Republican News · Thursday 22 May 2003

Ógra occupy British Tourist Board

Ógra members occupied the offices of the British Tourist Board last Saturday, as part of Dublin Sinn Féin's two-week campaign to highlight the suspension of the Assembly elections. The Dublin activists are planning a number of protest, rallies and occupations culminating in a massive assembly outside the British Embassy on 29 May, the date the suspended elections should have taken place.

The protest was also made on the 29th anniversary of the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings.

While a picket distracted Gardaí outside the offices on Dame Street, four Ógra members entered the building and locked themselves in. Posters were placed in the windows demanding the right to vote, while those on the picket outside blew foghorns and whistles.

Ciaran Doherty, one of the Ógra members inside the building, said that the occupation was held to expose Britain's ongoing denial of democracy in Ireland.

"For 30 years Britain has engaged in a dirty war that has resulted in the deaths of many people," he said. "But even as these covert and murderous dealings in Ireland are being exposed, the British are subverting democracy by cancelling elections in the North. These elections should go ahead in June."

Sinn Féin Councillor Larry O'Toole took part in the picket outside the Tourist Board. "There has been much speculation this past week about an alleged agent called 'Stakeknife', but what the most recent revelations of collusion reveal, confirmed by even the limited publication of the Stevens' Report into collusion, is a campaign of murder carried out at the behest of the British state," he said. "This is something that the families of the 33 Dublin and Monaghan victims, who are still awaiting full disclosure, can testify.

"Loyalists carried out those bomb attacks, but all the evidence, like in so many other killings over the past 30 years, points to the guiding hand of British Military Intelligence.

"The truth behind Britain's dirty war in Ireland is slowly coming to light. There should be full disclosure of the strategies and activities of Britain's secret agencies in the north over the last 30 years."

The picket and occupation lasted for almost two hours, and was well received by the Dublin public.