James Mawdsley

James Mawdsley In 2000, James Mawdsley was released for the third and last time from a rough prison in Burma, which is in Asia, near Thailand. Burma is one of the world’s most repressive regimes, where free speech is forbidden and severely punished. Burma has ignored all calls by the rest of the world to become more democratic and to improve the way that it treats its people. Many of the world’s countries refuse to do business with Burma because of this.

James had gone to Burma to teach English and he was first arrested in 1997 for spraying the word 'metta', meaning “peace”, on the wall of the school. He was deported from that country and told not to return. A year later, he did come back to hand out democracy leaflets, and protest about the way that the government was treating and killing its ethnic minorities.

He was arrested a second time and held for 99 days and then deported again. However, James could not give up the fight. His conscience and his anger at the way the Burmese government treated its people made him return a third time. This time, he was arrested and sentenced to 17 years in prison. He was put in solitary confinement, where he stayed for over a year. In prison, he was beaten and tortured, his food contaminated with dirt, glass and faeces, so that he could not eat it. When he was finally released, he left with a broken nose and two black eyes.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer was born in Germany in 1906, an outstanding student, and at the age of 25 became a lecturer in Christianity. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Bonhoeffer became a leading spokesman on behalf of the Protestant Church against the Nazis. He organized and for a time led the underground seminary of the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer had been taught not to defy authority, but he came to believe that to do so was sometimes the right choice. He joined a group planning the overthrow of Hitler. He was arrested in connection with an assassination plot against Hitler, but his life was spared, because he had a relative who stood high in the government; but then this relative was himself implicated in anti-Nazi plots. On Sunday 8 April 1945, he had just finished conducting a service of worship at Schoenberat the prison, when two soldiers came in, saying, "Prisoner Bonhoeffer, make ready and come with us," . This was the usual way to call for a prisoner about to be executed. As he left, he said to another prisoner, "This is the end -- but for me, the beginning -- of life." He was hanged the next day, less than a week before the Allies reached the camp.