The 25th anniversary of the death of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands is being commemorated today with a ceremony in the prison where he died.
Bobby Sands pictured on the first day of his hunger strike twenty-five years ago with the date of his death beneath the picture.
Bobby Sands, who was the first of the 10 hunger strikers to die, spent 66 days without food before dying on May 5th, 1981, in the Maze Prison, then known as Long Kesh.
The hunger strike was the culmination of a prisoner campaign to seek political status for prisoners, and the deaths of Sands and his fellow hunger-strikers changed the nature and direction of the republican struggle.
Members of the Sands family assembled for a private gathering in the former Maze Prison near Lisburn today to commemorate his life.
"The Government ought to be ashamed of themselves for allowing their property to be used in a way that is grossly offensive to the greater number of people in Northern Ireland," the North Belfast MP said.
Separately, Sinn Féin's chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness, and Michelle Gildernew joined republicans in the former Maze Prison for a short ceremony in its hospital wing.
Rallies, vigils and lectures are also being staged on either side of the Border in memory of the former MP who captured a House of Commons seat in a by-election a month before his death.
Sinn Féin Assembly member Raymond McCartney, who took part in a hunger strike a year before Bobby Sands died, said the ceremonies were focusing not just on the former Fermanagh and South Tyrone MP but all republicans who starved to death.
"The blanket protest of the late 1970s and the 1980 and 1981 hunger strikes were about whether or not the British were prepared to recognise us as political prisoners. If we fast forward to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, I think the early release of prisoners recognised the fact that we were political prisoners."
Seven IRA and three Irish National Liberation Army prisoners died in 1981 during the protest that they hoped would force Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government to grant them political status.
Democratic Unionist MP Nigel Dodds was furious republicans were allowed to stage the ceremony at the former jail.
As republicans took part in a series of weekend events across Ireland, Mr Dodds also accused Sinn Féin leaders of glorifying terrorism.