Fundraiser for Bobby Sands Mural in Rome

For the 40th anniversary of the 1981 hunger strike, Ógra Shinn Féin TCD is raising money to paint a mural of Bobby Sands in Rome in conjunction with comrades in Italy.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/un-murale-per-bobby-sands-a-roma

All funds left over from the mural will be donated to charity.

ROME REMEMBERS BOBBY SANDS

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the deaths of Bobby Sands and the other 9 Hunger Strikers: Francis Hughes, Raymond McCreesh, Patry O'Hara, Joe McDonnell, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Kieran Doherty, Thomas McElwee and Michael Devine.

Their sacrifice marked the culmination of the struggle of the Irish Republican prisoners in Long Kesh Prison which began in 1976, when the British government revoked their status as political prisoners.

In 1981 a second hunger strike began, the requests were the following five:

1. the right to wear their own clothes and not a prison uniform;
2. the right to not perform prison work;
3. the right of free association with other prisoners during air hours;
4. the right to have the remission of half of the sentence reinstated, a right they had lost as a result of previous protests;
5. the right to receive weekly parcels, mail, and to be able to take advantage of recreational activities.

The intransigence of the British prime minister Margaret Thatcher at the time, determined to criminalize the Republican Movement and treat political prisoners as common criminals without any political connotation, clashed with the political awareness of Republican prisoners that they were right, an awareness that led to, one after the other, to their death.

Palestra Popolare Valerio Verbano in Rome and the Patria Socialista intend to pay homage to the sacrifice of these 10 freedom fighters, who let themselves die of hunger as an extreme act of struggle, with a day dedicated to them during which it will be inaugurated, on the outer wall of the Gym, a mural dedicated to Bobby Sands.

In normal times we would have organized events to raise funds to cover the realization of the mural, today we ask for your contribution in this form so that the memory of the sacrifice of those who paid with their lives the belief that abuses and injustices must always be fought can be honored in the most beautiful way and remain everyone's heritage.