Thursday 24 January 2013

Dolours Price Rests in Peace





Dolours Price has been found dead at her home in Dublin.
The 62-year-old mother-of-two was found at her home in Malahide last night, sources said.

Her death is not being treated as suspicious. A postmortem is due to take place on her body at the Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown later today.
Ms Price and her 58-year-old sister Marian, who has been politcally interned in British Occupied Ireland since 2011 were on hunger strike for over 200 days,being force-fed by the British for 167 of them


Irish Republican News

" Veteran republican Dolours Price, sister of Irish political prisoner

 Marian Price, has died.

 Dolours remained a significant force in Irish republicanism until her
 untimely death in Dublin last night.

 Following the introduction of internment in 1971, when hundreds of
 nationalists were arrested and imprisoned without trial, she approached
 Sean MacStiofain, one of the founders of the Provisional IRA and said
 she wanted to be a "fighting soldier".  She campaigned to join the IRA,
 not part of Cumann na mBan, the women's wing of the republican movement.
 An IRA Army Council was convened and Price was sworn into the
 organisation, followed by her sister.  Both played a significant role in
 the IRA's armed struggle.

 In 1973, she and her sister were sentenced to life imprisonment in
 England, and immediately embarked on a 200-day hunger strike seeking
 their repatriation to a prison in Ireland.

 During the hunger strike, which was called off in 1974, the sisters were
 force fed.

 Following her release on compassionate grounds in 1980, Dolours returned
 to Dublin and she married Belfast actor Stephen Rea in the early 1980s.
 The couple, who divorced in 2000, have two sons.

 Her sister Marian Price was interned in 2011 by an order of the then
 British Direct Ruler Owen Paterson.  Marian continues to suffer serious
 ill health as a result of her hunger strike and remains the subject of a
 worldwide campaign for her release.

 Their brutal treatment in English prisons continued to affect both
 sisters' mental health, and Dolours has received treatment for post
 traumatic stress disorder.

 In recent years, she was highly critical of the Sinn Fein leadership of
 Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness and of the peace process.  She has
 made a number of statements denouncing Mr Adams for allegedly denying
 his IRA past, and her involvement in a historical archive project for
 Boston College became the subject of a PSNI subpoena and multiple legal
 actions.

 It is understood she died peacefully at her home last night in Malahide,
 County Dublin.  Ar dheis De go raibh a hanam."


In an interview with Suzanne Breen, they  described being force-fed:
Four male prison officers tie you into the chair so tightly with sheets you can't struggle. You clench your teeth to try to keep your mouth closed but they push a metal spring device around your jaw to prise it open. They force a wooden clamp with a hole in the middle into your mouth. Then, they insert a big rubber tube down that. They hold your head back. You can't move. They throw whatever they like into the food mixer – orange juice, soup, or cartons of cream if they want to beef up the calories. They take jugs of this gruel from the food mixer and pour it into a funnel attached to the tube. The force-feeding takes 15 minutes but it feels like forever. You're in control of nothing. You're terrified the food will go down the wrong way and you won't be able to let them know because you can't speak or move. You're frightened you'll choke to death.
Dolours Price and her sister, Marian Price, were the children of Albert Price, a prominent Irish Republican and former IRA member, from Belfast.

In 1980 Dolours and Marian Price received the Royal Prerogative of Mercy and was freed on humanitarian grounds afterwards her health became permanently damaged as a result of being force fed by the British.

In February 2010, it was reported by The Irish News that Dolours Price had offered help to the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains in locating graves of three men, Joe Lynskey, Seamus Wright and Kevin McKee, who were allegedly killed by the IRA and whose bodies have not been found.
Oral historians at Boston College interviewed both Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes between 2001 and 2006. The two former IRA members spoke on condition that the tapes not be released in their lifetimes. In May, 2011, the Police Service of Northern Ireland subpoenaed the material, possibly as part of an investigation into the disappearance of a number of people in Northern Ireland during the 1970s.

 In June 2011, the college filed a motion to quash the subpoena. A spokesman for the college stated that "our position is that the premature release of the tapes could threaten the safety of the participants, the enterprise of oral history, and the ongoing peace and reconciliation process in Northern Ireland." 

In July 2011, U.S. federal prosecutors asked a judge to require the college to release the tapes in order to comply with treaty obligations with the United Kingdom. On July 6, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit agreed with the government's position that the subpoena should not be quashed.On October 17, 2012, the United States Supreme Court temporarily blocked Boston College from turning over the interview tapes.The matter caused considerable duress to both Dolours and Marion.

 
Time Magazine Article:

The World: Ulster's Price Sisters: Breaking the Long Fast


      Each day passes and we fade a little more. But no matter how the body may fade, our determination never will. We have geared ourselves for this and there is no other answer.
Dolours Price, May 27 letter to her mother
Sometimes we can achieve more by death than we could ever hope to living. We 've dedicated our lives to a cause and it's supremely more important than any one individual's life.
Marion Price, May 27 letter to her mother
Fate and politics have a way sometimes of cheating would-be martyrs. Belfast's Price sisters—Dolours,... Rest of the story censored
If anyone can resurrect this article please 
forward or publish.
On Thursday 24 January 2013 it is reported that "Dolours Price has been found dead at her home in north Dublin. The Garda Síochána are investigating the circumstances surrounding the sudden death of the former Irish republican icon in her apartment in Malahide, although she had been in general ill health

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