European Commission blames H' Block prisoners

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:oot of the problem: British Army By no stretch of the imagination are Irish republican prisoners treated as common criminals by the British occupying army in the six counties of Northern They are interrogated, beaten and tortured at special RUC/army barracks reserved for political opponents of imperial.

They are interned for months or years on ena by being imprisoned without trial "on remand"-a treatment reserved for political prisoners.

They are hauled before special no-jury Diplock courts, in which the most common "evidence" is a "confession" extracted under torture or the secretive statement of an undisclosed police or army officer. Amnesty International has pointed out that 70-90% of Diplock court convictions are based wholly or mainly on "admissions of guilt"-obtained in the interrogation centre.

Once sentenced, republican prisoners are dispatched to special jails-Long Kesh and Armagh Jail-at which handpicked thugs use tactics varying from beatings to the use of drugs in a systematic bid to crush their fighting spirit and cow and humiliate them.

Yet in the view of the European Commission on Human Rights, republican PoWs are not entitled to be regarded as political prisoners!

This ruling, in response to an application by four republican victims of the Long Kesh 'H' Blocks, comes as no surprise.

The Commission is a tool of European imperialism: the "rights" it defends are those of the capitalist class to exploit and oppress.

Nevertheless its criticisms of the role of British imperialism in the 'H' Blocks will come as a certain embarrassment to Thatcher and is a renewed condemnation of the Callaghan/ Mason leadership, which review" its reaction to protesting prisoners; and to reconsider a prison regime that had manifestly failed to stem prisoners' protests.

And the Commission accepts that the prisoners are. denied any effective means to complain about their treatment under the existing law in the occupied six counties.

But, in the true imperialist tradition, the Commission declares on the one hand that the prisoners are enduring "almost subhuman" conditions -while claiming on the other that it was all their own fault!

The bitter fact is that, once in prison, there are virtually no forms of protest-other than escape-which do not in the short term worsen the plight of their courageous and bitter struggle for the recognition of their political cause, and the rejection of criminal status.

In Britain a new 'Charter 80' is campaigning in the labour movement for the restoration of their political status, and should be supported.

But trade unionists and socialists must . also fight to break the labour bureaucracy from their support for imperialist repression and step up the struggle for the immediate withdrawal of British troops from Only when freed from the yoke of imperialism and able to determine their own future can the Irish people begin to establish genuine human rights.