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Robert Gerard Sands ((アイルランド語:Roibeárd Gearóid Ó Seachnasaigh);〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Legacy of Cage Eleven )〕 9 March 19545 May 1981) was a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army who died on hunger strike while imprisoned at HM Prison Maze. He was the leader of the 1981 hunger strike in which Irish republican prisoners protested against the removal of Special Category Status. During his strike he was elected to the British Parliament as an Anti H-Block candidate. His death and those of nine other hunger strikers were followed by a new surge of Provisional IRA recruitment and activity. International media coverage brought attention to the hunger strikers, and the republican movement in general, attracting both praise and criticism. ==Early years== Sands was born in 1954 to Roman Catholic parents, John and Rosaleen, who were both raised in Belfast. After marrying, they relocated to the new development of Abbots Cross, Newtownabbey, County Antrim outside North Belfast.〔Feehan, ''Bobby Sands MP and the Tragedy of Northern Ireland'', p. 17〕〔Sands, ''Writings from Prison''.〕 His parents were able to live in an Ulster Protestant-dominated neighbourhood (home to three Protestant churches and a state school, but no Catholic church in the immediate vicinity) by concealing their religion. Sands was the eldest of four children. His sisters, Marcella and Bernadette, were born in 1955 and 1958, respectively. By 1960, the Sands' family secret was revealed. After experiencing harassment and intimidation from their neighbours, the family abandoned the development and moved in with friends for six months before being granted housing in the nearby Rathcoole development. Rathcoole was 30% Catholic and featured Catholic schools as well as a nominally Catholic but religiously-integrated youth football club known as Star of the Sea (of which Sands was a member and for whom he played left-back), an unusual circumstance in Northern Ireland.〔O'Hearn, ''Bobby Sands: Nothing but an Unfinished Song''〕 His parents had a second son, John (born 1962), their last child. By 1966, sectarian violence in Rathcoole (along with the rest of Belfast) had considerably worsened, and the minority Catholic population there found itself under siege; Sands and his sisters were forced to run a gauntlet of bottle- and rock-throwing Protestant youths on the way to school every morning, and the formerly integrated Rathcoole youth football club banned Catholic members and renamed itself "The Kai", which stood for "Kill All Irish". Despite always having had Protestant friends, Sands suddenly found that none of them would even speak to him, and he quickly learned to associate only with Catholics.〔 He left school in 1969 at age 15, and enrolled in Newtownabbey Technical College, beginning an apprenticeship as a coach builder at Alexander's Coach Works in 1970. He worked there for less than a year, enduring constant harassment from his Protestant co-workers, which according to several co-workers he ignored completely, as he wished to learn a meaningful trade.〔 He was eventually confronted after leaving his shift in January 1971 by a number of his colleagues wearing the armbands of the local Ulster loyalist tartan gang. He was held at gunpoint and told that Alexander's was off-limits to "Fenian scum" and to never come back if he valued his life. This event, by Sands's admission, proved to be the point at which he decided that militancy was the only solution.〔Feehan, ''Bobby Sands and the Tragedy of Northern Ireland'', pp. 13–14〕 In June 1972, Sands' parents' home was attacked and damaged by a loyalist mob and they were again forced to move, this time to the West Belfast Catholic area of Twinbrook, where Sands, now thoroughly embittered, rejoined them. He attended his first Provisional IRA meeting in Twinbrook that month and joined the IRA the same day. He was 18 years old. By 1973, almost every Catholic family had been driven out of Rathcoole by violence and intimidation.〔〔O'Hearn, ''Nothing but an unfinished song: Bobby Sands'', Chapter 1.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bobby Sands」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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