RSF President & Vice President to go before British Court

The trial of 37 people – including the President of Republican Sinn Féin Des Dalton and Vice-President Fergal Moore – for participation in an anti-internment march in Lurgan Co Armagh in January of last year is due to take place in Craigavon Courthouse, Co Armagh on January 10, 11 and 12.

In a statement Republican Sinn Féin described the prosecutions as an attack on the right to publicly express a political opinion.

“In the Middle East people are being applauded for coming out on to the streets to demand political change but in the Occupied Six Counties Irish people are being prosecuted by the British state for doing the same thing. The prosecution of people for participating in a protest march – held on January 23 last to call for the release of veteran Lurgan Republican Martin Corey who has been held without trial in Maghaberry prison since April 2010 – is clearly an attempt to force Irish Republicans off the streets and to silence anyone who refuses to accept British occupation.

“Not for the first time Irish Republicans find themselves before a British Court for upholding the principle of “the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland” and in defiance of  laws designed to silence the voice of protest. This political trial puts the political reality of the Six-County state under the spotlight and shows it to be still fundamentally undemocratic.”

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Republican Sinn Féin Westmeath is urging all who believe in the unfettered right of the Irish people to the ownership of Ireland not to be intimidated by these acts of repression and to join with us in the struggle for a new Ireland.  There are those in Ireland who seek to maintain the unjust British occupation and indeed the old order of doing things the British way yet by their actions they only succeed in achieving one thing, exposing their fear of unpurchased Irish Republicansim.  Republican Sinn Féin is the only organisation in Ireland that offers a long term viable alternative to the failed and discredited system of partition through our policy document Éire Nua calling for a federal Ireland based on the sound principles of socialism and republicanism.

These arrests and these trials will fail miserable.  Republican Sinn Féin will neither be purchased nor intimidated, we will continue to organise the Irish people as they continue to wake up to the reality of the situation in the occupied six-counties of our country.  We will continue the campaign on behalf of Martin Corey and the Republican POW's and we will continue to stand in defense of the All-Ireland Republic against the British and their Free State Lackeys.