Sunday, April 14, 2013

Criminalising Terrorism- A Thought

The death of Margaret Thatcher has brought the IRA hunger strikes back into the news, with a lot on the far left of British politics and the far right of Irish politics blaming her for their deaths.

What the hunger strikers wanted was to be granted political status- not to be treated simply as common criminals.

Yet when after 9/11 the United States refused to treat captured terrorists as criminals but instead granted them a special status- in Guantanamo Bay- many people were outraged, and that includes almost all those on the far left who blamed Thatcher for letting the hunger strikers do the decent thing.

3 comments:

James Higham said...

Plus special rendition.

Anonymous said...

When the Northern Irish terrorist Sands was on hunger strike, it was understood that he wanted to come off it but was 'persuaded' to remain on his hunger strike to avoid his family suddenly becoming ill or injured (possibilities of coincidences were quite high at that time). It appears that Sands' death was more important to 'the cause' than the well-being of a human being. Now, who really killed Bobby Sands?
Penseivat

Ross said...

Penseivat: It wouldn't surprise me.