Political Prisoners Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Political prisoners are people imprisoned for political beliefs or political actions as a result of a government’s criminalization. The government is one of political differences, and these differences are thought to threaten the established order of government; holding or articulating political views antagonistic to the state is thus seen as a crime. A closely related term is prisoner of conscience, which refers to those incarcerated because of their beliefs, color, sex, ethnic origin, language, or religion. At the shared definitional core of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience is their detainment by the state for the purpose of silencing dissent, or constraining opposition to orthodoxy as propagated by the state. Some political prisoners are simply arrested and incarcerated for an indefinite period of time, while others go through judicial proceedings before they are imprisoned. Extrajudicial killings and state sanctioned “disappearances” are also observed.

Political Prisoners And Civil Rights

A usual tactic seen with political prisoners is to charge or accuse them with contrived, nonpolitical, common criminal acts so as to help the state present a more acceptable facade of legitimacy for a prosecution or a jailing. Critics of such proceedings commonly invoke the pejorative terms trumped-up charges, fabricated evidence, kangaroo court, show trial, sham trial, and the like. The state’s political motivations in bringing about such prosecutions and trials are an important element in determining whether a detainee is indeed a political prisoner. There is a level of inherent subjectivity in assessing the depth and influence of politics in such prosecutorial decision making, and these commonly remain issues of contention and debate between the state and supporters of the accused. For example, at what point does legitimate dissent from political orthodoxy become illegitimate treason and betrayal of one’s country? Should there be a global standard to constrain governments, or should these concerns be more appropriately evaluated within a particular country’s own values and perspectives?

In an effort to put forth an international standard to clarify these considerations and to prevent governments from rationalizing politically motivated prosecutions and imprisonments, the United Nations (UN) promulgated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. This was the first time in international law that all people were recognized as possessing rights that transcended a state’s sovereign imperatives. According to this declaration, no person may be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention, or imprisonment—detention is understood to be arbitrary when there is no ostensible legal foundation for the detention or there are serious breaches of the right to a fair trial.

However, in the wake of these international legal provisions, a debate between Western and non-Western, or developing, countries emerged. Western states generally contend that political and civil rights are absolutely essential and critical, whereas non-Western detractors argue that political liberties are irrelevant and worthless if the fundamental needs of the people, such as freedom from hunger and basic security, are not provided. Thus, generally speaking, non-Western and developing countries show a lessened commitment to political rights as limned in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Along with the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch are prominent watchdogs on the lookout for potential violations of these human rights. However, even with these organizations at work, obtaining or collecting exact data on the number and treatment of political prisoners is extraordinarily difficult because of the lack of accurate self-reporting by states with problematic human rights records; there is also great risk involved in the preparation of such reports by internal nongovernmental actors.

Political Prisoners In Oppressive Regimes

The presence of political prisoners in a country is an important indicator of the level of repression that government exercises over its people. Repressive governments work to reinforce their control over the populace by denying them fundamental political freedoms and curtailing individual civil liberties and rights. Interfering with people and group’s ability to freely articulate and act on their dissident political beliefs is a prime tactic that authoritarian and totalitarian regimes use to help strengthen the survival of their regime, and examples of this have been readily observed in the modern era. Poland in the early 1980s prohibited the prodemocracy trade union of Polish Solidarity and anyone involved in it was subject to arrest. Soviet Union dissidents such as Andrei Sakharov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn were arrested and exiled by Soviet authorities for their respective public criticisms of the government. Solzhenitsyn’s monumental work The Gulag Archipelago is an extensive first-hand account of the Soviet Union’s prison camp system in which many Soviet political prisoners found themselves. A range of nations have held political prisoners in custody for extended periods of time or dealt with them in more summary ways, including South Africa, Cuba, Tibet, China, Indonesia, Chile, Haiti, and Pakistan.

Other regimes decide to place their political prisoners under house arrest—that is, restricting those people’s liberty by confining them to their homes. This was a commonly used tactic of the South African government in its efforts to deal with activists fighting apartheid. One of the most prominent current examples of this politically restricting approach is in Burma, where the ruling military junta of Burma has had Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for fourteen years for her pro-democratic political activism.

Bibliography:

Bennett, James R. Political Trials and Prisoners in the Twentieth Century: A Worldwide Annotated Bibliography, 1900 through 1993. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1995.
Hague, Rod, and Martin Harrop. Political Science: A Comparative Introduction. 5th ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Hopgood, Stephen. Keepers of the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006.
Kohn, Stephen M. American Political Prisoners: Prosecutions under the Espionage and Sedition Acts. Praeger, 1994.
Munro, Robin, and Mickey Spiegel. Detained in China and Tibet: A Directory of Political and Religious Prisoners. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1994.
Power, Jonathan. Like Water on Stone: The Story of Amnesty International. Manchester, Vt.: Northeastern, 2001.
Smith, Roger. Political Prisoners (Incarceration Issues: Punishment, Reform, and Rehabilitation). Broomall, Pa.: Mason Crest Publishers, 2006.
Timerman, Jacobo. Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number (The Americas). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.
Ziring, Lawrence, Robert Riggs, and Jack Plano. The United Nations: International Organization and World Politics. 3rd ed. New York: Harcourt, 2000.

This example Political Prisoners Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.