Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, uncovers a systematic campaign to persecute Assange. He reveals that Assange has faced grave and systematic due process violations, judicial bias, collusion and manipulated evidence. He has been the victim of constant surveillance, defamation and threats. Melzer also gathered together consolidated medical evidence that proves that the prison has suffered prolonged psychological torture. Melzer's compelling investigation puts the UK and US state into the dock, showing how, through secrecy, impunity and, crucially, public indifference, unchecked power reveals a deeply undemocratic system. Furthermore, the Assange case sets a dangerous precedent: once telling the truth becomes a crime, censorship and tyranny will inevitably follow.

North Korea is Orwell's 1984 made reality: it is the only country in the world not connected to the internet; Gone with the Wind is a dangerous, banned book; during political rallies, spies study your expression to check your sincerity.

After the death of the country's great leader Kim Il Sung in 1994, famine descended: people stumbled over dead bodies in the street and ate tree bark to survive. Nothing to Envy weaves together the stories of adversity and resilience of six residents of Chongin, North Korea's third largest city.

From extensive interviews and with tenacious investigative work, Barbara Demick has recreated the concerns, culture and lifestyles of North Korean citizens in a gripping narrative, and vividly reconstructed the inner workings of this extraordinary and secretive country.

Endorsement In this study on the evolution of the ANC in Nelson Mandela Bay (centred around the city of Port Elizabeth), Mcebisi Ndletyana presents a cogent analysis of how a liberation movement is impacted upon by transition into political office. The reader is taken into the interplay among issues such as pedestrian efforts to meet popular aspirations, organisational inertia and the impact of personalities. Beyond 'the what' and 'the how', this book uniquely delves into the reasons behind the ignominious decline of the ANC in a region historically endowed with an excellent corps of cadres. If 'sins of incumbency' may sound cliched, this book brings it to life through an analysis of the greed of a political leadership without scruples and the rapacious impact of procurement-based capitalist class formation. The rot originates in ANC structures - akin to suicidal conduct, even after electoral defeat. Ndletyana's canvass may be local; but the lessons are universal. The book is as much about the past as it is about future. -Joel Netshitenzhe, Executive Director and Board Vice-Chairperson of the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) South Africa's governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), has undergone dramatic changes over the last thirty years. Historically a hotbed of political activism, Port Elizabeth is an illuminating site. In 2016, observers greeted with shock the ANC's loss of the city, one of its crown jewels and a party stronghold. Yet, as this book shows through its analysis of power and politics in Port Elizabeth, the party's political decline was authored by its own hand. This book studies the ANC at a local level over a 28-year period and informs what is now playing out at a national level. The book traces four stages that characterise the party's post-1990 life in Port Elizabeth: rebuilding; ascension to political office; political decline; and adaptation to new contexts where its power was lost or is under threat. Ironically, the efforts to rebuild the ANC post-unbanning lie at the root of the decline, because they were misdirected. Buoyed to office by their party's heroic stature, the book shows how some party leaders in Port Elizabeth abused power for financial gain. A generally weak regulatory environment allowed abuse to become endemic. Service delivery failed, and corrosion of moral leadership set in. As the party failed to stem the morass, internal democracy gave way to a strongman syndrome and the party deteriorated into an instrument that provided access to, and dispensed, patronage. Stunningly, electoral loss did not trigger reforms. As the ANC battled to re-make itself outside of government, some leaders even recruited the underworld to settle contests and secure access to patronage. Port Elizabeth did not see a 'new dawn'. This evidence-based book is an enthralling account of how the ANC rebuilt itself into a governing organisation, but failed to cohere into an institution of democracy, becoming instead an amalgam of competing factions for patronage. Readers will judge how much Port Elizabeth is a microcosm of the entire ANC.

The war on terror has brought to light troubling actions by the United States government which many claim amount to torture. But as this book shows, state-sanctioned violence and degrading, cruel, and unusual punishments have a long and contentious history in the nation.

Organized around five broad thematic periods in American history--colonial America and the early republic; slavery and the frontier; imperialism, Jim Crow, and World Wars I and II; the Cold War, Vietnam, and police torture; and the war on terror--this annotated documentary history traces the low and high points of official attitudes toward state violence. Robert M. Pallitto provides a critical introduction, historical context, and brief commentary and then lets the documents speak for themselves. The result is a nearly 400-year history that traces the continuities and changes in debates over the meaning of torture and state violence in the U.S. and shows where state actions and policies have pushed and exceeded constitutional and international normative limits.

Rigorously researched--and sometimes chilling--this volume is the first comprehensive reference work on state violence and torture in the U.S.

Since Henry James there have been many impressions of an American abroad and we have become used to seeing the world 'under western eyes'. But what about seeing the world from a very different perspective - not from the standpoint of an affluent westerner, or even an anglicised foreigner like Conrad, but through the eyes of an Iranian who has not had the privilege of taking freedom for granted. Iran itself comes under close scrutiny as the author tries to come to terms with daily life in a country where freedom of speech, freedom of movement, and freedom to wear the clothing of one's choice does not exist. Imagine, for instance, visiting a tourist town for a holiday break and being picked up by the police because you are not a local, and then inadvertently finding yourself with a rope around your neck in a public execution? The book is a real page-turner as one follows the author's frequent bids for freedom, finding himself repeatedly in a prison cell, punting across a turbulent river to enter Greece without a visa, finding temporary solace and comfort in the arms of a young prostitute in Bulgaria, suffering the indignity of being treated as a slave by the high-minded bosses in Japan, and running away from the regular police raids in Cyprus. But not all is doom and gloom - by no means, for apart from the author's downright honesty, sharing and confiding his innermost thoughts, there is his irresistible humour that never fails to see the funny side in the events and the people that he describes. With its unique perspective of what it is like to be down and out, and sometimes affluent too, in Iran and the countries the author visits, this book provides an unforgettable experience.

'Soros has become a standard bearer for liberal democracy' Financial Times George Soros - universally known for his philanthropy, progressive politics and investment success, and now under sustained attack from the far right, nationalists, and anti-Semites around the world - gives an impassioned defence of his core belief in open society. George Soros is among the world's most prominent public figures. He is one of the history's most successful investors and his philanthropy, led by the Open Society Foundations, has donated over $14 billion to promote democracy and human rights in more than 120 countries. But in recent years, Soros has become the focus of sustained right-wing attacks in the United States and around the world based on his commitment to open society, progressive politics and his Jewish background. In this brilliant and spirited book, Soros offers a compendium of his philosophy, a clarion call-to-arms for the ideals of an open society: freedom, democracy, rule of law, human rights, social justice, and social responsibility as a universal idea. In this age of nationalism, populism, anti-Semitism, and the spread of authoritarian governments, Soros's mission to support open societies is as urgent as it is important.

The definitive portrait of Pol Pot, the enigmatic man behind the most terrifying regime of modern times Pol Pot was an idealistic, reclusive figure with great charisma and personal charm. He initiated a revolution whose radical egalitarianism exceeded any other in history. But in the process, Cambodia desended into madness and his name became a byword for oppression. In the three-and-a-half years of his rule, more than a million people, a fifth of Cambodia's population, were executed or died from hunger and disease. A supposedly gentle, carefree land of slumbering temples and smiling peasants became a concentration camp of the mind, a slave state in which absolute obedience was enforced on the 'killing fields'. Why did it happen? How did an idealistic dream of justice and prosperity mutate into one of humanity's worst nightmares? Philip Short, the biographer of Mao, has spent four years travelling the length Cambodia, interviewing surviving leaders of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge movement and sifting through previously closed archives. of lesser figures speak for the first time at length about their beliefs and motives.

George Soros is among the world's most prominent public figures. He is one of the history's most successful investors and his philanthropy, led by the Open Society Foundations, has donated over $14 billion to promote democracy and human rights in more than 120 countries. But in recent years, Soros has become the focus of sustained right-wing attacks in the United States and around the world based on his commitment to open society, progressive politics and his Jewish background. In this brilliant and spirited book, Soros offers a compendium of his philosophy, a clarion call-to-arms for the ideals of an open society: freedom, democracy, rule of law, human rights, social justice, and social responsibility as a universal idea. In this age of nationalism, populism, anti-Semitism, and the spread of authoritarian governments, Soros's mission to support open societies is as urgent as it is important.

Protectors of Pluralism argues that local religious minorities are more likely to save persecuted groups from purification campaigns. Robert Braun utilizes a geo-referenced dataset of Jewish evasion in the Netherlands and Belgium during the Holocaust to assess the minority hypothesis. Spatial statistics and archival work reveal that Protestants were more likely to rescue Jews in Catholic regions of the Low Countries, while Catholics facilitated evasion in Protestant areas. Post-war testimonies and secondary literature demonstrate the importance of minority groups for rescue in other countries during the Holocaust as well as other episodes of mass violence, underlining how the local position of church communities produces networks of assistance, rather than something inherent to any religion itself. This book makes an important contribution to the literature on political violence, social movements, altruism and religion, applying a range of social science methodologies and theories that shed new light on the Holocaust.

In 2006, four years after the illegal prison in Guantanamo Bay opened, the Pentagon finally released the names of the 773 men held there, as well as 7,000 pages of transcripts from tribunals assessing their status as 'enemy combatants'. Andy Worthington is the only person to have analysed every page of these transcripts and this book reveals the stories of all those imprisoned in Guantanamo. Deprived of the safeguards of the Geneva Conventions, and, for the most part, sold to the Americans by their allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the detainees have struggled for five years to have their stories heard. Looking in detail at the circumstances of their capture, and at the coercive interrogations and unsubstantiated allegations that have been used to justify their detention. Stories of torture in Afghanistan and Guantanamo are uncovered, as well as new information about the process of 'extraordinary rendition' that underpins the US administration's 'war on terror'. Who will speak for the 773 men who have been held in Guantanamo? This passionate and brilliantly detailed book brings their stories to the world for the first time.

Over much of its rule, the regime of Hafez al-Asad and his successor Bashar al-Asad deployed violence on a massive scale to maintain its grip on political power. In this book, Salwa Ismail examines the rationalities and mechanisms of governing through violence. In a detailed and compelling account, Ismail shows how the political prison and the massacre, in particular, developed as apparatuses of government, shaping Syrians' political subjectivities, defining their understanding of the terms of rule and structuring their relations and interactions with the regime and with one another. Examining ordinary citizens' everyday life experiences and memories of violence across diverse sites, from the internment camp and the massacre to the family and school, The Rule of Violence demonstrates how practices of violence, both in their routine and spectacular forms, fashioned Syrians' affective life, inciting in them feelings of humiliation and abjection, and infusing their lived environment with dread and horror. This form of rule is revealed to be constraining of citizens' political engagement, while also demanding of their action.

The young people of the Cameroon Grassfields have been subject to a long history of violence and political marginalization. For centuries, the main victims of the slave trade, they became prime targets for forced labor campaigns under a series of colonial rulers. Today's youth remain at the bottom of the fiercely hierarchical and polarized societies of the Grassfields, and it is their response to centuries of exploitation that Nicolas Pandely Argenti takes up in this absorbing and original book. Beginning his study with a political analysis of youth in the Grassfields from the eighteenth century to the present, Argenti pays special attention to the repeated violent revolts staged by young victims of political oppression. He then combines this history with extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the Oku chiefdom, discovering that the specter of past violence lives on in the masked dance performances that have earned intense devotion from today's youth. Argenti contends that by evoking the imagery of past cataclysmic events, these masquerades allow young Oku men and women to address the inequities they face in their relations with elders and state authorities today.

How does gendered power work? How does it circulate? How does it become embedded? And most importantly, how can we challenge it? Heather Savigny highlights five key traits of cultural sexism - violence, silencing, disciplining, meritocracy and masculinity - prevalent across the media, entertainment and cultural industries that keep sexist values firmly within popular consciousness. She traces the development of key feminist thinkers before demonstrating how the normalization of misogyny in popular media, culture, news and politics perpetuates patriarchal values within our everyday social and cultural landscape. She argues that we need to understand why #MeToo was necessary in the first place in order to bring about impactful, lasting and meaningful change.

Jacana Media is proud to make this important book available again, now with a completely new introduction. First published by Oceanbooks, New York and Melbourne and University of Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg in 2001, the book was short-listed for the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award in 2002.

In the public imagination the struggle that saw the end of apartheid and the inauguration of a democratic South Africa is seen as one waged by black people who were often imprisoned or killed for their efforts. Raymond Suttner, an academic, is one of a small group of white South Africans who was imprisoned for his efforts to overthrow the apartheid regime. He was first arrested in 1975 and tortured with electric shocks because he refused to supply information to the police. He then served 8 years because of his underground activities for the African National Congress and South African Communist Party.

After his release in 1983, he returned to the struggle and was forced to go underground to evade arrest, but was re-detained in 1986 under repeatedly renewed states of emergency, for 27 months, 18 of these in solitary confinement, because whites were kept separately and all other whites apart from Suttner were released. In the last months of this detention Suttner was allowed to have a pet lovebird, which he tamed and used to keep inside his tracksuit. When he was eventually released from detention in September 1988 the bird was on his shoulder. Suttner was held under stringent house arrest conditions, imposed to impede further political activities. He, however, defied his house arrest restrictions and attended an Organisation for African Unity meeting in Harare in August 1989 and he remained out of the country for five months. Shortly after his return, when he anticipated being re-arrested, the state of emergency was lifted and the ANC and other banned organisations were unbanned. Suttner became a leading figure in the ANC and SACP.

The book describes Suttner’s experience of prison in a low-key, unromantic voice, providing the texture of prison life, but unlike most ‘struggle memoirs’ it is also intensely personal. Suttner is not averse to admitting his fears and anxieties.

The new edition contains an introduction where Suttner describes his break with the ANC and SACP. But, he argues, the reason for his rupturing this connection that had been so important to his life were the same – ethical reasons – that had led him to join. He remains convinced that what he did was right and continues to act in accordance with those convictions.

Stephen Haliczer has mined rich documentary sources to produce the most comprehensive and enlightening picture yet of the Inquisition in Spain. The kingdom of Valencia occupies a uniquely important place in the history of the Spanish Inquisition because of its large Muslim and Jewish populations and because it was a Catalan kingdom, more or less "occupied" by the despised Castilians who introduced the Inquisition. Haliczer underscores the intensely regional nature of the Valencian tribunal. He shows how the prosecution of religious deviants, the recruitment and professional activity of Inquisitors and officials, and the relations between the Inquisition and the majority Old Christian population all clearly reflect the place and the society. A great series of pogroms swept over Spain during the summer of 1391. Jewish communities were attacked and the Jews either massacred or forced to convert. More than ninety percent of the victims of the Valencian Inquisition a century later were descendants of those who chose conversion, the conversos. Haliczer argues convincingly against those who see all the conversos as "secret Jews." He finds, on the contrary, that a wide range of religious beliefs and practices existed among them and that some were even able to assimilate into Old Christian society by becoming familiares of the Inquisition itself. Nevertheless, it was controversy over the sincerity of the converted which spawned the first proposals for the establishment of a Spanish national Inquisition. That very same controversy, persisting in the writings of history, may be resolved by Haliczer's stimulating discoveries. Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia is a major contribution to the lively field of Inquisition studies, combining institutional history of the tribunal with socioreligious history of the kingdom. The many case histories included in the narrative give both Valencian society and the Inquisition very human faces. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

How racism and discrimination have been central to democracies from the classical period to today As right-wing nationalism and authoritarian populism gain momentum across the world, liberals, and even some conservatives, worry that democratic principles are under threat. In The Spectre of Race, Michael Hanchard argues that the current rise in xenophobia and racist rhetoric is nothing new and that exclusionary policies have always been central to democratic practices since their beginnings in classical times. Contending that democracy has never been for all people, Hanchard discusses how marginalization is reinforced in modern politics, and why these contradictions need to be fully examined if the dynamics of democracy are to be truly understood. Hanchard identifies continuities of discriminatory citizenship from classical Athens to the present and looks at how democratic institutions have promoted undemocratic ideas and practices. The longest-standing modern democracies -France, Britain, and the United States-profited from slave labor, empire, and colonialism, much like their Athenian predecessor. Hanchard follows these patterns through the Enlightenment and to the states and political thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and he examines how early political scientists, including Woodrow Wilson and his contemporaries, devised what Hanchard has characterized as "racial regimes" to maintain the political and economic privileges of dominant groups at the expense of subordinated ones. Exploring how democracies reconcile political inequality and equality, Hanchard debates the thorny question of the conditions under which democracies have created and maintained barriers to political membership. Showing the ways that race, gender, nationality, and other criteria have determined a person's status in political life, The Spectre ofRace offers important historical context for how democracy generates political difference and inequality.

This title is part of American Studies Now and available as an e-book first. Visit ucpress.edu/go/americanstudiesnow to learn more. On July 23, 1967, the eyes of the world fixed on Detroit, as thousands took to the streets to vent their frustrations with white racism, police brutality, and vanishing job prospects in the place that gave rise to the American Dream. Mainstream observers contended that the "riot" brought about the ruin of a once-great city; for them, the municipal bankruptcy of 2013 served as a bailout paving the way for the rebuilding of Detroit. Challenging this prevailing view, Scott Kurashige portrays the past half century as a long rebellion whose underlying tensions continue to haunt the city and the U.S. nation-state. He sees Michigan's scandal-ridden "emergency management" regime, set up to handle the bankruptcy, as the most concerted effort to put it down by disenfranchising the majority black citizenry and neutralizing the power of unions. Are we succumbing to authoritarian plutocracy or can we create a new society rooted in social justice and participatory democracy? The corporate architects of Detroit's restructuring have championed the creation of a "business-friendly" city, where billionaire developers are subsidized to privatize and gentrify Downtown, while working-class residents are being squeezed out by rampant housing evictions, school closures, water shutoffs, toxic pollution, and militarized policing. Grassroots organizers, however, have transformed Detroit into an international model for survival, resistance, and solidarity through the creation of urban farms, freedom schools, and self-governing communities. This epochal struggle illuminates the possible futures for our increasingly unstable and polarized nation.

The LGBTI community in Turkey face real dangers. In 2015, the Turkish police interrupted the LGBTI Pride march in Istanbul, using tear gas and rubber bullets against the marchers. This marked the first attempt by the authorities to stop the parade by force, and similar actions occurred the following year. Here, Fait Muedini examines these levels of discrimination in Turkey, as well as exploring how activists are working to improve human rights for LGBTI individuals living in this hostile environment. Muedini bases his analysis on interviews taken with a number of NGO leaders and activists of leading LGBTI organisations in the region, including Lambda Istanbul, Kaos GL, Pembe Hayat, Social Policies, Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Studies Association (SPoD), and Families of LGBT's in Istanbul (LISTAG). The original information provided by these interviews illuminate the challenges facing the LGBTI community, and the brave actions taken by activists in their attempts to challenge the state and secure sexual equality.

The autonomous province of Vojvodina in Serbia is little-known in the English-speaking world, even though it is a territory of high significance for the development of Serbian national identity. Vojvodina's multi-ethnic composition and historical experience has also encouraged the formation of a distinct regional identity. This book analyses the evolution of Vojvodina's identity over time and the unique pattern of ethnic relations in the province. Although approximately 25 ethnic communities live in Vojvodina, it is by no means a divided society. Intercultural cohabitation has been a living reality in the province for centuries and this largely accounts for the lack of ethnic conflict. Vassilis Petsinis explores Vojvodina's intercultural society and shows how this has facilitated the introduction of flexible and regionalized legal models for the management of ethnic relations in Serbia since the 2000s. He also discusses recent developments in the region, most notably the arrival of refugees from Syria and Iraq, and measures the impact that these changes have had on social stability and inter-group relations in the province.

A former chief of Romania's foreign intelligence service reveals the extraordinary corruption of the Nicolae Ceausescu government of Romania, its brutal machinery of oppression, and its Machiavellian relationship with the West. An in side story of how Communist Party leaders really live.

This volume focuses on population displacement in Northeast Africa. For many people, flight across an international border occurs repeatedly and is not a uniquely traumatic event. For many more, displacement has occurred within their own countries. The contributors suggest that in situations of such long-term upheaval, notions of flight into refuge and repatriation to a homeland cease to have much meaning. These populations have received minimal assistance from international organizations and have lacked protection from oppressive governments and marauding guerillas. Their plight has largely been ignored. North America: Africa World Press

Since he seized power in Syria two decades ago, President Hafez Asad has subjected his people to continuous repression. Violence reached a peak in the early 1980s, when Asad's Ba'thist regime crushed its opposition, killing at least ten thousand citizens and jailing thousands more. And today, despite some gestures of liberalization, the practices of Asad's government remain repugnant. Security forces routinely arrest citizens without charge, torture them during interrogation, and imprison them without trial for political reasons. At least 7500 political prisoners are currently held under appalling conditions. Persecution of the country's minorities - notably Jews, Palestinians, and Kurds - is rampant. Syria is also a serious rights offender in Lebanon where, since 1976, its army has controlled more than half of the country and has imprisoned, tortured, and massacred hundreds of innocent civilians. This book by Middle East Watch describes the various forms of oppression in Syria and gives details about the three institutions that help Asad maintain his control - the Ba'th Party, the military, and the security forces. The book provides information not only on the violent acts perpetrated by the government but also on such topics as the censorship of mass media, the banning of opposition political parties and professional associations, and the country's foreign relations. Based in large part on confidential interviews with Syrian emigres and sources encountered during an unauthorized visit to Syria - all of whom risked harassment from their country's security forces for providing information to Middle East Watch - this book presents Syria's dismal human rights record powerfully and thoroughly.

A revelatory account of what is really happening to China's Uyghurs 'Intimate, sombre, and damning... compelling.' Financial Times 'Chilling... Horrifying.' Spectator 'Invaluable.' Telegraph In China's vast northwestern region, more than a million and a half Muslims have vanished into internment camps and associated factories. Based on hours of interviews with camp survivors and workers, thousands of government documents, and over a decade of research, Darren Byler, one of the leading experts on Uyghur society uncovers their plight. Revealing a sprawling network of surveillance technology supplied by firms in both China and the West, Byler shows how the country has created an unprecedented system of Orwellian control. A definitive account of one of the world's gravest human rights violations, In the Camps is also a potent warning against the misuse of technology and big data.