Sinn Fein activist murdered by UVF
By Denis Kevans
Sheena Campbell, a Sinn Fein activist, was murdered in Belfast last month. Sheena, 29, was a member of the Six County Sinn Fein Executive, and a woman's activist.
Sheena was standing with two friends in a bar of the York hotel, when a masked Ulster Volunteer Force gunman shot her six times. She died in hospital.
Sheena was a very popular member of Sinn Fein, and was loved by all. Her coffin was carried by members of Sinn Fein's Women's Department to the Republic Plot at Lurgan Cemetery.
Lucilita Bhreatnach, Sinn Fein general secretary, recalled the work Sheena had done as a member of the Six County executive and as a women's officer. She praised the organisational work that Sheena carried through especially in by-elections in South Derry, North Belfast and in Torrent, in East Tyrone.
Jim McAllister, a close friend, said, "She was a friend to many, and an enemy to none, except those who have chosen to make us enemies by oppressing us and denying us our rights to democracy in our own country".
Derry Sinn Fein councillor Dodie McGuinness read this poem she wrote for Sheena Campbell:
A strong woman determined
to do something others are determined
not to be done.
A strong woman is a woman who loves strongly
and weeps strongly and is strongly terrified
and has strong needs
A strong woman is strong in words; in action;
in connection; in feeling.
She is not strong as a stone, but as
a wolf suckling her young.
Strength is not in her, but she
enacts it as the wind fills the sail.
What comforts her is others loving her equally
for the strength and for the weakness
from which it issues.
Lightning from a cloud lightning stuns
in rain the clouds disperse.
Only water of connection remains;
flowing from us.
Strong is what we make each other
until we are strong together.