Word: maze
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Belfast that killed two persons. The threat of violence is always present, yet the real battle between the British authorities and the Irish Republican Army is being fought these days not in the streets of Northern Ireland, but in a sprawling, gray brick prison near Belfast known as the Maze. There, one after another, I.R.A. members are starving themselves to death for the right, technically, to get the special handling accorded political prisoners instead of being treated as common criminals. But, in a far more profound way, the hunger strikes have come to symbolize the bitter and enduring struggle between...
Street fighters from youth, terrorists half their lives, hardened and ruthless from years in prison, they are old at age 20. Because so many of the rebels, 406 of them, are locked in the H-shaped blocks of the Maze, they now believe they must win their war inside the prison, and that helps explain their astonishing defiance. But questions about them persist. Why are they so willing to starve themselves? How do they stand the pain? Are they afraid...
...intimate details of each death, spread eagerly from cell to cell, are well known to all the prisoners. Each time new volunteers are sought, Maze leaders review the awful effects of starvation. They want no false bravado and no dropouts. The prisoners stand silent against the cell-block doors, ears pressed to cracks in the framing, and listen to block commanders speaking in Gaelic to confound the guards, describe the ulcerated throats, the tooth fillings that drop out, the skin that turns so dry that bones break through, the inevitable blindness before death...
...hundred offered to die. I.R.A. commanders in the Maze, startled by the number, ordered the hunger strikes to begin. The volunteers quickly became heroes, paid special attention by the other prisoners, passed extra cigarettes, showered with support in the early days of stomach cramps. Poems were written to them and recited through the pipes and doors and shouted across the blocks...
Their families are with them often now and together they flash back to early memories and images. Francis Hughes, a folk hero inside the Maze long before his death, retained his needling, cheery nature to the end, lying in bed and singing rebel songs in a thin hoarse voice, his sad relatives gathered around...