Russian Roulette

By AM Friday, July 29, 2011

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It's quite clear that this man is very seriously ill and causes no harm or grief to anyone …  Our point is that anyone who is too ill to stand trial, how can that person then be a danger to the public when they can't even attend a court appearance? - West Belfast MP Paul Maskey

The former republican activist Brendan Lillis continues to be held in Maghaberry Prison despite widespread media discussion of his plight and street campaigning on his behalf. There had been some hopes that the British Government would have stepped back from its current hard-line position and assume a more compassionate stance. These hopes were dashed when the Life Sentence Review Commission refused earlier this week to release Brendan Lillis.

Last week saw a hunger strike vigil staged over a three day period aimed at drawing attention to the situation of the very ill West Belfast man. The venue was highly symbolic, the site of the old Andersonstown RUC barracks. Situated in the heart of West Belfast it is a mere few steps from Milltown Cemetery which holds the graves of three republican hunger strikers interred there after their deaths in Long Kesh in 1981. Bobby Sands, Kieran Doherty and Joe McDonnell all took part in the Blanket protest with Brendan Lillis. It is particularly poignant that the two sisters of Bobby Sands voiced public concern over the treatment of Lillis and called for his release.

The significance of the highly charged symbolism cannot have been lost on Sinn Fein. Many party luminaries have made spectacular political careers launched by the hunger strikes but who have since labelled the type of activity the hunger strikers engaged in while armed republican activists as the work of traitors. They now find themselves strenuously supporting the forces of the British state which is tasked with doing exactly as they did during the hunger strikes of 1981 - cracking down on republican activism.

The incongruity of the Sinn Fein position seems to have caused some discomfort within the party. Not every member is so lobotomised as to swallow without gagging the sight of Martin McGuinness standing shoulder to shoulder with Peter Robinson ‘screaming’ traitors at republicans for carrying out the type of activities that he ordered for decades before taking the queen’s shilling and for which the 1981 hunger strikers were serving time.

Perhaps this is the reason that some middle ranking Sinn Fein officials have thrown their weight behind the campaign. They have spoken out in the media about the ongoing incarceration of Brendan Lillis, have visited him in prison and have even put an appearance in at the Andersonstown vigil. No doubt the individuals involved genuinely dislike what is happening to their erstwhile comrade but at the strategic level within the party their activity is part of an exercise in the controlled management of political turbulence; harness and divert.

Supporters of the sick prisoner feel that while the top party leaders, who wield the real clout, maintain a distance from the issue, the British government will not treat it with either the urgency or compassion that it merits.   

In a statement from the Friends of Brendan Lillis support group it was pointed out that:

The continued imprisonment of Brendan Lillis is a travesty of justice and that travesty is multiplied a hundred fold by the inaction and/or inability of Sinn Fein to actually DO anything other than make statements purporting to support Brendan and Roisin.

It has not gone unnoticed among the backers of Brendan Lillis that Martin McGuinness was quickly out of he traps in relation to PSNI arrests linked to the investigation into the killing of Ronan Kerr but remains in a state of stasis regarding Brendan Lillis.

A somewhat more heavyweight intervention has come in the form of the recently elected Sinn Fein Westminster MP for West Belfast, Paul Maskey who called on the British micro minister for Justice David Ford to:

show leadership and release Brendan Lillis … The decision taken by the Life Sentence Review Commission not to release Brendan Lillis was the wrong decision and we made this clear to the Justice Minister pressing on him the need to overturn this decision and release Brendan Lillis immediately … Brendan Lillis is currently critically ill - too ill to stand trial. He is currently 5 stone 5lbs in weight and while this legal advice is awaited his health could deteriorate further … the continued imprisonment of Brendan Lillis does not serve the public interest and he should be released now on humanitarian grounds.

Welcome words from the West Belfast MP but it merely reinforces the paradox of how ‘deeply superficial’ change has been in the North’s justice arena. Unfortunately the nationalist voice is not been listened to. Unionist discourse is amplified in the ears of British state decision makers. Gregory Campbell’s branding of Brendan Lillis as ‘a terrorist and a criminal who was responsible for a number of serious crimes’ seems more inclined to chime with the British state perspective. He has called on David Ford to resist demands for the release of Lillis. Up to now the voice of the DUP is being listened to and that of Sinn Fein ignored.

While the political class that governs the North argue back and forth, Brendan Lillis is tied to a hospital bed at the side of which British officialdom plays Russian roulette with his life. At some point the bullet in the chamber will be struck.