Release Those Imprisoned Exiles Poem by Francis Duggan

We call them insurgents and terrorists yet call them what we may
They see themselves as quite different despite what we think or say,
They see themselves as freedom fighters whether they be wrong or right
And yet the laws of battle the Western powers re-write.

Young men captured in a war zone are shackled and transported to far away
And for years kept prisoners on an Island not what one might call fair play
the war they fought in long since over and yet there was a time
When to be captured in a war zone was not seen as a crime.

Terrorists were not captured on battle fields that's how it used to be
But that has changed it would seem in the twenty first century
And a loss of human rights for one is a loss for you and me
And a loss of rights for every one and all of humanity.

That the winners write the war history has always been the case
And fair play even on the field of combat was once firmly in place
But nowadays young men captured on battle fields are shipped off to a distant shore
And what was once seen just and honourable is not seen that way anymore.

Release those imprisoned exiled young men and their human rights to them restore
Or fair play for all war prisoners will be lost for forever more
And return them to their Homelands to their parents and their wives
And afford them the opportunity for to make something of their lives.