Remembering the prisoners this Christmas

December is traditionally prisoners' month — in solidarity with those republicans incarcerated across the world. It is a month to remember those who are locked up, but also the hundreds of people down through 30 years of struggle who, through their astonishing resistance, often became the cutting edge of the struggle.

And it is a time to remember all those thousands of people in Ireland and across the world who took part in solidarity work for Irish republican prisoners. Each played their part in supporting the prisoners and in spreading word of British crimes in subjugating the people of a part of our country.

And we still have prisoners now, people who by chance, or vindictiveness of governments and their legal institutions, remain locked up: people like Michael Rogan, extradited from the Canary Islands, who is imprisoned in Maghaberry, with a bail application this week, or like Michael Dickson, held in Oldenburg, Germany, to whom a German court refused repatriation back to Ireland last week, for no apparent logic or reason, except that they did.

And there are people like the Castlerea 4, who know that by right, under the Good Friday Agreement they should have been released, yet remain, as a political football, for the use of unscrupulous politicians who like to kick them around for cheap political gain. Painful as release of prisoners has been to many who lost loved ones, it is nonetheless part of an international treaty to which no one, least of all a government minister, has the right to make an exception.

Then of course there are others in Castlerea; Walter Nagle, Michael Nugent and Kieran Kiely due out in 2005, and Niall Binéad and Ken O'Donohue, whose case was heard over the last few weeks and who are now in Portlaoise Jail.

Further afield again there is Ciarán Ferry, in Jefferson County Jail, Colorado, who was arrested in America in January 2003, and lost his appeal last month through which he sought to remain with his wife and children in the States.

This month we offer solidarity with all those who have stood against British rule, across the world and most especially in Ireland, and remember the huge sacrifices which so many republican prisoners have made.