

2026-03-25 UN General Assembly Resolution on the Declaration of the Trafficking of Enslaved Africans and Racialized Chattel Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime Against Humanity: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/4106660

Oireachtas question following Ireland’s abstention: https://www.oireachtas.ie/ga/debates/question/2026-04-14/284/

PEACE WITHOUT JUSTICE IN PALESTINE

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Genocide, Human Rights, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Israeli Zionism, National Liberation, Palestine, peace processes, Political Analysis, Song, Song in StruggleLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

Two famous people addressed a crowd outside Leinster House, home of the Parliament of the Irish State on 25th May. Rami Elhanan, an Israeli graphic designer, and Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian scholar, had forged a remarkable friendship.

Section of participants in the Dubs for Palestine noontime event outside Leinster House 27 May 2026. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Bassam Aramin, now a Palestinian scholar, had been sentenced to a 7-year term of imprisonment for throwing a grenade at Israeli soldiers when he was 17 and had lost his daughter later to a plastic bullet fired at short distance by an IOF soldier.

Rami Elhanan, an Israeli graphic designer, had also lost his daughter Smada but to a suicide bomber in 1997. Both men became advocates of peace and dialogue and friends to one another.

Their audience was the weekly Dubs for Palestine gathering outside Leinster House on Wednesdays 12 noon to about 1.00 pm, with speeches, songs and poetry and David Hickey as MC. This week’s was the 113th such weekly gathering and the duo had been invited to speak.

The broad group has of late been concentrating on parting the Gaelic Athletic Association1 from its sponsor and insurance underwriter, the former Nazi and since Zionist-friendly Allianz company, along with now campaigning for the Irish soccer team not to play the ‘Israeli’ team.

Rami Elhanan (L-R) and Basam Aramin addressing the Dubs for Palestine noontime event outside Leinster House 27 May 2026. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Rami Elhanan referenced his descent from Holocaust survivors and outlined the different living standards of the Palestinian and Israeli Jewish communities, commenting on the sickness in Israeli society, that they did not want to know what is being done in their name to the Palestinians.

Basam Aramin’s contribution was against the Occupation and claimed that without that, Palestinians and Israelis could live in peace (it was not clear whether he was referring to the ‘Two State’ proposal2). David Hickey, the MC of the group presented them with an Arum Lily each.3

After their speeches had been applauded, they were asked to comment on the recent Leinster House debate and the Government’s refusal to endorse a boycott of Israel. Rami Elhanan replied that boycotts entrenched opposing sides and that continuing to talk was the answer.

Singer and activist Emma Browne, invited next to the microphone, sang Keep the Little Flame Alive, among the lyrics of which Faye, Dolores, Bernadine, Table grapes and gasoline, Homemade rifles, kitchen knives, Kept the little flame alive riposted the previous speakers.

Soon afterwards, Paul Lynch read a poem of a Palestinian father mourning the killing of his child. Poet and activist Dorothy Collin declared that in order to have peace there must be justice first and that we must support the oppressed in whatever way they choose to resist.

Áine Ruttley reading her poem while addressing the Dubs for Palestine noontime event outside Leinster House 27 May 2026. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Áine Rutley also upheld our duty of solidarity and the right of the Resistance movement to choose its own methods, as did Jimi Cullen who then performed his own song composition The Freedom Fighter about a fighter from Gaza.

As I was called to the microphone, I commented that my views had already been well expressed in song and speech and that one of the forms of resistance is song, of which we had more than probably any other people in the world and sang An Dord Féinne,4 which is banned in Germany.

A little later the event came to an end with another song from Emma Browne, Never Again Is Now and with group chanting for Palestine, against Allianz and against playing the ‘Israeli’ team.

IN CONCLUSION

It is a popular proposition in certain circles that all social conflicts can be resolved by discussion, by understanding our opponents’ view. It is an attractive idea but flies in the face of history and of contemporary reality.

The interests of Occupied and Occupier are opposed and cannot be reconciled through understanding. The Occupier understands that the Occupied wish to be rid of them. The Occupied do understand that the Occupier wishes to continue appropriating their land and resources.

In this kind of situation one must win and the other lose. Far from understanding leading to peaceful resolution, the more the oppressed understand the nature of their oppressor, the more resolutely they are likely to resist and this is surely true of the Palestinians resisting the Zionist settlers.

The false proposition of resolving irreconcilable interests through discussion is usually of liberal or social-democratic origin when applied to anti-colonial, anti-imperialist and anti-racist struggles and though appearing even-handed, always ends up disempowering the victimised.

The journeys of both these men is extraordinary and interesting but it should not be presented as representative of the Palestinian struggle against Occupation, Theft and Genocide. Each father lost a child but the Palestinian is losing a lot more on top.

Furthermore, a just resolution can only come about through the total defeat of the Zionist forces and the dismantling of their State, so that if we really want that kind of resolution we are called to support the Palestinian side, unequivocally and resolutely.

Of course, in reality there is no question of real peace without justice, for ultimately the oppressed (unless wiped out) will rise in struggle again and again. The proposition of accommodation of opposites by discussion can only undermine or distract the struggle of the oppressed.

We cannot take the story of Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan, however remarkable, as even a metaphor for a just resolution nor allow ourselves to be seduced from resistance nor our struggle undermined by it.

End.

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FOOTNOTES

1The management of the Gaelic games, including hurling and Gaelic football. The GAA has teams in every one of the 32 counties of Ireland, crossing the colonial border and is the biggest community sports association not only in Ireland but also in Europe and perhaps in the world.

2This proposal came out of the Oslo Accords, to give the Palestinians 20% of their land for peace with the Zionist settlers who would own the remaining 80%. Apart from its basic injustice the proposal was never realistic since Zionist settlers continued to construct settlements on additional land. Despite this, supporting that proposal is the formal position of most western imperialist states and the Irish State and of most parliamentary political parties.

3In Ireland these are often viewed as symbolic of the 1916 Easter Rising.

4Also known as Gráinne Mhaol and Óró Sé Do Bheatha ‘Bhaile, an Irish traditional song of some antiquity refashioned into an Irish resistance song by Patrick Pearse, a martyred leader of the 1916 Rising.

SOURCES

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apeirogon_(novel)

MAN DEAD AFTER BRUTAL RESTRAINT BY ARNOTTS SECURITY

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Human Rights, Ireland, Political Analysis, Traditions & Folk Custom1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

A vigil was held today outside Arnotts department store, Dublin at the site of the death of a man yesterday while being restrained by four men, apparently employed as security by the store.

The crowd grew dense in front of Arnotts in Henry Street Dublin as more people arrived to support the vigil about the killing of Yves Sakila. A woman can be seen displaying the flag of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

A video of the four security staff restraining a man has now circulated widely. It is brutal. He is being held face down with one operative pressing his head to the ground. Another is placing his knee against the man’s neck and then shoving hard it inwards while the man’s cries are ignored.

The other two, not clearly in view, are presumably restraining at least his legs.

View of the initial crowd in front of Arnotts in Henry Street Dublin to support the vigil about the killing of Yves Sakila. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

According to media reports, the man is alleged to have shoplifted something. That is an unproven allegation but even had it been so, are we to accept the endangering of a life to defend a commercial company from the theft of some article?

Are we to accept the right of a commercial company’s security team to brutally take a suspect down and to restrain him without regard to the safety of his life?

It is possible but not yet certain that attitudes to race played a part in Yves’ treatment. One of the speakers at the vigil today seemed to say that was not so, that it could’ve happened to anyone in the hands of that security team. Perhaps. And perhaps not.

One of the Congolese adjusting flower offerings in mourning for the killing of Yves Sakila in Henry Street in front of Arnotts. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

Just over five years ago George Nchengo, a Nigerian experiencing an episode of mental illness, was shot dead by Gardaí. While brandishing a knife he was in his own family’s garden and of no immediate threat to the Gardaí or anyone else but they were cleared by GSOC investigation.1

The victim’s name is Yves Sakila, of Congolese background, who came to Ireland as a child, where he attended secondary school 22 years ago, according to one of the speakers at the vigil. A number of apparently Congolese spoke, most in English and one in French and were widely applauded.

One of the speakers angrily drew attention to the recently-reported racist comments of Fianna Fáil politician and former Taoiseach (Prime Minister equivalent) Bertie Ahern, who in his anti-immigration comment specifically mentioned people from the Congo.

Another view of the initial crowd in front of Arnotts in Henry Street Dublin to support the vigil about the killing of Yves Sakila. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

That is a man who used his Government positions to rip off the Irish people and was judged by the Mahon Tribunal to have lied during at least four sessions of the Tribunal from 2007 to 2008 about the purpose of substantial cash transactions during his time as Minister of Finance.

Gardaí were present at the vigil today but in the background. One Congolese man told the crowd he was an engineer and paid his taxes in Ireland. A few Congolese present were in Dublin Bus jackets, with a white-skinned man in the same uniform talking to them.

The crowd of both black and white-skinned people took up chants of No Violence! and Justice for Yves! Flowers were purchased from a street stall, brought to a nearby spot and attached to a lamppost. A group of African women led a chant in a circling dance around the spot.

One of the Congolese explained to me that the chant is a mourning one and, in reply to my comment about the keeners in our tradition, said that they also have women who come to funerals to perform that service; like ours, there are also stories, songs and laughter amid the mourning.

There were photo and video cameras much in evidence with individuals being interviewed but there was no mention of the vigil in Breaking News this afternoon. RTÉ News issued a reasonably full report while the Independent seemed to be slanting against the victim.2

Earlier today the Irish Network Against Racism (INAR) issued a statement expressing concern and its Director Shane O’Curry was quoted calling for a thorough investigation “in order to ensure minority ethnic community confidence in the criminal justice system.”3

While expressions of concern are welcome, one needs to ask why one should expect the minority ethnic community to have confidence in the Irish criminal justice system. Quite apart from their own experience of it, many in the host community themselves have no confidence at all in it.

A number of presumably Congolese called for further protests at the spot: Thursday at 1pm and Saturday also at 1pm, Thursday’s at least to be followed by a march to Leinster House, the seat of the Parliament of the Irish State.

IN CONCLUSION

From the video alone there are clear grounds for the charging of the security team with manslaughter.

An early inquiry should be held – not one sitting years down the road4 – to also produce recommendations on appropriate types of restraint by security guards and on what occasions.

But Arnotts, as the responsible employer of the security staff, also has tough questions to answer. According to RTÉ their management expressed regret at the death: at the very least, out of respect, Arnotts should have closed today rather than carrying on business as usual.5

end.

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FOOTNOTES

1Two years after the event.

2See Additional Sources section.

3https://inar.ie/statement-on-the-death-of-mr-yves-sakila/

4See the two-year-long investigation in the Garda fatal shooting of George Nchenko.

5In the case of a fatality on a building site in England, closing that day out of respect was a minimum demand of the Construction Safety Campaign.

ADDITIONAL SOURCES

https://www.rte.ie/news/2026/0519/1574115-yves-sakila-death

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/crime/horrible-locals-on-death-of-man-after-alleged-shoplifting-incident-on-dublins-henry-street/a/151795866.html

DUBLIN GERMAN EMBASSY PICKETED IN SOLIDARITY WITH ULM FIVE

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Human Rights, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Language, Irish Left, Israeli Zionism, Political Analysis, Political Prisoners, Song, Song in StruggleLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

Outside the German Embassy in Dublin speakers denounced the German State’s repression of Palestine solidarity activists and their treatment as terrorists in solitary confinement in dispersed locations, increasing the visiting difficulties for relatives.

Organised by the broad group Dubs for Palestine, scores of people attended a lunchtime picket of the Embassy on Monday 27th April.1 In addition to the speeches and chants, songs were sung with particular relevance to the occasion and location.

The focus of this rally was in support of a group of five activists that includes a young man formerly of Dún Laoire, Daniel Tatler-Devally and have become known as the Ulm Five. They were alleged to have broken into an Elbit Systems facility in Ulm, Germany and caused damage inside.


Lynn Treacy, of the Devally-Tatler family support grou, speaking outside gates of the German Embassy, Dublin on Ulm Five solidarity rally April 29th. (Photo: R.Breeze)

Their action was in protest at the Israeli military systems company and its part in the genocide of Palestinians supported by the German state. One of the speakers was Daniel’s father, Conor Devally while Lynn Treacy, a friend of Daniel’s mother spoke on her behalf too.

Jimi Cullen, accompanied by Dermot outside gates of German Embassy, Dublin on Ulm Five solidarity rally. (Photo: R.Breeze)

The activists are being treated as terrorists, in seven months of solitary confinement, separated and dispersed throughout different jails long distances apart. Their trial is scheduled for separate days over a period from April to July, also causing relatives and friends great difficulty.

Jimi Cullen singing and playing guitar performed his own We Are All Palestinians, developed from the well-known chant on Palestine solidarity demonstrations, accompanied by Dermot Sheehan on drum.

Two prominent members of People Before Profit spoke, Richard Boyd Barrett TD and Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, a political and cultural activist and noted singer in the sean-nós style. Raymond Deane, composer and founding member of the IPSC spoke too as did political activist and singer Diarmuid Breatnach.

Richard Boyd Barret speaking at Ulm Five solidarity rally at German Embassy April 29th. (Photo: R.Breeze)

Ó Ceannabháin spent some time demolishing the discourse that Germany has an excuse for its repression of pro-Palestine solidarity because of alleged guilt due to its perpetration of the Hollocaust. He pointed to its genocidal history in Namibia and its leadership of EU imperialism.

The PBP member and election candidate for a councillor vacancy in DCC told the rally of Germany’s banning not only some Palestinian solidarity chants2 but also the song known as ‘Óró Sé do Bheatha Abhaile’3 which he proceeded to sing, the participants joining the chorus with gusto.

Ó Ceannabháin at Ulm Five solidarity rally at German Embassy April 29th. (Photo: R.Breeze)

Diarmuid Breatnach pointed out that the German working class had a strong history of struggle and at one time led the world in socialist and social-democratic representation, even recording a vote of 4.8 million votes for the Communist Party in the midst of Nazi repression.

Hans Beimler, a communist trade union activist, Breatnach said, escaped from a Nazi concentration camp, went to Spain to fight in the Anti-Fascist War there and was killed. In his honour Breatnach sang two verses of The Peat Bog Soldiers4 followed by the ballad about Beimler.

Breatnach was accompanied on drum by Dermot Sheehan, a regular attendee at the weekly Wednesday Dubs for Palestine event outside Leinster House, seat of the parliament of the Irish State. An anti-Zionist Jewish activist spoke against Israeli Zionism and its support by Germany.

Naoise Dolan speaking at Ulm Five solidarity rally at German Embassy April 29th. (Photo: R.Breeze)

Speaking in German, Irish and English, Naoise Dolan, novelist, supporter of Palestine Action who was captured in piracy action by the IOF on the October 2025 Gaza aid flotilla, also spoke to denounce the attitude and actions of the German Government and Berlin police.

Ken Powell of Dubs for Palestine, who had acted as MC throughout, led the rally in chanting slogans of solidarity with Palestine including calling for the freedom of each of the Ulm Five by name before thanking all for their attendance and concluding the event.

end.

Early view of Ulm Five solidarity rally outside German Embassy April 29th as people are still arriving. (Photo: R.Breeze)

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FOOTNOTES

1The day the trial began in Germany but however did not proceed due to the presiding judge refusing to allow the Defence lawyers to sit with their clients and the lawyers’ refusal to proceed under those restrictions

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/27/pro-palestine-activists-face-trial-attack-israel-arms-factory-germany

2“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” which they claim is ‘anti-Semitic’; also “Globalise the Intifada.”

3An Dord Féinne is the actual title given by Patrick Pearse in his adaptation of a traditional song in Irish.

4A translation from the German song of the Communists in Nazi concentration camps which was eventually banned by the camp authorities under pain of death.

THE DICEMAN CAMETH

On By rebelbreezeIn Civil Rights, Cultural Comment, History, Human Rights, irish history, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Police Violence, Political Prisoners, Public HealthLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

Alerted by a sibling to a short exhibition on the life of the Spice Man (Thom McGinty), a remarkable performance artist and character of Dublin streets particularly associated with Grafton Street, I was fortunate to view it on its final day.

The exhibition was part of the annual Phizzfest’s annual program and was staged in the Bohemians FC room above the Phibsborough shopping centre. The space was a moderately-sized room with a few installations, a film projector, panels of images and text displayed on the walls.

One of the panels at the exhibition.

Sadly the chatter of a number of people made it difficult – for me at least – to understand all the audio accompanying the film footage but some of the images were very interesting, in particular the reaction of Dublin adults and children to the Spice Man’s street performances.

When he spoke it was with a Scottish accent, having been born to a father from Donegal and mother from Wicklow and reared in a village outside Glasgow from where he recalled journeying on holidays to Baltinglass for family reunions.

He came to economically-depressed Ireland in 1976, trying his hand at a number of occupations before he found the one that both gave him success and defined him publicly.

Typically, his performance was silent, his movement stilled or gradual, slow but moving to avoid arrest.1 But his costume and makeup were something else. Though McGinty later initiated performances in social and political protest, his initial ones in Dublin were commercial promotions.

A gaming shop called The Dice Man was the first of these and the one that gave him the nickname by which he became known and found fame. It was one of the commercial promotions, ironically not a political one, that ended with his arrest.

The promoters of a run of The Rocky Horror show in Dublin hired Thom to promote their show which he did, walking the street in ‘horror’ facial makeup, a cerise basque, fishnet stockings and a thong. He was arrested.

McGinty was charged with acts contrary to public decency under Section 5 of the Summary Jurisdiction (Ireland) Amendment Act, 1871, and with breach of the peace. Thom protested that these were his working clothes and he had been contracted to wear them.

According to the arresting gardaí, complaints had been made that Thom’s buttocks were clearly visible, “and the only thing covering his genitals was a G-string.” He was bailed from Store Street Garda Station pending the trial but could not be released until he was given a raincoat to wear.

The Act, which is still on the statute books (according to the exhibition text) had sexual connotations and could be used against gay people. McGinty’s lawyer raised the ramifications of a conviction under this Act and the judge sentenced him to probation without recorded conviction.

The 1991 production of the Rocky Horror Show at the Bord Gáis Theatre could not have asked for better publicity and McGinty personally got exposure (!) internationally and offers of work abroad as a result, from which he always returned to Ireland.

Among social causes which Thom protested with performance was the financial penalty on the Union of Students in Ireland for breach of injunctions by publishing anti-pregnancy choice information in a case pursued by SPUC.2 Another was against restrictions on the sale of condoms.3

Thom’s performances and the causes espoused would have been of interest to me had I been living in Ireland at the time but they touched on my family in Dublin a number of times. Foremost was his support for the wrongly accused, framed and brutalised of the Sallins Mail Train robbery.

One of the panels at the exhibition.

It is nearly 50 years since three socialist Republicans were wrongly convicted and sentenced to nine and twelve years imprisonment. As a result of much campaigning, two of the accused, one of whom is a sibling of mine, were released with convictions revoked after 18 months in Portlaoise jail.

The third accused, who had absconded the day prior to the sentence, returned to Ireland and was immediately jailed, campaigners then switching to obtain his freedom, gained only ‘on humanitarian grounds’ after four years in jail and a hunger strike of 38 days.

Satirising the ‘sleeping judge’ in one of the Sallins trials (he was clearly seen sleeping but his co-judges and State denied it and then to embarrassment of State, he died days later). In suits, two of the framed, (l-r) Nicky Kelly and Osgur Breatnach. One of the panels at the exhibition.

A recent concert, packed both by audience and performers in the Vicar Street Dublin venue was organised by yet another sibling to promote a campaign for an inquiry into how that travesty of justice could be carried out by state police, Government and judiciary right up to the High Court.4

Thom was a strong supporter of liberal social rights such as the right to prevent pregnancy or birth and for gay and lesbian rights. His defence of framed Irish Socialist Republicans centred on their right to a fair trial and not to be brutalised, as did his support for the Birmingham Six.

One of the panels at the exhibition.

But he was far from being an Irish Republican. Dressed as the Grim Reaper with scythe, Thom also led a delegation of ‘Peace Train’5 people in protest to the offices of Provisional Sinn Féin where, in a twist of fate, it was another sibling of mine who had to receive him and to face the cameras there.

At the time, SF was the political party leading a struggle for Irish reunification and independence from British occupation and, though its leadership and much of the party’ base support was socially conservative, it was not that which focussed the attacks of two states and a statelet6 upon it.

And those armed and judicial attacks were backed by the imperialist and neocolonial-dominated liberal and social-democratic sector of society, the likes of the ‘Peace (sic) Train’ and ‘Peace Women’.7 I would have argued strongly with Thom I’m sure but regret very much his passing.

Thom McGinty (1952-20/21 February 1995)

Thom McGinty’s funeral, from one of the panels at the exhibition.

end.

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FOOTNOTES

SOURCES

Biography Thom McGinty: https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/the-dice-man-5007353-Feb2020/

The Sallins Mail Train frame-up and campaign: https://sallinsinquirynow.ie/

The ‘Peace People’ etc, Mairéad Corrigan/ Maguire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mairead_Maguire

1On ‘loitering’ charges.

2Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child. After a long struggle ending pregnancy became legal within the Irish state but regulated under the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018, allowing for termination on request up to 12 weeks of pregnancy. Following a 2018 referendum, abortion services began on 1 January 2019, providing free access for residents.

3Following campaigning and public defiance of the law, restrictions on the sale of condoms were only finally removed in 1993 in the Irish state.

4https://sallinsinquirynow.ie/

5https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_Train_Organisation The issue is not whether bombing the railway line was a useful activity or not but rather that its condemnation took the place of condemning and drawing attention to the British occupation of a colony in Ireland and the brutal repression of resistance to that occupation.

6Although it has the trappings of a state, the Northern Ireland (sic) Assembly is a UK colonial administration.

7

TWO RECENT EVENTS CONNECTED DECADES EARLIER

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, France, History, Housing Struggle, Human Rights, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, National Liberation, Police Violence, Political Analysis, Political PrisonersLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 3mins.)

A recent arrest in France and concert in Dublin are connected by events in both countries a half-century earlier.1

The arrest in question by French police was on 16 April of Mahmoud Khader Abed Adra, for alleged involvement in the 1982 attack on the Jo Goldenberg restaurant in the Marais district of Paris.2

The report of the arrest came less than a week after the Dublin commemoration by concert of another event, also half a century earlier. And strangely, there was a connection between both events.

On 11 April, a concert was held in Vicar Street to commemorate the arrest, torture, framing of three Irish Socialist Republicans and their jailing in 1986.3

Musicians, poets and journalists came together at the event, organised by musician Cormac Breatnach, brother of one of the accused, to commemorate the event and to press for an inquiry into three activists being tortured into making false confessions incriminating themselves.

And into how, despite their retractions and medical evidence of torture, they were then convicted of an event they had not committed. And how the legal system, from the Court of Appeal to the High Court, had all colluded in the injustice.

The trial in Ireland was for the Sallins Mail Train Robbery of 1976. The convicted three were Osgur Breatnach, Nicky Kelly and Brian McNally: Breatnach and Kelly were sentenced in the no-jury Special Criminal Court to 12 years, McNally to nine.

The day before sentence, Nicky Kelly jumped bail but returned nearly two years later when the convictions of Breatnach and McNally were deemed ‘unsafe’ and that their statements had ‘not been made voluntarily’.

However, the State insisted that the time period for registering an appeal had by then been exceeded and it took much campaigning and his own hunger strike before Kelly was finally released, on a Presidential pardon for a crime he had not committed.

A fourth, Mick Plunkett, had stood trial with the three on the same charges but having succeeded in not making a false confession under torture and threats, was finally acquitted. The French connection with the extradition of Mahmoud Khader Abed Adra, is Plunkett’s.

Mick Plunkett4 had decided that, despite his escaping the framing, that the Garda Heavy Gang5 would be out to get him and that a departure to other climes might he healthy. Plunkett settled in France but did not give up his politics.

Photo: Joel Robine/ AFP

The Jo Goldenberg restaurant was subjected to a grenade and firearms attack on 9 August 1982, killing six and injuring 22.

On 28 August that year, Plunkett, Mary Reid and Stephen King (not the novelist) were arrested by a special anti-terrorist unit of the Gendarmerie (perhaps Le Gang Lourd, the Heavy Gang a la Francaise!).

The police claimed that all three were part of a terrorist organisation and that leaflets confirming that had been found in their apartment. And also firearms. All the allegations were vigorously denied by the three Irish activists.

Eventually the case against all three fell apart and they were released with, in time, the Gendarmerie admitting that the evidence against them had been ‘planted’ and the special unit was disbanded.6

One of the acts which the French police had claimed for the organisation of which they had falsely claimed membership of Plunkett, Reid and King was the attack on the Jo Goldberg Restaurant — the same incident for which the French Police have now charged Mahmoud Khader Abed Adra.

The French state got Khader Abed by extradition from Occupied Palestine. The State of Israel does not extradite its citizens anywhere but the Palestinian Authority was willing to do the job for France, which last year had officially recognised ‘the State of Palestine.’

end.

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Footnotes

1This story was published recently in the Irish language-only weekly An Páipéar (available in newsagents and online).

2https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/17/france-arrests-suspect-over-1982-attack-on-jewish-restaurant

3https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-41819201.html

4See report on his funeral https://rebelbreeze.com/2022/05/04/death-of-a-retired-warrior/

5https://sallinsinquirynow.ie/heavy-gang-named/

6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_of_Vincennes

Sources & Further reading

Home

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/false-arrest-victims-call-on-judge-to-act-against-french-police/26257140.html

Gardaí Threaten Arrests to Remove Solidarity Picketers at Dublin Court

On By rebelbreezeIn Civil Rights, Genocide, Human Rights, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Israeli Zionism, Middle EastLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

Participants in a small picket outside a Dublin court on 13 April were threatened with arrest by Gardaí unless they dispersed.

The picketers were supporting two activists facing charges after being pepper-sprayed by Gardaí on the Dublin docks in October last year.

The event in October had been to symbolically blockade Ireland against imports from the Zionist state due to its genocide of Palestinians. Ireland is the second-largest importer of Israeli goods next to the EU and the largest single-state importer of all, exceeding even the USA.

Some of the Garda vehicles attending the Garda repression of picketers. (Photo: R.Breeze)

Pickets outside the Court of Criminal Justice in Dublin have been a regular feature in recent years, not only in support of Palestine solidarity activists but also anti-NATO protesters, housing activists and Irish Republicans (the latter being brought through the no-Jury Special Criminal Court).

While some attend the actual court case others picket outside with flags, placards and banners. Until the incident being described there has been no recorded trouble from the Gardaí. However on the 13th picketers were approached by at least 15 Gardaí from five Garda vans.

More of the Garda vehicles attending the Garda repression of picketers. (Photo: R.Breeze)

First they went to a lone picketer who was standing with Palestinian flags on the line dividing west from eastbound traffic outside the court. It is not known what words were exchanged between them but they accompanied him to the roadside for some time before detaining him in handcuffs.

The Garda leader then told the picketers immediately outside the court to leave the area and when they asked what law they were accused of breaking refused to reply except to directed them under the Public Order Act to leave or he would arrest them.

Some of the Garda participating in the repression of picketers, some of whom have already crossed to the other side of the road. (Photo: R.Breeze)

Most of the picketers crossed the road to the north-east side but after the Gardaí departed, slowly drifted back. Gardaí returned, their previous leader visibly angered as he once again told them to leave, adding that should he find them in the area, he would arrest without warning.

Once again most picketers crossed the road away from the Court but shortly thereafter the court adjourned, both activists of the Dublin Port incident emerging along with their supporters who had attended inside and shortly thereafter all dispersed in various directions without incident.

The legal advice is that neither the individual picketer in the road nor the others nearer the court were breaking any law and that the Gardaí, under instructions from somewhere, exceeded their powers, including under the Public Order Act.

Gardaí in front of the Court after repression of picketers. (Photo: R.Breeze)

The picketers viewed the Garda actions as an attack in general on civil liberties, the right to peacefully assemble and demonstrate and in particular on the right to express solidarity with the Palestinian people and to protest Irish State collusion in Israeli State genocide.

A couple of separate incidents occurred prior to the Garda action. In one, a seemingly hysterical man appeared before the solidarity picketers, with two others videoing him while he brandished a tabloid newspaper with a headline alleging a sexual offence by a migrant.

He departed quickly shouting racist sentences. Later another in similar vein approached to within a foot of the picketers asking them where they were from, alleging that sexual assaults were committed only by immigrants and twice made an unsuccessful grab for a Palestinian flag.

The two Palestine activists are due back in court on 11th June and the arrested picketer, it is believed, on the 12th. It has been suggested that legal observers trained by the Irish Council for Civil Rights will be in attendance outside, as they were during the Garda attack last October.

end.

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Further related reading:

STRONG SOLIDARITY SUPPORT FOR ARRESTED PORT BLOCKADE ACTIVISTS
THE COST IS NOT HIGH ENOUGH

Irishman Among Activists Against Genocide Jailed by the German State

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Human Rights, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, NATO, Police Violence, Political Analysis, Political Prisoners, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

An Irishman, Daniel Tatlow-Devally is one of five people who allegedly damaged equipment in the Israeli arms company Elbit in Germany last year. They are charged under anti-terror legislation and kept in solitary confinement in separate jails.

Daniel’s mother complained that for a month friends and relatives were prevented from making any communication with the detained: “They thought we’d disowned them.” By the time the trials are expected to conclude, the five will have spent around around 11 months in custody.1

Two weeks ago Daniel’s father addressed the weekly Dubs for Palestine rally outside Leinster House in Dublin to raise awareness of his son’s situation and to ask for support. A protest at the German Embassy has been organised for Monday 27 April at 1pm.2

In recent years the German state has earned a reputation for repression of freedom of expression of pro-Palestine sentiments or criticism of the Israeli Zionist state, including banning demonstrations, classifying anti-Zionism as ‘anti-Semitism’ and arresting people for wearing the kiffiyeh.

A 2025 report “documents how German authorities systematically curtail freedoms of assembly, expression, academia, and art when it comes to anti-genocide protests and advocacy for Palestinian rights …

… from legal repression, criminalisation, and surveillance to delegitimizing dissent within the educational sector, arts, and media. Such measures …. form a pattern of political persecution that undermines democratic principles and international human rights obligations.

European legal expert Alice Garcia of the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC) cautioned that current practices in Germany are “unequivocally comparable to practices of authoritarian regimes.”

The Civic Space Report 2025 by the European Civic Forum identifies Germany as one of the most repressive EU states in relation to Palestine advocacy, highlighting the systematic misuse of public order laws and excessive use of executive and police power (European Civic Forum, 2025, p. 20).3

Their police have been widely accused of violence towards peaceful demonstrators and a video circulated widely on 28 August 2025 showing a Berlin police officer punching Kitty O’Brien twice in the face, causing her to bleed and the same officer snapped the humerus bone in their arm.4

O’Brien was charged with assault but the circulation of video of the incident caused the police to change the charge to ‘insulting the police’ by calling them “genocide supporters”.

Speaking on RTÉ’s News at One on 5 August, Kitty described their injuries after arriving home from hospital the previous day: “I have a broken nose, a broken humerus bone (with 11 screws holding the bone together), and potentially long-standing radial nerve damage.”5

Last year an independent protest took place outside the Dublin German Embassy about the treatment of Kitty O’Brien, other Palestine solidarity protesters and the German state’s collusion with the genocide of Palestinians by the ‘Israeli’ state, its biggest supplier of arms after the USA.

HISTORICAL GENOCIDE ‘GUILT’ USED TO JUSTIFY GENOCIDE TODAY

Ironically, Germany’s ruling class uses the Nazi history of its state’s genocide of Jews (also Roma, Disabled, Gays & Lesbians, Communists etc) as justification for its support for the Zionist state’s genocide of Palestinians today. But that ‘guilt’ also infected the Left resistance movement.

For many years large sections of the German Left would counter calls for solidarity with struggles of national liberation abroad with their support for anti-nationalismus (anti-nationalism), erroneously identifying that as the source of fascism, rather than just a factor exploited by fascists.

In the mid-19th Century and up until the 1930s, most observers expected Germany to be the first socialist state, so powerful were its communist and social-democratic movements. Even after the Communist Party had been banned by Hitler, it received around 4.8 million votes.

After the defeat of Nazism in the Anti-Fascist War (WWII) the USA recruited not only Nazi scientists but also Nazi intelligence agents for its anti-Soviet campaigns and built NATO as an imperialist military alliance and a specifically anti-communist alliance, with Germany at its heart.

The USA built military bases across Germany and, after the fall of the USSR, began to spread NATO membership in states eastward to encircle Russia.

The German state has hard economic motivation for supporting the Israeli state in addition to any ideological reasons; after the USA, Germany is the biggest arms supplier to the Zionist State6 and approved $7.8 million in arms exports to Israel during the USA and Israel’s strikes on Iran.7

Daniel can be written to:
Daniel Tatlow-Devally,
JVA Ulm,
Frauengraben 4,
89072 Ulm,
An Ghearmáin.

End.

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Footnotes

1https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/germany-five-activists-held-alleged-elbit-systems-break-in-isolation-families-say

2The German Embassy’s address is 31 Trimleston Road, Booterstown in the south-eastern Dublin suburbs, about 10 minute’s walk from Booterstown train Station on the DART system. By BUS: Rock Road, Bellevue Avenue – Routes serving this stop: 4, 7, 7A, 8. CAR: No parking available on site – on-street parking (Pay & Display, max. 3Hrs).

3https://elsc.support/resource_ext/repression-of-palestine-solidarity-in-germany/

4https://www.rte.ie/news/2025/0905/1532044-irish-activist-berlin/

5Ibid.

6https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/11/germany-arms-transfers-to-israel-reckless-unlawful-and-risks-complicity-in-israels-international-crimes/

7The approvals ran from 28 February to 27 March and were disclosed in responses from the Economy Ministry to queries by The Left party.

Links

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