RAFFLE TO AID FORMER IRISH NATIONAL LIBERATION

The International Republican Socialist Network is hosting a raffle to
benefit Dessie O Hare, a recently released prisoner of war of the
Irish National Liberation Army. Why, one might ask, does O Hare
merit being singled out for such support? A fair question,
especially considering it is contrary to normal practices of the IRSN
to focus on the needs of an individual, especially one no longer
incarcerated.

There are significant reasons for such an exception, however. Dessie
O Hare was eligible for release under the general amnesty applied to
all other Irish republican and republican socialist prisoners of war
in June 2000, following the Good Friday Agreement. Dessie O Hare was
not released at that time, however; instead he remained incarcerated
for an additional six years! To provide the details, we quote
Dessie's own telling of his tale:

"I can only speak truthfully and accurately concerning my own case,
where the Irish Government have failed to implement the Good Friday
Agreement, i.e. their decision to arbitrarily exclude me from the
early release scheme. The scheme was set out in the GFA, for the
phased release of all Political Prisoners, and a completion time
scale of two years meant that any POWs remaining after June 2000
would be automatically released. The Irish and British Governments
passed appropriate laws to facilitate the releases and began
processing the POWs—which basically went on the lines of `first in,
first out'.

"The British released almost immediately those Prisoners who had
served out most of their sentence, then prisoners who were deemed the
least threat to the Peace Process were released, after that they
began releasing high risk prisoners and finally they began releasing
those who had just begun their sentences. These phased releases
continued for two years until the cut off date (28-06-00) was
reached, and on that day all the remaining political prisoners were
released en masse. But I wasn't released on that date with all the
remaining prisoners, so I immediately began legal proceedings to
contest the legality of my detention, citing that under the Good
Friday Agreement I should have been released by June 2000 and was
therefore illegally detained.

"The legal proceedings went by way of judicial review. Initially the
government said that I failed to apply for release under the GFA.
When this was done, they shifted the goalposts and said I wasn't a
POW proper! So when my application to rejoin the INLA wing in the
prison was accepted, they then shifted the goalposts again by saying
my case could not be processed because I wasn't speaking (I had taken
a yogic vow of silence and hadn't spoken for six years). When I made
a forty-page written submission, they simply rejected it and said I
would have to speak! So I spoke, which led them to shift the goal
posts yet again and this time they stooped to Siberian tactics and
said I wasn't complying with the process by refusing to allow a
psychiatric report. So this forced me to acquiesce and allow a
psychiatric report (which resulted in a clean bill of health). Then
two months after that report was made, they ordered another one and
when that psychiatric report failed to turn up anything detrimental
that they could present in court, they then ordered a different
psychiatrist! And, when this report was also a favourable one, they
then ordered a fourth report from another doctor; this time their own
clinical psychologist from the Department of Justice, and after
exhaustive interviews conducted over three days with Dr. Des
O'Mahony, I received a further healthy Compus Mentis report.

"The disgraceful and malicious intent of those who put me through all
these hoops is all the more accentuated by the very fact that both
Republican and Loyalist Prisoners who were convicted of very serious
crimes, including capital murder, were all released under the terms
of the Good Friday Agreement and not a single one of them was
submitted to the demands that have been placed on me. Anyhow, after
a year's protracted legal wrangling in the courts, the then Minister
for Justice, John O'Donohue, officially recognised me as a Qualifying
Prisoner under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement."

O Hare has spent all but one of the past 27 years of his life behind
bars for his service to the struggle for national liberation and
socialism in Ireland—an exceptional sacrifice to make for one's
convictions—and he can anticipate the most severe bias against him in
any endeavor to seek employment, will be a highly sought after target
of loyalist death squads, and will likely face almost unending
harassment from the authorities. In short, Dessie O Hare has been
singled out for the most extreme forms of repression, vilification,
and abuse by both the imperialist government of Britain and its lap
dog, the neo-colonial regime of the 26-county Irish statelet. That
alone, in our opinion, merits him special consideration—if our
enemies hate a person that much, we must assume that his service to
the cause of socialism and Irish national liberation intimidates the
hell out of them!

But, there is another reason. Though Eddie McGarrigle of the IRSP
worked tirelessly to win O Hare's freedom over the course of many
years, along with a handful of others, we ourselves feel guilty about
our record of efforts on his behalf during his incarceration and feel
that others who should have done much more to focus attention of this
unique case of state repression in Ireland are due the same
criticism. In the end, we did what we felt we were capable of doing,
yet we feel that far more should have been done.

Dessie O Hare has proudly and heroically served the struggle of his
nation and his class and to help to provide the respect due him,
which he has been largely denied, we would like to assist him
financially to make easier his efforts to pick up the threads of his
life and his return to his wife and family. We ask you to join us in
this modest effort to aid in righting the injustices that O Hare
endured, which no other prisoner of war was forced to endure.

Participation is as simple as buying raffle tickets for yourself, or
better yet, join in selling the raffle tickets in your local area.

Raffle Prizes:

Grand Prize

Wooden harp made by INLA POWs (18 inches tall)

1st Prize

DVD of Celtic Woman (filmed during their sold-out concert at the
Helix Centre in Dublin,featuring five leading Irish female vocalists)

2nd Prizes (3 awarded)

CD of Celtic Woman (all the music from the DVD above)

3rd Prizes (2 awarded)

CD of Who Bombed Judi Bari? (Spoken word recording of IWW and Earth
First! activist Judi Bari, who along with music recorded during Earth
First's Redwood Summer)

Or

CD of Mumia Abu Jamal's 175 Progress Drive (featuring Mumia, Bob
Marley, Hugh Masekela, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Jimmy Carter,Peter
Coyote, Hurricane Carter, Assata Shakur, Unbound All-stars, Michael
Franti, and others in discussion of and tribute to Mumia)

Ticket Prices:

1 Ticket for $2.00, book of 6 for $10.00

We welcome offers to sell books of tickets in your local area, paying
only for those sold.

To buy tickets for yourself or to obtain books of tickets for re-
sale, contact the International Republican Socialist Network (IRSN)
at:

1422 5th Street
Berkeley, California 94710

Or by e-mail at: irsp@netwiz.net