[spectre] Homage to Bobby Sands/ Tuesday May 2/ Radio France Culture

[Louise Desrenards]

Radio France Culture on Tuesday, May 2nd from 3 pm till 4 pm more following
debate from 4 pm till 4:30 pm

Listen online at the moment (click "écouter le direct" :
    http://www.radiofrance.fr/chaines/france-culture2/sommaire/
Listen later (RealAudio)
    http://www.radiofrance.fr/chaines/france-culture2/emissions/vifdusujet/

An homage to Bobby Sands and to his companions dead in Ulster

Mostly French spoken more Anglophone interviews

A documentary more live interviews by Rinaldo Depagne and Simon Guibert
Sound director Jean-Philippe Navarre

In "Le vif du sujet" Producer-coordinator: Alexandre Héraud, Special
producer of the broadcast: Rinaldo Depagne

The death of Bobby Sands.

In May 5th, 1981 to the prison of Long Kesh in Ulster, Bobby Sands died
after 66 days from hunger strikes. This 27-year-old man became one of the
symbols of the fight of the Irish Republicans.

While all the duration of its agony, Sands¹ photo portrait is omnipresent in
the catholic districts of Belfast. His face is painted on the walls, hung
above fireplaces, pricked in the lapel of jackets, embroidered on flags, as
stickers in pubs and shops. This photo in black and white is one of Bobby
Sands¹ only existing public images. It was taken in 1976 at the very
beginning of this tragic history, when Bobby Sands is already prisoner. He
serves a sentence of fourteen years of prison for carrying of firearms. The
war tears the Ulster. Thirty thousand British soldiers are quartered in it.
Sands is a political prisoner but on March 1st, 1976 everything changes: the
status of political prisoner is abolished by the government- Labour- of
Harold Wilson. Begins then " the strike of coverings ". Sands and his
companions refuse to wear the prison suit of the common laws. They live bare
in their cell covered with their only coverage of bed. Shower and sanitary
tubes are forbidden them. They are washed in the jet and make their need on
the ground. In March, 1981, after five of this degrading treatment, Sands
and nine other prisoners enter hunger strike. They ask for the restoring of
the status of political prisoner and better conditions of detention.
Margaret Thatcher in the power since 1979 does not give up.

Bobby is the first one to die. he new the other hunger strikers die one
after the other.

.................... Sorry of my bad translation..

O.