When Ho Chi Minh visited China in the 1940s, he was trying to gain support from Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist government for his struggle against French colonialists. But Ho was a communist and distrusted by the Chinese generalissimo, who had Ho imprisoned for 18 months. In that time, Ho wrote the now famous Notebook from Prison, a collection of melancholic and stoic poems written in Chinese that call for revolution. Ho would go on to liberate Vietnam from the French in 1954, paving the way for the foundation of a socialist state in the country's north.
Akbar Ganji, a controversial and outspoken journalist, is a standard bearer of resistance for many of Iran's reformists. He was a member of the Revolutionary Guard before he became disenchanted: "I saw a fascism and political tyranny emerging in Iran. Anyone who asked questions was branded 'antirevolutionary' and 'against Iran.' " Ganji embarked on an investigation of a series of murders that became known as "the chain murders of Iran." The result was his most famous work, a string of essays alleging that senior officials were behind the killings. The accusation led to his arrest in 2000, and he spent the next six years in prison. While in confinement he managed to smuggle out texts he had written, most notably a political manifesto, laying out the basis of his proposal for a fully fledged Iranian democratic republic. He has been a well-known critic of the Iraq war, arguing, "You cannot bring democracy to a country by attacking it."
The Soviet nuclear physicist turned human rights campaigner turned prisoner in his own country Andrei Sakharov received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. But because of his views on Soviet political repression and its hostile relations with other countries, the Soviet government would not allow Sakharov to leave the country to collect the prize. In 1980 Sakharov was exiled to Gorky, stripped of all his honors and placed under constant surveillance for his views on the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. He also called for a worldwide boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow. However, in 1986 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev released Sakharov from his exile, and the aging dissident became a symbol of resistance to hard-line Soviet repression in the final three years of his life.
Burmese pro-democracy opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, now 65, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 while she was under house arrest. She was released in 1995, only to be detained again — and again. Her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), decided to boycott this year's elections, which have been widely labeled in the international press as a sham. But soon after the polls, Suu Kyi was released by the Burmese junta — it remains unclear what sort of role she'll be able to play in pushing for reform under the yoke of the country's authoritarian generals.
In 1990 — two years after Suu Kyi, the daughter of assassinated Burmese liberation hero General Aung San, returned to Burma from abroad and became a leading activist — the NLD did participate in elections. It won more than 80% of the contested parliamentary seats, but the ruling military junta paid no heed. Suu Kyi's persistent stand for democracy and human rights inspired the U2 song "Walk On." In an essay for TIME, Bono wrote, "Her quiet voice of reason makes the world look noisy, mad; it is a low mantra of grace in an age of terror, a reminder of everything we take for granted and just what it can take to get it."
Benigno Aquino Jr. (or Ninoy, as he was known) was destined to enter politics. He was a scion of a prominent Filipino political clan and was elected his country's youngest-ever Senator at the age of 34 — a feat that would have him crowned the "Wonder Boy of Philippine Politics." On Sept. 21, 1972, when Ninoy's former fraternity brother Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law, Ninoy and other opposition leaders were jailed. After seven years of confinement, he suffered a heart attack and was allowed by Marcos to go to the U.S. for surgery. That was followed by three years of self-imposed exile, after which he returned to the Philippines, reportedly saying on the plane back, "My feeling is, we all have to die sometime, and if it's my fate to die by an assassin's bullet, so be it." As he stepped off the plane, he was gunned down, dying in a bloody pool on the Manila tarmac. News of his death sparked mass protests that eventually led to the end of Marcos' 20-year regime and the restoration of democracy to the Philippines with the election of Ninoy's wife Corazon.
Vaclav Havel was a prominent playwright, essayist and poet. He was also, for a time, a political prisoner, jailed for his writings that satirized communist bureaucracy and for his involvement in the Prague Spring reform movement of 1968. His contentious letter to then President Gustav Husak didn't result in any action being taken, but the text quickly went viral — at least by the standards of the pre-Internet era. His work was banned by the government, yet it brought the world's attention to Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia's plight. Havel would be subjected to police harassment and arrests, and in 1979 he was sentenced to 4½ years in prison for subversion of the republic. Upon his release, Havel became a leading figure in what would become known as the Velvet Revolution of 1989. He won the presidency that year and subsequently became the first President of the newly formed Czech Republic in 1993. His lifelong motto: "Truth and love must prevail over lies and hate."
Despite repeated warnings from the Chinese government, the Nobel Committee named jailed Chinese dissident writer Liu Xiaobo the winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize, citing "his long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights in China." Liu has been in prison since last Christmas, when he was sentenced to 11 years for criticizing China's communist government in a widely circulated petition dubbed Charter 08. Liu's wife accepted the committee's praise on his behalf, and, from house arrest in Beijing, invited Chinese dissidents and writers to attend the ceremony in her husband's place. President Obama, the recipient of last year's Peace Prize, called on China to release Liu soon after the award was announced, saying that political reform in the country "has not kept pace" with "dramatic progress in economic reform."
Mohandas Gandhi's storied history of resistance included many stints in jail, starting with a two-month imprisonment in 1907 in South Africa, where he was working to end discrimination against Indians living there. He was arrested for urging them to ignore a law requiring Indians to be registered and fingerprinted. While in jail, Gandhi read Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, which would become a major part of his philosophy upon his return to India. Back in his home country, Gandhi was put behind bars several times for his movement to end British rule. In 1922 he was tried for the last time by the British government for "bringing or attempting to excite disaffection towards His Majesty's Government established by law in British India." He pleaded guilty to all charges and was sentenced to six years, of which he served two before being released for an emergency appendectomy. India achieved independence on Aug. 15, 1947, five months before Gandhi was assassinated. His moniker, Mahatma, meant "the great one."
The most important civil rights campaigner in American history, Martin Luther King Jr. was born in January 1929, the son of a Baptist minister. He was a child protégé at school, skipping two grades and entering Morehouse College without ever formally graduating from high school. He completed his Ph.D. at Boston University before becoming a pastor. His studies pulled him toward the philosophy of nonviolent struggle and inspired him with the Gandhian dictum, "Through our pain we will make them see their injustice." King's political campaigning took full force with the Rosa Parks bus incident in 1955, which led to a nonviolent boycott of the buses in Montgomery, Ala. The campaign succeeded in ending forced segregation on buses, but there was still a long struggle ahead. Throughout his tireless campaigning for racial equality, King was arrested about 30 times. He penned his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail" in 1963 after being imprisoned for his role in a direct action there. The text's most famous line — "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" — echoed the world-changing moral righteousness of his cause. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
After joining the African National Congress (ANC) in 1944 and taking part in resistance against the largely white, ethnic-Afrikaner National Party's apartheid policies, Nelson Mandela eventually went on trial in what became known as the marathon Treason Trial of 1956-1961 (in which all defendants would eventually be acquitted). With the ANC banned, in 1961 he co-founded its military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) but was arrested in 1962 and sentenced to five years' imprisonment with hard labor. In 1964 the sentence was furthered to life imprisonment for his allegedly plotting to violently overthrow the government. Until 1982, Mandela was kept at the infamous Robben Island prison, off Cape Town, before moving to Pollsmoor prison on the mainland.
Despite his incarceration, his reputation grew, along with the antiapartheid movement itself. Upon his release in 1990, Mandela threw himself into his life's work and became leader of the ANC. By 1994, South Africa's first multiracial elections saw the ANC win 62% of the vote. Mandela duly became the country's first black President, with the National Party's F. W. de Klerk as his first deputy and Thabo Mbeki as the second in the Government of National Unity.
0 comments:
Posting Komentar