Church paper blames Sands death on U.K.

Press, 19 May 1981, Page 3

Church paper blames Sands death on U.K.

PA - ' ' ’■ ’ Wellington The Catholic newspaper, '‘Tablet”, has blamed the death of the Irish hunger striker, Bobby Sands, on the British Government.. •

In a strongly worded editorial in' this week’s issue of the newspaper, the editor. Mr J. P.. Kennedy, said that Bobby Sands died because the “ British Government broke its word.

% Mr Kennedy said that his newspaper was not condoning the Irish Republican' Army, which was “a bunch of thugs and murderers.” “We are . talking about Bobby Sands, the human being, and'fais fellow prisoners,, who /.were convicted under - conditions ;; which would produce a roar of outrage if they were ti;ied in New Zealand,” he wrote. Sands t.was jailed by a .Court which had no jury, Mr Kennedy said. The principal evidence was confessions extracted during seven days of interrogation. He said that the background to Sands’s death was a mattetFpf; public , record. “Thislneeds to be borne in

mind because it blows away’ the smokescreen of lies which Britain is using to conceal its role,”. Mr Kennedy said. “Why must men die because Britain says that they cannot now have a special status which Britain itself allowed them from 1972 to 1976?

“The irony in all this is that the British stupidity has given A - the/ I.R.A. ' cause another martyr. . -Sands’s ; name will be remembered: long after those of Humphrey Atkins (Secretary, for Northern Ireland) and Margaret Thatcher' and the rest of them.

“The tragedy of all this is that it has all happened before wherever people sought freedom from British rule. .

“Makarios, Kenyatta; Nkrumah, Nehru — the list of men who suffered under the British and who finished up dining at Buckingham Palace as heads of government or State is a long one.' /

“Won't the British ever learn that you cannot chain spirits?”