The crowd gathered outside Elder’s Bar on Causewayside Street in the Tollcross neighbourhood of Glasgow.
As is traditional, the bands assembled and the flag-bearers, dressed in black and wearing black berets, took their places. From two-year-olds to people in their seventies, members of the Irish community gathered, greeting one another.
The march began at 10 a.m. to the rhythm of drums and flutes. The procession, led by IRPWA banners and Irish Republican flags, including a Palestinian flag, proceeded along Tollcross Road towards Barrowland Park.
Once the crowd reached the park, speeches were delivered by representatives of the Revolutionary Communist Group, the Anti-Imperialist Front and the IRPWA. Following the speeches, the Irish national anthem was played by the band, and the flags were lowered as a mark of respect for those who were martyred in the struggle for liberation and socialism.
The speech delivered by the Anti-Imperialist Front representative is reproduced below.
COMRADES, FRIENDS,
We salute the history of the Irish Republican struggle.
We salute those who fought against imperialism in 1916 and gave their lives for the freedom of the Irish people.
We salute the Republican prisoners who sacrificed their lives in Long Kesh, and those who supported them in other prisons in both the free and occupied parts of Ireland in 1981.
We salute the revolutionary prisoners of Turkey who fought and were martyred in 1984, 1995, 1996—in both January and July—1999, 2000, and during the seven-year Great Resistance against the F-Type isolation prisons between 2000 and 2007.
We also salute Gürkan Türkoğlu, who fell as the first martyr of the resistance against the so-called S-R-Y high-security prisons on 30 July. In reality, these prisons are nothing but isolation torture centres.
We also salute all those who continue to fight against imperialism, fascism and Zionism in Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey and everywhere else in the world.
Friends…
Keeping the most advanced members of society in prison and isolating them from the struggle outside is neither a new policy nor the last.
Imperialism and its collaborators have tried this in many countries. They succeeded in some and failed in others. Ireland and Turkey are among the countries where they failed.
What they want from our prisoners is for them to renounce their ideology, abandon their identity and change their convictions.
In the year 2000, they declared in Turkey’s prisons:
“You will either change your minds or die.”
The revolutionary prisoners replied:
“WE WILL DIE!”
The world now consists of two words:
TO RESIST AND NOT TO SURRENDER!
The world now revolves around these two words.
There is no resistance without gains, because every resistance becomes the strength of the next resistance.
HISTORY IS THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN CLASSES,
and Gürkan won this struggle.
He resisted.
He did not surrender.
Resistance proved itself.
Gürkan said:
“Wherever oppression strikes and wherever the people are, that place will become our position of resistance.”
The cause of all defeats is ideological weakness and separation from the people.
The source of all victories is ideological clarity and reliance on the people.
Whether in Ireland…
Whether in the poor neighbourhoods of Istanbul…
Whether in the universities of Anatolia…
Whether in the streets of Gaza reduced to rubble…
Whether beneath the bombs falling on Iran…
Or in the S-, R- and Y-Type pit-type torture centres…
Wherever we may be, wherever there is oppression, resistance is a right!
The victors are the organised peoples who resist with historical and political legitimacy!
Gürkan became the first martyr of the indefinite hunger-strike resistance against the pit-type prisons, which has continued uninterruptedly for three years.
Forty-two times, revolutionary prisoners have won!
Together with the coffin and the documents inside it, Gürkan Türkoğlu’s coffin weighed 78 kilograms.
Think about the weight of a coffin.
This means that Gürkan’s body had been reduced to only around 25 kilograms.
His body had been reduced almost to a skeleton.
CELL BY CELL, HE RESISTED DEATH AND MARCHED FORWARD,
AND HE WON VICTORY!
And let it be known:
YOU CANNOT FORCE THOSE WHO HAVE PAID THE PRICE TO BOW DOWN!
Friends…
The assault on our ideas, our ideology, our identity and our historical legitimacy does not come in only one form.
In Ireland, it takes the form of internment—setting aside their own laws and keeping Republicans hostage in their prisons.
In Germany, it took the form of forcing revolutionary prisoner Özgül Emre to wear a prison uniform. She refused and wore only her bathrobe for a month while on hunger strike. German imperialism eventually transferred her to another prison and returned her clothes in an attempt to save face. Now they are preventing her from receiving letters in her mother tongue, Turkish.
In Turkey, they forced Tuğçenur Özbay to carry a compulsory prisoner identity card portraying her as a terrorist. She refused and began a hunger-strike resistance that lasted 159 days. Similarly, she was transferred to another prison where the compulsory identity card was no longer imposed.
Today, six revolutionary prisoners are on hunger strike against repression and isolation in Turkey’s prisons.
They are:
- Cem Dursun — on hunger strike since 29 April. Today is his 102nd day.
- Tacettin Erol Şahin — on hunger strike since 29 April. Today is also his 102nd day.
- Hasan Basri Yıldız — on hunger strike since 18 May. Today is his 83rd day.
- Güzin Tolga — on hunger strike since 13 July. Today is her 27th day.
- Emircan Yazı and Cemil Kurt — on hunger strike since 15 July. Today is their 25th day.
And friends,
Only three days ago, on 5 August, possibly for the first time in its history, Ukrainian political prisoners went on hunger strike against repression, torture, murder and the appalling conditions in the prisons of the fascist Ukrainian regime.
We all took part in a one-day solidarity hunger strike, including revolutionary prisoners. So far, the total number of participants has exceeded 400.
The similarity in the repression directed against revolutionary and political prisoners is no coincidence.
These decisions were made at NATO headquarters.
They wage war against the peoples of the world and against their legitimate organisations.
The prisons are one front in that war.
But their defeat is inevitable, because there are those who continue to resist, to fight and to refuse to surrender.
Those who compromised with imperialism and its collaborators have decayed and disappeared from history.
Those who resist and continue to fight are still standing today, and they will continue to stand because they possess ideological clarity and place their trust in their own people.
Therefore, we—the oppressed, the exploited and the ignored peoples of the world—have no choice but to:
- Resist.
- Organise.
- Rely on our own people.
- Support those who resist through solidarity.
- Demand justice and freedom.
- Refuse to be silenced.
- Condemn injustice wherever we are.
LONG LIVE THE LEGACY OF THE IRISH REPUBLICAN STRUGGLE AGAINST IMPERIALISM!
REVOLUTIONARY MARTYRS ARE IMMORTAL!
GÜRKAN TÜRKOĞLU IS IMMORTAL!
LONG LIVE RESISTANCE! LONG LIVE VICTORY!
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