THE British government has decided that seven Irish political prisoners now entering their third week hunger strike must die alone.
This is the consequence of Thursday decision announced through Government's Northern meland rice. ll was a move all too typical of the cruel and heartless thinking which has been the basis of policy on the H Blocks issue.
I ne seven prisoners are or demands prisoners in H Block and Armagh to be given political SLalus. This would Involve allowing the prisoners to wear their UWIl cutles. renall from prison work, associate freely with each other. organise their own education and recreation.
Until the end of last week each of the seven prisoners shared a cell witn political prisoner hunger strike. But the seven have no'v been moved into a special reserved' wing, Kesh and placed solitary confinement.
Will The transfer is seen as the latest attempt of the government to break the will of the hunger strikers.
The Northern Ireland Of fice produced squalid justification move, that the hunger strikers need ed 'a higher degree of clinical observation than is possible in the conditions pertaining in the 'dirty' cells.
But while this explains wav the prisoners are being moved to 'clean' cells does not explain WaV necessary to completely isolate the seven.
Meanwhile, "Produced S,.00o the ment has 5,000 copies of a special pamphlet entitled H Block - he 00 which is being distributed free to journalists and to foreign embassies.
This pamphlet is an exercise in 'black' propaganda, full of unfounded assertions and twisted facts.
In one bizzare passage it the attempts to justify the squalid scal cul the prisoners when they on forced to squat nakea over a mirror while the individuals' rectum is probed and searchprocedure necessary, says the pamphlet, because of frequent attempts the to smuggle articles'.
talse as this assertion may be, what is not explained is why it is the H Block prisoners, and the H Block prisoners alone, who degrading practice.
Certainly, smuggling not unknown in Long Kesh, but neither are such excerises confined the pulsuicis. .H Block — the facts also ollers evidence of the conti. nuing intransigent attitude of ine government. any room for compromise, says the pamphlet, which hardly fits with another claim in the pamphlet; that it the 'government's of in Clearing out the H Blocks cleo on are True this H Block 'Nor is there that 'the prisoners will go on being treated as humanely as a boast possible'.
For possible' now read wish' commement.