totalitarianism

Myanmar just executed four democracy activists.

There is a video on my website by Father James Mawdsley, “Men and Women” (see the More tab).

He was arrested in Myanmar several times, so I wanted to give some background on him. I picked Wikipedia because this source is nonsectarian.

“Mawdsley took up teaching English at a Burmese refugee camp and became further involved when government forces burnt down the school. He was arrested three times for his involvement and deported three times. The second arrest was in May 1998, for handing out stickers and playing songs for the pro-democracy movement. On arrest, he was tortured for fifteen hours and sentenced to five years imprisonment, which was suspended after 98 days.

“He was rearrested a third time in September 1999, for illegal entry and sedition, and was sentenced to seventeen years in jail. His imprisonment was held to be arbitrary by the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in 2000. This time, he spent 415 days in solitary confinement, before his release in October 2000, after pressure was exerted by the United Kingdom Foreign Office on the authorities in Myanmar.”

​Mawdsley became a priest after his imprisonment in Myanmar.