Here are six images of the hunger strikers mural in Mountpottinger Road, Belfast. The ten portraits are on cut wooden boards while the rest is painted. On the far right (image 5) is a “spirit of freedom” lark and the names of the ten deceased 1981 strikers. In the centre (image 3) is blanket man Hugh Rooney.
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Copyright © 2002 Peter Moloney
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This Short Strand mural packs a lot in, beginning with both ancient Éıre and a celtic cross. Its main panels commemorate 25 years of resistance in east Belfast (probably dating to the Battle Of St Matthew’s in 1970) with portraits of 16 deceased locals (“I measc laochra na nGael go raıbh a naınmeacha”) and two verses from Bobby Sands’s poem Weeping Winds (see below). On the right (in the second image) is a quote from Bobby Sands: “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children”.
Oh, whistling winds why do you weep/When roaming free you are,
Oh! Is it that your poor heart’s broke/And scattered off afar?
Or is it that you bear the cries/Of people born unfree,
Who like your way have no control/Or sovereign destiny?
Oh! Lonely winds that walk the night/To haunt the sinner’s soul/
Pray pity me a wretched lad/Who never will grow old.
Pray pity those who lie in pain/The bondsman and the slave
And whisper sweet the breath of God/Upon my humble grave.
These verses are also used on a board in St James’s.
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Copyright © 2002 Peter Moloney
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The flag of the Basque Country/Euskadi flies above the hunger striker memorial (with Bobby Sands’s Rhythm Of Time) in Rockdale Street, Belfast. For more, see the 2001 image.
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Copyright © 2002 Peter Moloney
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Belfast’s Whiterock Road is renamed Bóthar Roıbeaırd Uí Sheachnasaıgh [“Ua Seachnasaıgh”?] or, in the top image, “bother Bobby Sands”.
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Copyright © 2002 Peter Moloney
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“Our laughter will be the joy of our victory + [the] joy of the people; our revenge will be the liberation of all.” This is perhaps the only appearance of this quote from Bobby Sands’s hunger strike diary, from Thursday March 12th. In the background are the towers of Long Kesh; in the foreground is Sands’s funeral procession.
Gardenmore Road, Dunmurry/Belfast
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Copyright © 2002 Peter Moloney
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A portrait and the words of Bobby Sands, near his Twinbrook home. “Everyone, republican or otherwise, has their own particular part to play.” [Diary, March 14th, 1981]
Laburnum Way/Summerhill Rd, Twinbrook, Dunmurry
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Copyright © 2002 Peter Moloney
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Here are two images of a variety of small boards in Gardenmore Road/Laburnum Way, Twinbrook, including three about the RUC, a tricoloured H-shaped board with ten crosses, and a portrait of Bobby Sands who lived in the building that the boards are on. (The portrait and the items in the second image date back to at least 1996. See C01012 and C01007.)
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Copyright © 2002 Peter Moloney
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Here is a 2002 image of the colourful Bobby Sands mural Sevastopol Street, Belfast. For lots more info, see the original post on this mural.
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Copyright © 2002 Peter Moloney
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Zehra Kulaksiz was one of 816 prisoners who went on hunger strike to protest conditions in “F-type”. Her sister Canan died two weeks before she died and 122 people in total, both inside and outside the prisons. (Guardian | WP | BBC News video)
On the International Wall (Visual History), Divis Street, west Belfast
See previously: F-Block Martyrs
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Copyright © 2002 Peter Moloney
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A portrait of 1981 hunger striker Bobby Sands with a slightly grimacing smile.
Lecky Road, Bogside, Derry
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Copyright © 2002 Peter Moloney
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