Солтүстік Ирландиядағы ашалық акциясы және он адамның қаза болуы

Protest by Irish republican prisoners in Northern Ireland, in which ten died

The 1981 Irish hunger strike was the culmination of a five year protest during the Troubles by Irish republican prisoners in Northern Ireland. The protest began as the blanket protest in 1976, when the British government withdrew Special Category Status (prisoner of war rather than criminal status) for convicted paramilitary prisoners. In 1978, the dispute escalated into the dirty protest, where prisoners refused to leave their cells to wash and covered the walls of their cells with excrement. In 1980, seven prisoners participated in the first hunger strike, which ended after 53 days. The second hunger strike took place in 1981 and was a showdown between the prisoners and the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. One hunger striker, Bobby Sands, was elected as a member of parliament during the strike, prompting media interest from around the world. The strike was called off after ten prisoners had starved themselves to death, including Sands, whose funeral was attended by 100,000 people.

On 27 October 1980, republican prisoners in HM Prison Maze began a hunger strike. One hundred and forty eight prisoners volunteered to be part of the strike, but a total of seven were selected to match the number of men who signed the Easter 1916 Proclamation of the Republic. The group consisted of IRA members Brendan Hughes, Tommy McKearney, Raymond McCartney, Tom McFeely, Sean McKenna, Leo Green, and INLA member John Nixon. The second hunger strike began on 1 March, when Bobby Sands, the IRA's former officer commanding (OC) in the prison, refused food. A statement from the prisoners was issued by Danny Morrison:

We have asserted that we are political prisoners and everything about our country, our arrests, interrogations, trials, and prison conditions, show that we are politically motivated and not motivated by selfish reasons or for selfish ends. As further demonstration of our selflessness and the justness of our cause a number of our comrades, beginning today with Bobby Sands, will hunger strike to the death unless the British government abandons its criminalization policy and meets our demand for political status. Unlike the first strike, the prisoners joined one at a time and at staggered intervals, which they believed would arouse maximum public support and exert maximum pressure on Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The republican movement initially struggled to generate public support for the second hunger strike. The Sunday before Sands began his strike, 3,500 people marched through west Belfast. During the first hunger strike four months earlier the marchers had numbered 10,000. Five days into the strike, Independent Republican MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone Frank Maguire died, resulting in a by election. There was debate among nationalists and republicans regarding who should contest the election: Austin Currie of the Social Democratic and Labour Party expressed an interest, as did Bernadette McAliskey and Maguire's brother Noel. Following a high profile campaign the election took place on 9 April, and Sands was elected to the British House of Commons with 30,492 votes to West's 29,046. Sands' election victory raised hopes that a settlement could be negotiated, but Thatcher stood firm in refusing to give concessions to the hunger strikers. She stated "We are not prepared to consider special category status for certain groups of people serving sentences for crime. Crime is crime is crime, it is not political". The world's media descended on Belfast, and several intermediaries visited Sands in an attempt to negotiate an end to the hunger strike, including Síle de Valera, granddaughter of Éamon de Valera, Pope John Paul II's personal envoy John Magee, and European Commission of Human Rights officials. With Sands close to death, the government's position remained unchanged, with Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Humphrey Atkins stating "If Mr. Sands persisted in his wish to commit suicide, that was his choice. The Government would not force medical treatment upon him". More than 100,000 people lined the route of his funeral, which was conducted with full IRA military honours. Margaret Thatcher showed no sympathy for his death, telling the House of Commons that "Mr. Sands was a convicted criminal. He chose to take his own life. It was a choice that his organisation did not allow to many of its victims". There were also local elections in Northern Ireland on 20 May, although Sinn Féin did not contest them. Some smaller groups and independents who supported the hunger strikers gained seats, such as the Irish Independence Party with 21 seats, while the Irish Republican Socialist Party (the INLA's political wing) and People's Democracy (a Trotskyist group) gained two seats each, and a number of pro hunger strike independent candidates also won seats. The British government passed the Representation of the People Act 1981 to prevent another prisoner contesting the second by election in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, which was due to take place following the death of Sands. Following the deaths of Joe McDonnell and Martin Hurson, the families of some of the hunger strikers attended a meeting on 28 July with Catholic priest Father Denis Faul. The families expressed concern at the lack of a settlement to the priest, and a decision was made to meet with Gerry Adams later that day. At the meeting Father Faul put pressure on Adams to find a way of ending the strike, and Adams agreed to ask the IRA leadership to order the men to end the hunger strike. The following day Adams held a meeting with six of the hunger strikers to outline a proposed settlement on offer from the British government should the strike be brought to an end. The six men rejected the settlement, believing that accepting anything less than the "Five Demands" would be a betrayal of the sacrifice made by Bobby Sands and the other hunger strikers who had died. On 31 July, the hunger strike began to break, when the mother of Paddy Quinn insisted on medical intervention to save his life. The following day Kevin Lynch died, followed by Kieran Doherty on 2 August, Thomas McElwee on 8 August and Michael Devine on 20 August. On the day Devine died, Sands' election agent Owen Carron won the Fermanagh and South Tyrone by election with an increased number of votes. On 6 September, the family of Laurence McKeown became the fourth family to intervene and asked for medical treatment to save his life, and Cahal Daly issued a statement calling on prisoners to end the hunger strike. A week later, James Prior replaced Humphrey Atkins as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and met with prisoners in an attempt to end the strike. The strike was called off at 3:15 pm on 3 October.

There are memorials and murals in memory of the hunger strikers in towns and cities across Ireland, including Belfast, Dublin, Derry, Crossmaglen and Camlough. Annual commemorations take place across Ireland for each man who died on the hunger strike, and an annual hunger strike commemoration march is held in Belfast each year, which includes a Bobby Sands memorial lecture. Several towns and cities in France have named streets after Bobby Sands, including Paris and Le Mans. The government in Tehran, Iran, changed the name of the street on which the British embassy was located to Bobby Sands, from its previous name, Churchill Street. The embassy subsequently changed its mailing address to refer to an entrance door around the corner from the main entrance, to avoid having to use the name of Bobby Sands on their letterhead. In 1997 NORAID's Hartford Unit in the United States dedicated a monument to Bobby Sands and the other hunger strikers. The monument is a granite Celtic cross standing in a traffic roundabout renamed "Bobby Sands Circle" in 1995. On 3 October 2001—the 20th anniversary of the end of the hunger strike—a memorial was unveiled by Gerry Adams, Patrick Sheehan and Ahmed Kathrada, on Robben Island, South Africa. On 20 March 2001 Sinn Féin's national chairperson Mitchel McLaughlin opened the National Hunger Strike Commemoration Committee's exhibition at the Europa Hotel in Belfast, which included three original works of art from Belfast based artists. A separate exhibition was also launched in Derry the following month. Numerous films have been made based on the events of the hunger strike, including Some Mother's Son starring Helen Mirren, H3 (which was co written by former hunger striker Laurence McKeown), and Steve McQueen's Hunger.