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Drawing Support: Murals in the North of Ireland
Republican Mural - Hunger Strike
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Text and Photograph: Bill Rolston ... Page Compiled: Fionnuala McKenna
Theme
Bust of Bobby Sands.
Mural painted in commemoration of the republican hunger
strike, 1981, in Long Kesh prison, near Lisburn, 10 miles from
Belfast. Republican prisoners (and loyalists) had had political
status until 1976, allowing them to avoid prison work, wear
their own clothes, and maintain their own military command
structure in the prisoner. That status was withdrawn, and the republican
prisoners engaged in a long process of non-cooperation, which
included both the refusal to wear uniforms (they dressed only in
towels or blankets), and a no-wash protest. Bobby Sands was the
Officer Commanding the Republican prisoners, and was the first
of ten hunger strikers to die in 1981 in an attempt to have
political status returned. The quotation in the mural is from
Sands' own writings.
Location and Date
Sevastopol Street & Falls Road, Belfast, 1990
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