“The Cuban people remember the death of Bobby Sands and his fellow hunger strikers, 40 years ago, with a monument in Park Victor Hugo in the centre of Havana.

“Following their tragic deaths, I recall Fidel Castro Ruz paying generous tribute to the courage of Bobby Sands and his comrades. Fidel said, ‘The stubbornness, intransigence, cruelty, insensitivity shown by the British government to the international community in addressing the problem of Irish patriots on hunger strike until death, are reminiscent of Torquemada and the barbarity of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages.

“For Cubans the struggle against colonialism by the Irish people over the centuries is a mirror image of our 30-year war against the Spanish in the 19th century and the US aggression that followed.”- Hugo Ramos