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A political prisoner is 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.
In many cases, political prisoners are imprisoned with no legal veneer directly through extrajudicial processes.
However, it also happens that political prisoners are arrested and tried with a veneer of legality, where false criminal charges, manufactured evidence, and unfair trials are used to disguise the fact that an individual is a political prisoner. This is common in situations which may otherwise be decried nationally and internationally as a human rights violation and suppression of a political dissident. A political prisoner can also be someone that has been denied bail unfairly, denied parole when it would reasonably have been given to a prisoner charged with a comparable crime, or special powers may be invoked by the judiciary.
Particularly in this latter situation, whether an individual is regarded as a political prisoner may depend upon subjective political perspective or interpretation of the evidence.
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Variants
Governments of various regime types — fascist, communist, democratic and theocratic — 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. I
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.
Amnesty International campaigns 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. 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.
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Examples of individuals believed to be political prisoners
Aung San Suu Kyi - Myanmar: Leader of political party victorious in last Burmese elections the results of which were ignored by military government. Ordered under house arrest by Burmese military tribunal.
Andrei Ivanţoc - Transnistria: one of the four leaders of the pro-Romanian Christian-Democratic People's Party of Moldova who were accused of terrorism
Adolfo Fernandez Sainz - Cuba: Journalist for the Moscow based news agency PRIMA. He was arrested on 2005-03-20, 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 - Maldives: Opposition political activist Jennifer Latheef was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment on 2003-10-18, convicted of "terrorism" for joining a protest in September 2003 against deaths in prison and political repression.
Mikhail Marynich - Belarus: On 2005-12-30, 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 United States 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.
Soebandrio - Indonesia: Minister of Foreign Affairs of Indonesia under Sukarno. He was detained by Soeharto in 1966 after the so-called "communist" coup d'etat in 1965, sentenced to death by a military tribunal. His sentence was commuted to life, but he was released in 1995.
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Famous Historic Political Prisoners
Fidel Castro served approximately two years (1953-1955) for his participation in the Attack on Moncada Barracks before launching a successful rebellion in Cuba to become President.
Kim Dae Jung served one term (1976-1979) and in 1980 was exiled to the United States, but returned in 1985 and became President of Korea in 1998.
Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1956 and acquitted, he left the country and returned, only to be arrested again for a long term (1962-1990) where after he negotiated the end of Apartheid and soon became President of South Africa.
Zhang Xueliang served a very long term (1936-1990) for leading the Xi'an Incident in China in which he temporarily imprisoned Chiang Kai-shek, who, when later released, promptly arrested Zhang and brought him to Taiwan after the fall of the Nationalist government to continue his lengthily sentence.
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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 0-299-19554-6
Stuart Christie. 2004. Granny Made Me An Anarchist: General Franco, The Angry Brigade and Me. London: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-5918-1
Christina Fink. 2001. Living Silence: Burma Under Military Rule. Bangkok: White Lotus Press and London: Zed Press. (See in particular Chapter 8: Prison: 'Life University' ). In Thailand ISBN 974-7534-68-1, elsewhere ISBN 1-85649-925-1 and ISBN 1-85649-926-X
Marek M. Kaminski. 2004. Games Prisoners Play. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-11721-7 http://webfiles.uci.edu/mkaminsk/www/book.html
Ben Kiernan. 2002. The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1975. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-09649-6
Stephen M. Kohn. 1994. American Political Prisoners. Westport, CT: Praeger. ISBN 0-275-94415-8
Barbara Olshansky. 2002. Secret Trials and Executions: Military Tribunals and the Threat to Democracy. New York: Seven Stories Press. ISBN 1-58322-537-4
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