A political prisoner may be someone held in prison or otherwise detained, perhaps under house arrest, because their ideas or image are deemed by a government to either challenge or threaten the authority of the state. Typically, the imprisonment of people on political grounds is done under extrajudical processes, where the veneer of legality and terminology are used to disguise the fact that an individual is a political prisoner.
False or exaggerated criminal charges may have been used to imprison the political prisoner, or he or she may have been denied bail unfairly, denied parole when it would reasonably have been given to another prisoner, or special powers may be invoked by the judiciary. Who is or is not regarded as a political prisoner may depend upon one's own subjective political perspective.
Variants
Governments of all regime types – fascist, communist, theocratic, and liberal democratic – have held political prisoners. In the Soviet Union, dubious psychiatric diagnoses were sometimes used to confine political prisoners. In Nazi Germany, "Night and Fog" prisoners were among the first victims of fascist repression. In North Korea, entire families are jailed if one family member is suspected of anti-government sentiments. In America, Rep. Charlie Rangel and others have called those imprisoned due to the War on drugs, political prisoners [1].
Governments typically reject assertions that they hold political prisoners. For example, during the Vietnam War, the Government of South Vietnam denied that it held any political prisoners, despite the fact that approximately 100,000 civilians were imprisoned as inmates in 41 detention facilities for civilians. These included non-combatant members of the National Liberation Front or NLF, including village chiefs, schoolteachers, tax collectors, postmen, medical personnel, as well as many peasants whose relatives were members of the NLF.
Political prisoners sometimes write memoirs of their experiences and resulting insights. See list of memoirs of political prisoners. Some of these memoirs have become important political texts.
In the parlance of many violent groups and their sympathizers, political prisoner includes persons imprisoned because they await trial for, or have been convicted for, actions usually qualified as terrorism. The assumption is that these actions were morally justified by a legitimate fight against the government that imprisons the said persons, including in the case of democratic governments. For instance, French anarchist groups typically call "political prisoners" the former members of Action Directe held in France for murders.[2]
Amnesty International normally campaigns only for the release of prisoners of conscience or POCs, which include both political prisoners as well as those imprisoned for their religious or philosophical beliefs. (Distinguishing politics from religion and philosophy is often difficult.) To reduce controversy and as a matter of principle, the organization's policy is to work only for prisoners who have not committed or advocated violence. Thus there are political prisoners who do not fit the narrower criteria for POCs. (AI also campaigns against any kind of death penalty, no matter the accusation.)
Examples of persons thought to be current political prisoners
- Gerard Jean-Juste - Haiti (liberation theologist and prominent member of the Fanmi Lavalas party, currently being held without charge)
- Lori Berenson - Peru (American human rights activist convicted of assisting terrorists)
- Aung San Suu Kyi - Burma (leader of political party victorious in last Burmese elections; military government ignored results) (democracy activist ordered under house arrest by Burmese military tribunal)
- Pasteur Bizimungu - Rwanda
- Phuntsok Nyidron - Tibet
- Gedhun Choekyi Nyima - Tibet
- Mikhail Trepashkin - Russia (convicted on trumped-up charges for his investigation of the involvement of the FSB in Russian apartment bombings)
- Cho Sung-hye - North Korea (Returned to North Korea against her will by China)
- Samir Geagea - Lebanon (leader of the Lebanese Forces, a christian political party in Lebanon)
- Akbar Ganji - Iran (Former Revolutionary Guard and Journalist imprisoned in Evin Prison since April 22, 2000. He was imprisoned for his participating in the Berlin conference "Iran after the elections" after the February 2000 Iranian Election)
- Adolfo Fernandez Sainz - Cuban (Journalist for the Moscow based news agency PRIMA. He was arrested on March 20th 2005, as a result of the government’s crackdown on independent journalists. He was accused of giving interviews to foreign radio stations and posting “subversive” articles on the Internet, and sentenced to 15 years in prison under infamous Law 88, better known as the “gag law”.)
- Jennifer Latheef - Maldivian (Opposition political activist Jennifer Latheef was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment on 18 October, convicted of "terrorism" for joining a protest in September 2003 against deaths in prison and political repression.)
- Mikhail Marynich - Belarusian (On December 30th 2005, the Minsk district court found the former Minister of Foreign Economic Relations, and Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of Belarus, Mikhail Marynich, guilty of the misappropriation of office equipment, which the US Embassy had given to the Belarusian public association “Business Initiative”. The politician has been sentenced to five years detention in a medium-security colony and his property has been confiscated. His arrest was clearly politically motivated.)
Further reading
- n.a. 1973. Political Prisoners in South Vietnam. London: Amnesty International Publications.
- Luz Arce. 2003. The Inferno: A Story of Terror and Survival in Chile. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0299195546
- Ben Kiernan. 2002. The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1975. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300096496
- Stephen M. Kohn. 1994. American Political Prisoners. Westport, CT: Praeger. ISBN 0275944158
- Barbara Olshansky. 2002. Secret Trials and Executions: Military Tribunals and the Threat to Democracy. New York: Seven Stories Press. ISBN 1583225374
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