Nicaragua is desparately basic hygiene.
Unemployment poor. diseases have been virtuallv elımınated. Malaria is now confined to the SO border areas — mosquitos don't carry passports. We shared a hotel with the San Fransisco Mime troupe, touring outlying Villages with a play about underетрюуел are largery history, as are the slave-history conditions of many be that you will know that our justice is much greater than yours (quoted in Politics and Profit, Oct '84)
One of the Junta's first projects was an open prison farm - no guards, no fences — for ex-National Guard thugs, many serving the Nicaraguan maximum of 30 years. There have been only two 'escapes'.
the strip searches in Armagh jail paign, it must be the beginning. Even if the prison their bend under pressure, mediate practical results.
munition into the NO is being waged searches. have followed and strengulcus their them ceed in breaking their spirit.
public campaign Tried out inside.
ference in Swansea said:
Northern degrading escalation of repression Camthe women in Armagh.' British controlled THE SUCCESS at Labour Party at wishes of women's conference before it, in winning a policy of opposition to cannot be the end of the camgovernor, Thomas Murtagh, and the Thatcher government seem unlikely to campaigning against strip searches has im- It The aim of strip searches is not to found prevent smuggling of arms and am(after all, metal detectors could be used if that were the problem), but to introduce systematic sexual harassment of women with the aim of breaking their morale and collective solidarity. vulnerable. Knowledge that a vigorous campaign the prison walls undermines the effects of the said that the knowledge that their case is being campaigned around making They feel that the degradation and humiliation cannot be allowed to sucWomen have also said that at times when the 1S its most vociferous, there is a reduction in the frequency of the strip searching carThis year's Labour womens' con'the use of strip searching whether in English or nakedness deplorable practice (which is) aimed demoralising women prisoners. In the case of Irish removed. republican prisoners, it is proof of an _or an or pressed nationalist population by the forces of the British state. Strip searching is a tool by which British imperialism hopes to crush the spirit of Labour women successfully took this resolution to Blackpool, demanding that the Labour Party as a whole condemn and demand an immediate end to strip searching of women in FOR prisons.
Richardson, who is Labour's womens rights spokesperson, has followed the con. ference and personally campaigned against strip searching and is intending to visit Armagh to see conditions and talk to prisoners herself. Of Northern Ireland, she 'women particular are suffering and have indignities heaped upon them daily Strip searching of women on remand in Armagh is a disgrace.
must remembered that women on remand have not been guilty of any offence. Not knowing what to expect from the arbitrariness of the system which passes for justice in the North, they are held on remand for excessive periods -sometimes up to eighteen months. It is then that women are at their most The weekly visit to the courts to renew the : remand order becomes a mental and physical ordeal as it is inevitably accompanied by the degradation of the strip search.
Women have said that they felt tempted to confess or inform upon others to break the weekly pattern.
have said that they were prepared to do this even though they knew that the confessions they were being asked to sign were false or the individuals they were asked to in. criminate were innocent.
Quigley, ex-Armagh prisoner, who was a visitor at Party conference described strip searches an 'attempt to use our bodies against us'.
bodies sind their degrade. Women's menstruation is used to exert extra pressure as sanitary protection can be sometimes forcibly Pregnancy is also used as fears for their safety heightens the tensions of the search.
Labour's speakers must now impally policy, stepping ur pressure upon the government and prison authorities to stop the searches and giving support to the Armagh women's campaign. Local parties or union branches wishing to know more about the campaign or hear speakers should contact: LABOUR WOMEN Gc/o Feminist Library, tigerford House, Victoria Embankment, London WC2