Prisoners Of Conscience Research Articles

Japan’s Prisoners of Conscience: Protest and Law During the Iraq War

Japan’s Prisoners of Conscience: Protest and Law During the Iraq War

The Problematic Situation of Freedom of Expression in Japan - Japan’s Prisoners of Conscience: Protest and Law during the Iraq War. By Lawrence Repeta, Oxford & New York: Routledge, 2023. 238 pp. Hardcover: £120.00

The Problematic Situation of Freedom of Expression in Japan - Japan’s Prisoners of Conscience: Protest and Law during the Iraq War. By Lawrence Repeta, Oxford & New York: Routledge, 2023. 238 pp. Hardcover: £120.00

Japan's Prisoners of Conscience: Protest and Law During the Iraq War by Lawrence Repeta (review)

Japan's Prisoners of Conscience: Protest and Law During the Iraq War by Lawrence Repeta (review)

Torture and Trauma in WodOkello Lawoko’s The Dungeon of Nakasero

African literature is characterised by the struggles and challenges of Africans, entailing pains of slavery, primitive colonization and modern colonization otherwise referred to as neo-colonization or imperialism. The continent’s postcolonial challenges include poor leadership, government instability, corruption, poor justice administrative system, underdevelopment, and poverty, among others. Prison memoir, which is a form of witness and resistance literature, particularly, the one written by Prisoners of Conscience (POC), is usually a documentation of these challenges including the trauma experienced as a result of torture experienced from bad leaders. Journalists, being part of society have not been excluded from the societal problems, principally, the torture and trauma experienced from undemocratic leaders. Some journalists have captured these experiences in their writings. However, while scholarship in African literature has paid attention to the various problems of Africa, it has not sufficiently explored torture and trauma in literary texts, mainly, the memoirs written by journalists. WodOkello Lawoko’s The Dungeon of Nakasero, a journalist memoir of sufferings, torture and trauma in the hands of their worst dictatorial military head of state, General Idi Amin, captures the highlighted African struggles and challenges. Therefore, against this backdrop, this study explores the nexus between torture and trauma in The Dungeon of Nakasero, a journalist’s prison memoir that presents the real-life ordeals of Ugandans during the reign of Idi Amin. The study relies on Carthy Caruth’s trauma theory to undertake a textual analysis of the text. Apart from depicting Idi Amin as the worst dictatorial head of state in Uganda, it further places him as one of the worst leaders in Africa. The text depicts journalism as one of the riskiest professions in the world and notes that only the unison of Africans can rid the continent of dictators and poor leadership. 

FEATURES OF THE PLOT OF THE POETRY OF THE RESISTANCE MOVEMENT OF THE SECOND HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY IN UKRAINE (ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE LYRICS OF THE DISSIDENT TARAS MELNYCHUK)

In modern literary studies, the problems of generational experiences, the involvement of authors in certain generations, the artificial interruption of the connection between them in the USSR and the dynamics of restoration in the period of Independence are actualized. Plot poetry fell out of the field of view of scientists, although it was under the direct influence of the mentioned features, it contained many contradictions, because the plot was a convenient means of typical post-Soviet vulgar socialist realist poetry. The event, the so-called external plot, was generously used by the official authors of the “thaw” when writing poems. Dissidents and hermeticists mostly rejected the external plot and bet on an internal, emotional event. This influenced the formation of the multidimensionality of the generative experience of the post-modern era. The figurative-symbolic style of the poetry of the resistance movement became more expressive than procedurality, which lost cause-and-effect detail, and the internal plot became, in fact, a projection of codes based on the constructed figurative-symbolic style. Therefore, the lyrics of the direct participants of the resistance movement, that is, prisoners of conscience, the displaced generation and hermeticists, poets of several branches of the resistance movement, who symbolically intertwined, are a certain symbolic integrity. Therefore, many dissident writers were qualified as involved in the suppressed generation and hermeticism. Taras Melnychuk, a prisoner of the Perm camps, in particular, was the author of open and hidden lyrics, where there were external and internal plots with a consistent modeling of ethnocodes, with a dominant image of the Carpathians, with relic molfarism, which he contrasted with shamanism (which would be impossible to interpret and to explain outside the plot, without the external course of events and the connection of phenomena and without internal spasmodic toning with dynamics and hermetization), which resulted in a unique, discourse expression of the author’s position.

Reagan, Congress, and Human Rights: Contesting Morality in US Foreign Policy by Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard

Reviewed by: Reagan, Congress, and Human Rights: Contesting Morality in US Foreign Policy by Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard Aryeh Neier (bio) Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard, Reagan, Congress, and Human Rights: Contesting Morality in US Foreign Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2022), ISBN 9781108495639 (hard-back), 324 pages. Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard, a Danish historian teaching at a Swedish university, has written an excellent account of the way that the United States Congress, through its struggles in the 1980s with the Reagan Administration, helped to make the promotion of international human rights an important ongoing component of American foreign policy. His book, Reagan, Congress, and Human Rights: Contesting Morality in US Foreign Policy, is deeply researched. To one who was a close observer and participant in those struggles as they were taking place, Søndergaard’s highly detailed reporting seems flawless. Most of his judgments seem well-considered and fair. And yet, despite his book’s many virtues, it appears to me that Søndergaard has told only part of the story. It was not only struggles with Congress during the Reagan years that led to an ongoing American commitment to promote human rights. It was also the focus on human rights reporting in the mainstream American press during that period and the emergence of an array of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) dedicated to the human rights cause. The press coverage and the lobbying by NGOs complemented and contributed to the efforts of those members of Congress who were at the forefront of disputes with the Reagan administration. In turn, of course, the battles waged by members of Congress provided material for press attention to human rights, and NGOs built their constituencies by mobilizing their supporters around struggles in Congress. Before the 1970s, the international human rights cause did not attract much attention. It was rarely an issue in the US Congress. Press coverage was scarce. And a civil society movement to promote human rights barely existed. Amnesty International had been founded in 1961, but while it caught on in a few European countries, it had only a small following in the United States. Also, in those days, it restricted its activities to very few issues. Its main activity was to identify “prisoners of conscience” in a number of countries and to organize letter-writing campaigns for them. All of this changed in the 1970s because human rights became a focal point in the Cold War struggle. The most important developments were the emergence of a small dissident movement, quickly subjected to harsh repression in Moscow, at the heart of the Soviet empire; a military coup that was accompanied by extensive torture and killings that overthrew a democratically elected leftist government in Chile; and large scale protests against the Apartheid government in South Africa that were violently suppressed. The geopolitical alignments of the governments engaged in repression became a central part of the story. Some reacted to abuses because of their political sympathies for certain victims of repression. Others were insistent that all such abuses should be condemned and that human rights should be upheld regardless of Cold War alignments. [End Page 157] A member of Congress who responded to the human rights developments in different parts of the world was Representative Donald Fraser of Minnesota. He conducted hearings on those developments and was the principal author of legislation that would change the way the United States Department of State would deal with human rights. Fraser’s legislation mandated the creation of the post of Assistant Secretary for Human Rights, provided that the Department would issue annual “country reports” on the human rights practices of governments worldwide, and prohibited security aid to governments that had practiced gross abuses of rights. The latter provision was seen as a repudiation of the role of Henry Kissinger in facilitating the military coup in 1973 that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power in Chile. The legislation was vetoed by President Gerald Ford, for whom Kissinger served as Secretary of State. It was adopted by Congress over Ford’s veto. An essential part of the process that secured the votes needed to override Ford’s veto is that the legislation won the support of right-wing members of...

Poland's Solidarity Movement and the Global Politics of Human Rights

In the Fall 2013 issue of the Journal of Cold War Studies, Robert Brier published an article “Broadening the Cultural History of the Cold War: The Emergence of the Polish Workers’ Defense Committee and the Rise of Human Rights,” which examined the emergence of a dissident movement in Communist-era Poland. Following a student uprising in Poland in March 1968 and the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in August of that year, distinctive forms of opposition began to challenge the Communist monopoly of power in Poland. Inspired by Soviet dissenters, most notably Andrei Sakharov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Polish opposition activists also later appealed to the human rights agenda of the Helsinki Accords of 1975, which the Polish authorities had recognized by signing but failed to enact in practice.Poland's key opposition movements in the 1970s were the Workers’ Defense Committee (KOR) and the Movement to Defend Human and Civil Rights (ROPCiO). Their aspirations were encouraged by the arrival of the Polish Pope, John Paul II, in 1979, though Brier contends that the pope's visit “may not have been as heroic as some accounts suggest” (p. 34). These were significant impulses for the creation of Solidarity, whose “Twenty-One Demands” articulated the agenda of human rights. Solidarity was temporarily accepted by the Communist authorities in the Gdańsk Agreement of August 1980, but after sixteen months of legality Solidarity was banned by martial law, and the human rights agenda was brutally suppressed.The world watched the Solidarity underground in the decade that followed. But, as Brier explains, international responses were often determined by domestic agendas. To West German Chancellor Willy Brandt—himself a former refugee from Nazi Germany—foreign policy was governed by lengthy time-horizons during which détente gradually unfolded through the evolution of intergovernmental relations. His Ostpolitik hence saw dissidents as promoting an unreasonable, or simply ignorant, view of history. Even so, Western officials began to extend their visits by meeting opposition figures and stopping at sites of popular remembrance, notably the tomb of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, a Polish priest murdered by secret police officers in 1984.The French left engaged in fierce debate from 1974—triggered by Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago—about the respective merits of Communism and Marxism. Brier argues that “the once dominant framework of the French Left—Marxism—collapsed completely” (p. 108), and in its place human rights became the principal concern. As the abstractions of “totalitarianism” were replaced by specific concerns for human rights, political prisoners and dissidents in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe became central figures. Left-wing intellectuals demanded that Communist rulers heed human rights and other universal norms they had endorsed at Helsinki. Rather than acknowledging Communist autocracy, they had to accept Solidarity's democratic principle that citizens should have a direct influence on public affairs. This was also the priority at home.U.S. debates on foreign policy were also driven by domesticity. In the 1970s, Democrats like Senator Henry Jackson began to use the language of human rights to reinforce the ideological differences between East and West and thereby “reclaim American virtue” (p. 128). But under Ronald Reagan's Republican presidency the target was extended from anti-Communist rhetoric to measures against any social system antagonistic toward the creativity of individual human beings. As Reagan dismantled some welfare policies and reduced the influence of trade unions, union leaders in the United States argued that Solidarity represented a human right that was under threat at home: freedom of association.Brier concludes that Solidarity became a “vessel” for the ideas and wishes of its supporters abroad. Its leaders, including “iconic figures” such as Lech Wałęsa, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, were harshly suppressed by the Communist regime and were lauded abroad as prisoners of conscience. Poland became a “canvas unto which West Europeans and Americans could project their own struggles” (p. 145). Brier does recognize their assistance in helping to keep Polish activists out of prison, providing funds to sustain their activity and nudging the Polish government toward the 1989 roundtable talks with the opposition. These were significant steps toward the end of Communism in Eastern Europe and of the Cold War, but Brier suggests their main impulse was domesticity rather than internationalism.His book is a contribution to the promising Cambridge University Press series “Human Rights in History,” which one hopes will explore these issues further. Not least are the dramatic changes of the post-1989 era, as political leaders in Poland and Hungary have moved to recentralize state power and limit, or indeed extinguish, the role of human rights-based opposition.

Seamus Heaney’s Prisoners

This article focuses on the role that prisoners play in the poems of Seamus Heaney. From the time of the introduction of internment in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s, Heaney’s poems frequently touch on prisoners, the conditions in which they are held, and how they might be conceptualized. This article discusses how these poems reflect contemporaneous political discourse regarding prisoners. It also shows how Heaney’s engagements with prisoners are refracted, characteristically, through his earliest memories, and through his knowledge of literature. In particular, Second World War POWs and Heaney’s knowledge of Russian authors, including Osip Mandelstam and Anton Chekhov, provide significant contexts for his engagements with Troubles-era prisoners. Drawing on materials from the Heaney Literary Papers held in the National Library of Ireland, this article demonstrates how the conditions in which internees were held shaped ‘The Unacknowledged Legislator’s Dream’ in North (1975). Finally, it discusses the roles Nelson Mandela, and the prisoners of conscience campaigned for by Amnesty International, play in his work. This paper concludes that, although Heaney was resolute in not promoting violence, his attitudes towards those who perpetrated it, and were imprisoned for it, were complex and changing.

Biology

Biology Ko Than Tun (bio) Translated from Burmese by ko ko thett To have sex with her just onceI've fed her my head.She looks aroused, munching my skull. I don't need a head for orgasm.To reach the climax for herselfshe will chomp on the rest of me. This isthe way of life for a pair of praying mantis.This issacrifice—for love.This is love—sacrificed for survival. [End Page 240] Ko Than Tun Ko Tan Tun was born in 1953 in Homelin, in western Burma. He was a prisoner of conscience in Monywa, Mandalay, and Insein prisons. He has been recognized with a national poetry award for his collection The Night's Storyteller (The Eras, 2018). Ko Ko Thett ko ko thett is a bilingual poet and author of several collections of poetry and poetry translations in Burmese and English. He has been featured at literary events from Sharjah to Shanghai, and his poems and translations have appeared in literary journals and anthologies worldwide. He was the poetry editor for Mekong Review from 2017 to 2022. His most recent volume is Bamboophobia (Zephyr, 2022). He lives in Norwich, U.K. Copyright © 2022 University of Hawai'i Press

Poetry as a “Sanctuary” Amidst Barbed Wire: The Dialogue of Symbols

With the 1990s, after the communist regime collapsed in Romania, the reading public could see the rapidly increasing publication of poetry composed by former prisoners of conscience. Still, to this day, such works have remained a somewhat peripheral concern of literary critics and the society alike. These writings, nevertheless, have a lot to offer in terms of meanings, beyond the aesthetic plane, in gaining further insight into the human condition and creativity amid traumatic circumstances. One may find studies about Romanian prison poetry, on the one hand, describing the abusive political power as well as victims’ resistance to it and, on the other, identifying elements of collective memories transmitted through literary discourse. However, the unique ways in which these texts have been able to help their authors maintain their moral values and identity have not undergone a thorough exploration. This article aims to offer a glimpse into this very issue and emphasise its relevance to literary, memory and trauma studies. This brief analysis hermeneutically approaches the poetry created by Bishop Ioan Ploscaru during his ideologicallymotivated incarceration. More specifically, it focuses on how, amid the dynamics between the poetic act and the prisoner’s mental state, his “rhymed reflections” gain the qualities of a ‘memory sanctuary’. This notion derives from that of symbolic “sites of memory” and relates to processes of remembering, contemplating and seeking protection. In their original, unwritten state, Ioan Ploscaru’s poems - later featured in the volume Cruci de gratii (Crosses of Prison Grates) - evoke an inner space of representation, where detention experiences get invested with new meanings. In the circumstances of life-threatening abuses, these verses illustrate how the mental (re)composing of personal poems works towards achieving the survival of conscience.

The lived experience of a psychologist activist

This essay reflects upon the role of activism for psychologists in these times and future decades. The author's lived experience as a transgenerational Holocaust survivor, prisoner of conscience, and clinical psychologist serve as the springboard to explore how psychologists can help to address the current threats to human survival. The article highlights the interface between the healing of individual and collective trauma. The transparency demonstrated in the exploration of the author's lived experience aims to encourage a parallel openness and vulnerability in attending to the collective trauma sustained in the twentieth century, the age of genocide. The article concludes with a proposal for a conspiracy of hope, in which psychologists can play a unique role as advocates for human survival.

Authentication and Analysis of Purported Undercover Telephone Calls Made to Hospitals in China on the Topic of Organ Trafficking

The People’s Republic of China operates one of the largest organ transplantation systems in the world as measured by transplant volume, yet its operations are cloaked in official secrecy. A great deal of contention has surrounded the source of the organs, whether voluntary donors, death row prisoners, or prisoners of conscience. It is difficult to gather reliable data about the operations of China’s transplant program, and Chinese authorities have been found to disseminate falsified donor registry datasets. One source which may shed light on empirical questions about China’s transplant system is a cache of telephone calls made by investigators to transplant hospitals in China. The investigators pose in a range of plausible identities, and make enquiries about organ availability, health, and donor source. The matter of whether these telephone calls may be used as valid evidence in social scientific research is not immediately clear, given questions of source and selection bias, and even the basic facticity of the calls themselves. This working paper aims to establish whether or not the audio files are in fact what they purport to be — that is, actual calls to hospitals in China — and considers issues associated with their potential use by researchers.

«НАУКОВА ОДІССЕЯ» НАДІЇ СУРОВЦОВОЇ: НАРИС ІНТЕЛЕКТУАЛЬНОЇ БІОГРАФІЇ НЕСКОРЕНОЇ УМАНЧАНКИ

На основі першоджерел – мемуарної літератури, архівних матеріалів і наукових напрацювань низки вітчизняних та зарубіжних дослідників відтворено наукову біографію Надії Суровцової в галузі історії України, краєзнавства, етнографії й мистецтвознавства. Можна окреслити кілька напрямків її роботи: це докторська дисертація «Богдан Хмельницький та ідея української державності», історичні розвідки про декабристів, праця в Уманському краєзнавчому музеї, активна участь у відкритті Уманської картинної галереї, вивчення історії міста й дендропарку «Софіївка», численні статті краєзнавчого характеру, зокрема про цадика Нахмана, у місцевій й зарубіжній пресі, аналіз яких стане темою наступних наших досліджень.

THE MAIN DIRECTIONS OF STUDY OF THE DISSIDENT MOVEMENT IN THE USSR IN RUSSIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY (ON MATERIALS OF DISSERTATION RESEARCH)

The article deals with the historiography of the dissident movement in the USSR, represented by a complex of dissertations for the degree of candidate and doctor of historical Sciences. According to the classification proposed by the author, the dissertations can be divided into 2 areas depending on the researchers' assessment of the place and role of dissidents in Soviet history. Most of the works are characterized by the apologia of dissidence, the consideration of this phenomenon only from the point of view of a positive contribution to the national history, the representation of all dissidents as martyrs and «prisoners of conscience». A smaller part of the work relates to the objective-realistic direction, which considers both the pros and cons in the dissident movement, its role in the years of the «cold war». The author concludes that the studies of the second half of the 1990s - the first decade of the 2000s are more characterized by the mythologization of the dissident movement, which replaced its sharp criticism in the 1960s - the first half of the 1980s.

Prisoners of conscience in the Plowshares and School of the Americas Watch movements: the politics of privilege, gender, and religious identity

ABSTRACTThe American peace movement has always been predominantly white and Christian, and this essay makes the privileged identities of nonviolent prisoners of conscience in the Plowshares and School of the Americas Watch movements its analytical starting place. From the axes of gender (female or male) and religious identity (laity or vowed religious), it examines how privilege and experience are understood and animated by movement participants, and how this impacts activist experience. Specifically, it investigates how some prisoners of conscience negotiate and employ their whiteness, education, class, and status as a strategic use of ‘privilege power,’ as well as how the ‘moment of action’ is a gendered experience of empowerment that is shaped by religious identity. The data illuminate the ways that privilege can be a site of intentional contestation and power, while un-examined areas of identity can shape experience in meaningful ways.

Bioethics and activism: A natural fit?

Bioethics is a practically oriented discipline that developed to address pressing ethical issues arising from developments in the life sciences. Given this inherent practical bent, some form of advocacy or activism seems inherent to the nature of bioethics. However, there are potential tensions between being a bioethics activist, and academic ideals. In academic bioethics, scholarship involves reflection, rigour and the embrace of complexity and uncertainty. These values of scholarship seem to be in tension with being an activist, which requires pragmatism, simplicity, certainty and, above all, action. In this paper I explore this apparent dichotomy, using the case example of my own involvement in international efforts to end forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China. I conclude that these tensions can be managed and that academic bioethics requires a willingness to be activist.

Rape and genital maiming/mutilation as a torture method in Ethiopian Prisons: Evidence that prisoners of conscience, critical journalists, and activists have been abused

In recent years, it has come to be recognized that men and women activists, prisoners of conscience, and critical journalists in Ethiopia have been sexually abused in detention as a method of torture. We do not know exactly how common the abuse is. Few former prisoners are willing to disclose their experience. Rape, genital maiming/mutilation, and sexual violence including sodomy are under-reported by both men and women. Male survivors of sexual violence are less likely than women and girls to disclose assaults (Callender & Dartnall 2011) [1] due to a combination of cultural and religious reasons manifested through shame, confusion, and guilt. This study uses personal accounts and anecdotal evidence to investigate the alleged abuses. The data indicate that genital maiming/mutilation and rape have been practiced in an attempt to silence dissent and humiliate the victims. This study highlights the urgent need for the international community and local human rights organizations to address seriously the needs of victims of sexual violence such as genital maiming, rape, and other obscene and sadistic, ill treatment in prisons. The human cost of the silencing and the marginalization of survivors can only be estimated at present. [1] Callender, T. and E. Dartnall (2011) Mental health responses for victims of sexual violence and rape in resource poor settings. SVRI Briefing Paper, Sexual Violence Research Initiative, Medical Research Council, Pretoria, South Africa (e-version).

Obrona decyzji sumienia przez Tomasza More’a w obliczu uwięzienia i śmierci

The article analyses Thomas More’s firm attitude defending his conscience, which did not allow him to swear an oath. The basis for reflection is his prison correspondence, especially with her daughter Margaret. He remained faithful to his conscience because he refused to submit the required signatures and was beheaded, but gained eternal salvation. He studied for a long time, meditated and prayed to make the right decision. The closest urged him to change his decision, but he refused. He was not affected by accusations, slander, threats or flattery. He did not swear an oath and did not explain anything. He preserved freedom of conscience and responsibility for his own decisions. He did not judge anyone else. All the time he showed respect and loyalty to the king and constantly assured of his prayers in king’s intentions. Despite the weakness and fear of death, he put everything into God's hands. He was a prisoner of conscience and gave his live in the name of fidelity to the Church and the Holy See.

‘You Exile them in their Own Countries’: The Everyday Politics of Reclaiming the Disappeared in Libya

Located in Libya’s capital city of Tripoli, Abū Salīm Prison has become suspended in Libya’s national collective memory as the site of a contested prison killing in 1996. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the prison hosted many prisoners of conscience, namely individuals who forcibly had been disappeared because security personnel suspected them of opposing the regime of Mu’amar Qadhdhafi. Drawing on interviews with their family members, I trace how Libyan families contested the state’s violence and forced disappearance through everyday behaviors, such as inquiring about their relatives’ whereabouts and visiting Abū Salīm Prison. The article contributes to an ongoing discussion within sociology, anthropology, and area studies about the significance of small-scale acts of resistance as forms of political action. Disappearance not only pulled people apart, but also brought them together, often around the same spaces that were intended to disenfranchise them.

Nelson Mandela’s changing idea of South Africa

This article is a critical reflection on Nelson Mandela’s changing idea of South Africa as reflected in his widely known autobiography Long Walk to Freedom. It seeks to understand how he worked towards laying down a profound post-racial humanism based on a broader inclusive South African nationalism that transcended the narrow and exclusionist racial apartheid idea of South Africa. His autobiography is intertwined inextricably with the complex and ever-changing idea of South Africa. The formation of Mandela’s political consciousness from that of a rural Thembu boy in Eastern Cape, to an urban nationalist fire-brand in Johannesburg, a prisoner of conscience at Robben Island, a pragmatist and voice of reason during the Convention for South Africa Democracy (CODESA) negotiations, and right up to his one-term presidency (1994–1999) reflects the life of an active politician and an embodiment of the contested idea of South Africa. While Mandela never stopped seeking to understand the complex aspects of the contested idea of South Africa, his idea was also influenced by instances of mass action, the influence of friends, work and political colleagues, the ANC and his experiences during the 27 years of his imprisonment. Therefore, if his life of struggle embodied the complex and ever-changing idea of South Africa, it is not surprising that his political actions are blamed as the source of the present crisis engulfing the country. However, this article posits that South Africans who remained stuck in racial adversarial politics failed Mandela in his decolonial endeavour to set afoot a new humanism. Based on a platform that radically transcended the colonial/apartheid paradigm of difference, Mandela’s vision depended on a successful metamorphosis of the erstwhile ‘white/black’ dichotomy as an essential pre-requisite for the rebirth of a new political community.