I Remember Bobby Sands (1954-1981)

Bobby Sands died on May 1, 1981, in a British prison after a 65-day-long hunger strike to protest the conditions under which Irish political prisoners were held. Nine other IRA prisoners died before the hunger strike ended on October 3, 1981. Just a few weeks earlier the imprisoned Sands had been elected MP in a special election. Bobby Sands became a symbol of the IRA and his death gained media attention through out the world. His funeral drew a hundred thousand mourners.

Sands kept a secret diary for the first 17 days of his hunger strike, he had to hide the paper and the pen in his body cavities.

In his last entry he wrote:

I was thinking today about the hunger-strike. People say a lot about the body, but don't trust it. I consider that there is a kind of fight indeed. Firstly the body doesn't accept the lack of food, and it suffers from the temptation of food, and from other aspects which gnaw at it perpetually.

The body fights back sure enough, but at the end of the day everything returns to the primary consideration, that is, the mind. The mind is the most important.

But then where does this proper mentality stem from? Perhaps from one's desire for freedom. It isn't certain that that's where it comes from.

If they aren't able to destroy the desire for freedom, they won't break you. They won't break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show.

It is then we'll see the rising of the moon.

I was eleven years old when Bobby Sands died. I knew nothing about the IRA, their concerns, their demands or their tactics, but his protest, his steadfastness in the face of death, and his death itself burned into my memory. I was left with a lifelong sympathy for the IRA.

When I read that a large percentage Guantanamo Prisoners have begun a hunger strike, I remember Bobby Sands.