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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > Political control & influence > Political oppression & persecution > General
The McCarthy era was a bad time for freedom in America. Encompassing far more than the brief career of Senator Joseph McCarthy, it was the most widespread episode of political repression in the history of the United States. In the name of National Security, most Americans--liberal and conservative alike--supported the anti-Communist crusade that ruined so many careers, marriages, and even lives. Now Ellen Schrecker gives us the first complete post-Cold War account of McCarthyism. "Many Are the Crimes" is a frightening history of an era that still resonates with us today.
Considering fiction from the colonial era to the present, State of Peril offers the first sustained, scholarly examination of rape narratives in the literature of a country that has extremely high levels of sexual violence. Lucy Graham demonstrates how, despite the fact that most incidents of rape in South Africa are not interracial, narratives of interracial rape have dominated the national imaginary. Seeking to understand this phenomenon, the study draws on Michel Foucault's ideas on sexuality and biopolitics, as well as Judith Butler's speculations on race and cultural melancholia. Historical analysis of the body politic provides the backdrop for careful, close readings of literature by Olive Schreiner, Sol Plaatje, Sarah Gertrude Millin, Njabulo Ndebele, J.M. Coetzee, Zoe Wicomb and others. Ultimately, State of Peril argues for ethically responsible interpretations that recognize high levels of sexual violence in South Africa while parsing the racialized inferences and assumptions implicit in literary representations of bodily violation.
Bangladesh: A Suffering People Under State Terrorism explores the destructive political situation in Bangladesh under the one-party and one-person rule of the despotic Sheikh Hasina. The contributors to this edited collection examine the catastrophic political environment of the country in view of the Hasina regime's relentless oppression and repression since 2009, the authoritarian rule of her father in the early 1970s as well as the topic of Indian political, cultural and economic hegemony to which this dictatorial regime is increasingly surrendering Bangladesh's national interest, integrity and sovereignty. The contributors also attempt to expose the wholesale corruption and unprecedented vote-rigging that have rendered the regime completely illegal and illegitimate. They also highlight how the regime has been clinging to power by systemically unleashing terror and tyranny through its widespread networks of state machinery.
No issue in the Arab-Israeli conflict has proven more intractable than the status of the Palestinian refugees. This work focuses on the controversial question of the property left behind by the refugees during the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948. Beyond discussing the extent of the refugees'losses and detailing the methods by which Israel expropriated this property, the book also notes the ways that the property question has affected, and in turn been affected by, the wider Arab-Israeli conflict over the decades. It shows how the property question influenced Arab-Israeli diplomacy and discusses the implications of the fact that the question remains unresolved despite numerous diplomatic efforts. From late 1947 through 1948, more than 726,000 Palestinians -- over half the entire population -- were uprooted from their homes and villages. Though some middle class refugees were able to flee with liquid capital, the majority were small-scale farmers whose worldly fortunes were the land, livestock, and crops they left behind. This book tells for the first time the full story of how much property changed hands, what it was worth, and how it was used by the fledgling state of Israel. It then traces the subsequent decades of diplomatic activity on the issue and publishes previously secret UN estimates of the scope and value of the refugee property. Michael Fischbach offers a detailed study of Israeli counterclaims for Jewish property lost in the Arab world, diplomatic schemes for resolving the conflict, secret compensation efforts, and the renewed diplomatic efforts on behalf of property claims since the onset of Arab-Israeli peace talks. Based largely on archival records, including those of the United Nations Conciliation Commission of Palestine, never before available to the public and kept under lock and key in the UN archives, "Records of Dispossession" is the first detailed historical examination of the Palestinian refugee property question.
This new study offers a fresh interpretation of apartheid South Africa. Emerging out of the author's long-standing interests in the history of racial segregation, and drawing on a great deal of new scholarship, archival collections, and personal memoirs, he situates apartheid in global as well as local contexts. The overall conception of Apartheid, 1948-1994 is to integrate studies of resistance with the analysis of power, paying attention to the importance of ideas, institutions, and culture. Saul Dubow refamiliarises and defamiliarise apartheid so as to approach South Africa's white supremacist past from unlikely perspectives. He asks not only why apartheid was defeated, but how it survived so long. He neither presumes the rise of apartheid nor its demise. This synoptic reinterpretation is designed to introduce students to apartheid and to generate new questions for experts in the field.
'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.
Dear Leader contains astonishing new insights about North Korea which could only be revealed by someone working high up in the regime. It is also the gripping story of how a member of the inner circle of this enigmatic country became its most courageous, outspoken critic. Jang Jin-sung held one of the most senior ranks in North Korea's propaganda machine, helping tighten the regime's grip over its people. Among his tasks were developing the founding myth of North Korea, posing undercover as a South Korean intellectual and writing epic poems in support of the dictator, Kim Jong-il. Young and ambitious, his patriotic work secured him a bizarre audience with Kim Jong-il himself, thus granting him special status as one of the 'Admitted'. This meant special food provisions, a travel pass and immunity from prosecution and harm. He was privy to state secrets, including military and diplomatic policies, how the devastating 'Scrutiny' was effected, and the real position of one of the country's most powerful, elusive men, Im Tong-ok. Because he was praised by the Dear Leader himself, he had every reason to feel satisfied with his lot and safe. Yet he could not ignore his conscience, or the disparity between his life and that of those he saw starving on the street. After breaking security rules, Jang Jin-sung, together with a close friend, was forced to flee for his life: away from lies and deceit, towards truth and freedom.
The searing accounts of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Evgeniia Ginsberg and Varlam Shalamov opened the world's eyes to the terrors of the Soviet Gulag. But not until now has there been a memoir of life inside the camps written from the perspective of an actual employee of the Secret police. In this riveting memoir, superbly translated by Deborah Kaple, Fyodor Mochulsky describes being sent to work as a boss at the forced labor camp of Pechorlag in the frozen tundra north of the Arctic Circle. Only twenty-two years old, he had but a vague idea of the true nature of the Gulag. What he discovered was a world of unimaginable suffering and death, a world where men were starved, beaten, worked to death, or simply executed. Mochulsky details the horrific conditions in the camps and the challenges facing all those involved, from prisoners to guards. He depicts the power struggles within the camps between the secret police and the communist party, between the political prisoners (most of whom had been arrested for the generic crime of "counter-revolutionary activities") and the criminal convicts. And because Mochulsky writes of what he witnessed with the detachment of the engineer that he was, readers can easily understand how a system that destroyed millions of lives could be run by ordinary Soviet citizens who believed they were advancing the cause of socialism. Mochulsky remained a communist party member his entire life-he would later become a diplomat-but was deeply troubled by the gap between socialist theory and the Soviet reality of slave labor and mass murder. This unprecedented memoir takes readers into that reality and sheds new light on one of the most harrowing tragedies of the 20th century.
In the late 1990s, the issue of diamonds contributing to conflict began to receive global attention. In response, the Kimberley Process, an international agreement drawn up in 2003, was implemented to reduce the trade of conflict diamonds and provide a way to certify the global diamond trade. This study looks at the political economy of resource-wealthy states in Africa to understand responses to the Kimberley Process, asking why some African states have higher levels of compliance and co-operation than others. Using cross-country comparisons to explain differing state policies and outcomes, Nathan Munier explores whether domestic, private economic actors matter in how international agreements operate. In doing so, he asks why states that regularly ignore international agreements will use scarce resources to raise their level of compliance with the Kimberley Process. Focusing on the domestic political economy of states, in contrast to past theories of state responses to international agreements, Munier finds that economic dependence and the preferences of private actors are essential in understanding the variation of state responses to international agreements.
This book proposes a new encompassing theoretical framework for the study of immigration. Ewa Morawska provides a systematic comparative examination of the experience of turn-of-the-twentieth-century and present-day immigrants, and of eight contemporary immigrant groups in the United States. Within this interpretative framework, Morawska examines four major issues informing current sociological studies of immigration: mechanisms and effects of international migration, processes of immigrants' assimilation and transnational engagements, and the adaptation patterns of the second generation. This study focuses on the interactive framework in which immigrants, responding to circumstances not of their choosing, nonetheless make history. Though the book is shaped by an underlying theoretical framework, the key theoretical issues are explored through a comparison of eight different groups, providing rich, empirical, grounded material. As the groups range widely in origins and immigrant experiences, they shed light on one of the salient aspects of the contemporary immigrant phenomenon, namely its diversity. The concluding chapter offers a thoughtful review of the main agendas of immigration research in different regions of the world followed by the author's suggestions regarding better-informed cross-national/regional studies in this field.
Gultan Kisanak, a Kurdish journalist and former MP, was elected co-mayor of Diyarbakir in 2014. Two years later, the Turkish state arrested and imprisoned her. Her story is remarkable, but not unique. While behind bars, she wrote about her own experiences and collected similar accounts from other Kurdish women, all co-chairs, co-mayors and MPs in Turkey; all incarcerated on political grounds. The Purple Color of Kurdish Politics is a one-of-a-kind collection of prison writings from more than 20 Kurdish women politicians. Here they reflect on their personal and collective struggles against patriarchy and anti-Kurdish repression in Turkey; on the radical feminist principles and practices through which they transformed the political structures and state offices in which they operated. They discuss what worked and what didn't, and the ways in which Turkey's anti-capitalist and socialist movements closely informed their political stances and practices. Demonstrating Kurdish women's ceaseless political determination and refusal to be silenced - even when behind bars - the book ultimately hopes to inspire women living under even the most unjust conditions to engage in collective resistance.
Kim Yong shares his harrowing account of life in a labor camp--a singularly despairing form of torture carried out by the secret state. Although it is known that gulags exist in North Korea, little information is available about their organization and conduct, for prisoners rarely escape both incarceration and the country alive. "Long Road Home" shares the remarkable story of one such survivor, a former military official who spent six years in a gulag and experienced firsthand the brutality of an unconscionable regime. As a lieutenant colonel in the North Korean army, Kim Yong enjoyed unprecedented privilege in a society that closely monitored its citizens. He owned an imported car and drove it freely throughout the country. He also encountered corruption at all levels, whether among party officials or Japanese trade partners, and took note of the illicit benefits that were awarded to some and cruelly denied to others. When accusations of treason stripped Kim Yong of his position, the loose distinction between those who prosper and those who suffer under Kim Jong-il became painfully clear. Kim Yong was thrown into a world of violence and terror, condemned to camp No. 14 in Hamkyeong province, North Korea's most notorious labor camp. As he worked a constant shift 2,400 feet underground, daylight became Kim's new luxury; as the months wore on, he became intimately acquainted with political prisoners, subhuman camp guards, and an apocalyptic famine that killed millions. After years of meticulous planning, and with the help of old friends, Kim escaped and came to the United States via China, Mongolia, and South Korea. Presented here for the first time in its entirety, his story not only testifies to the atrocities being committed behind North Korea's wall of silence, but it also illuminates the daily struggle to maintain dignity and integrity in the face of unbelievable odds. Like the work of Solzhenitsyn, this rare portrait tells a story of resilience as it reveals the dark forms of oppression, torture, and ideological terror at work in our world today.
A FAMILY STORY AND THE TALE OF A NATION. Ai Weiwei - one of the world's most famous artists and activists - weaves a century-long epic tale of China through the story of his own life and that of his father, Ai Qing, the nation's most celebrated poet. 'Engrossing...a remarkable story' Sunday Times Here, through the sweeping lens of his own and his father's life, Ai Weiwei tells an epic tale of China over the last 100 years, from the Cultural Revolution to the modern-day Chinese Communist Party. Here is the story of a childhood spent in desolate exile after his father, Ai Qing, once China's most celebrated poet, fell foul of the authorities. Here is his move to America as a young man and his return to China, his rise from unknown to art-world superstar and international rights activist. Here is his extraordinary account of how his work has been shaped by living under a totalitarian regime. It's the story of a father and a son, of exceptional creativity and passionate belief, and of how two indomitable spirits enabled the world to understand their country. 'A story of inherited resilience and self-determination' Observer 'A majestic and exquisitely serious masterpiece about his China... One of the great voices of our time' Andrew Solomon 'Intimate, unflinching...an instant classic' Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition
Chechnya From Nationalism to Jihad James Hughes "James Hughes has produced the most comprehensive, thoroughly documented, and up-to-date study of the Chechen conflict available. This sophisticated and subtle analysis places Chechnya in the context of broader debates about nationalism and ethnic politics, theories of empire and secession, and the propensity of new democracies to go to war."--Matthew Evangelista, Cornell University "Hughes offers a new way of thinking about ethnopolitical conflict by examining conflict dynamics as part of the causation chain in a conflict."--"History: Reviews of New Books" "Does the book have value for the military historian? Absolutely."--"Journal of Military History " "an excellent starting point for anyone looking for insight into how the radical Sunni Salafi movement both evolved and commandeered the struggle in Chechnya, which could also serve as an example as to how Al-Qaeda could hijack other nationalist struggles in the future."--"International Affairs" "An exemplary case study. . . . Throughout, insights into the consequences of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the reconstitution of a federated Russia, and the leadership of Vladimir Putin abound. . . . Highly recommended."--"Choice" The sheer scale and brutality of the hostilities between Russia and Chechnya stand out as an exception in the mostly peaceful breakup of the Soviet Union. "Chechnya: From Nationalism to Jihad" provides a fascinating analysis of the transformation of secular nationalist resistance in a nominally Islamic society into a struggle that is its antithesis, jihad. Hughes locates Chechen nationalism within the wider movement for national self-determination that followed the collapse of the Soviet empire. When negotiations failed in the early 1990s, political violence was instrumentalized to consolidate opposing nationalist visions of state-building in Russia and Chechnya. The resistance in Chechnya also occurred in a regional context where Russian hegemony over the Caucasus, especially the resources of the Caspian basin, was in retreat, and in an international context of rising Islamic radicalism. Alongside Bosnia, Kashmir, and other conflicts, Chechnya became embedded in Osama Bin Laden's repertoire of jihadist rhetoric against the "West." It was not simply Russia's destruction of a nationalist option for Chechnya, or "Wahabbist" infiltration from without, that created the political space for Islamism. Rather, we must look also at how the conflict was fought. The lack of proportionality and discrimination in the use of violence, particularly by Russia, accelerated and intensified the Islamic radicalization and thereby transformed the nature of the conflict. James Hughes is Professor of Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. National and Ethnic Conflict in the 21st Century 2007 296 pages 6 x 9 5 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-2030-8 Paper $26.50s 17.50 ISBN 978-0-8122-0231-1 Ebook $26.5s 17.50 World Rights Political Science Short copy: The conflict in Chechnya involves many of the most contentious issues in contemporary international politics. By providing us with a persuasive and challenging study, Hughes sets out the indispensable lessons for other conflicts involving the volatile combination of insurgency and counterinsurgency, most notably the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The second instalment in a gripping memoir by Sakine Cansiz (codenamed 'Sara') chronicles the Kurdish revolutionary's harrowing years in a Turkish prison, following her arrest in 1979 at the age of 21. Jailed for more than a decade for her activities as a founder and leader of the Kurdish freedom movement, she faced brutal conditions and was subjected to interrogation and torture. Remarkably, the story she tells here is foremost one of resistance, with courageous episodes of collective struggle behind bars including hunger strikes and attempts at escape. Along the way she also presents vivid portraits of her fellow prisoners and militants, a snapshot of the Turkish left in the 1980s, a scathing indictment of Turkey's war on Kurdish people - and even an unlikely love story. The first prison memoir by a Kurdish woman to be published in English, this is an extraordinary document of an extraordinary life. Translated by Janet Biehl.
Bearing Witness While Black tells the story of this century's most powerful Black social movement through the eyes of 15 activists who documented it. At the height of the Black Lives Matter uprisings, African Americans filmed and tweeted evidence of fatal police encounters in dozens of US cities-using little more than the device in their pockets. Their urgent dispatches from the frontlines spurred a global debate on excessive police force, which claimed the lives of African American men, women, and children at disproportionate rates. This groundbreaking book reveals how the perfect storm of smartphones, social media, and social justice empowered Black activists to create their own news outlets, which continued a centuries-long, African American tradition of using the news to challenge racism. Bearing Witness While Black is the first book of its kind to identify three overlapping eras of domestic terror against African American people-slavery, lynching, and police brutality-and explain how storytellers during each period documented its atrocities through journalism. What results is a stunning genealogy-of how the slave narratives of the 1700s inspired the Abolitionist movement; how the black newspapers of the 1800s galvanized the anti-lynching and Civil Rights movements; and how the smartphones of today have powered the anti-police brutality movement. This lineage of black witnessing, Allissa V. Richardson argues, is formidable and forever evolving. Richardson's own activism, as an award-winning pioneer of smartphone journalism, informs this text. Weaving in personal accounts of her teaching in the US and Africa, and of her own brushes with police brutality, Richardson shares how she has inspired black youth to use mobile devices, to speak up from the margins. It is from this vantage point, as participant-observer, that she urges us not to become numb to the tragic imagery that African Americans have documented. Instead, Bearing Witness While Black conveys a crucial need to protect our right to look into the forbidden space of violence against black bodies, and to continue to regard the smartphone as an instrument of moral suasion and social change.
Long before Alexander Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) shocked the Western world with its frightening description of a typical day in a forced-labor camp during the Stalin era, some readers in the West already knew of prison life in the Soviet Union, the Eastern bloc, and other Communist countries. A powerful genre of gulag literature had emerged in the late 1930s and developed throughout the cold war. Books by survivors revealed in graphic detail the systematic implementation of a totalitarian police state that induced terror in its citizens through torture, imprisonment in slave labor camps, and death. In Enemies of the State, Donald and Agnieszka Critchlow have selected excerpts from nine of the most widely read books from this gulag literature. The stories are riveting and inspiring. They are dramatic by their nature and illustrate humanity at its heroic best. But they have historical value too, because in addition to providing a ghastly record of Communist terror, they also explain why Western readers developed such deep mistrust of "peaceful coexistence" with any Communist nation. Memoirs from survivors of Communist prisons confirmed beliefs that the Communists could not be trusted. They told readers that Communist regimes operated through deception and denial, and that sympathetic visitors to the Soviet Union, China, North Vietnam, and Cuba were too often misled by the carefully staged performances of Communist officials. In short, gulag literature reinforced among American anti-Communists the idea of an apocalyptic struggle between communism and Western Christendom.
The British, Irish, Russian, American, German and Austrian contributors examine the intricate nature of the mass repression unleashed by the Stalinist leader of the USSR during 1937 38. The first part of the collection deals with annihilation policies against the Soviet elite and the Communist International. The second section of the volume looks at mass operations of the secret police (NKVD) against social outcasts, Poles and other 'hostile' ethnic groups. The final section comprises micro studies about targeted victim groups among the general population. FRIDRIKH FIRSOV Researcher, History of the Comintern WLADISLAW HEDELER Researcher, History of the Karaganda Gulag Complex OLEG KHLEVNIUK Department of Public Administration, Moscow State University, Russia NATALIA MUSIENKO Lecturer, German Language NIKITA PETROV Vice-Chairman, Board of Memorial, the most prominent Russian organization dedicated to uncovering the crimes of Soviet Communism ARSENII ROGINSKII Chairman, Board of Memorial HANS SCHAFRANEK Freelance Historian, Vienna DAVID SHEARER Associate Professor of History, University of Delaware, USA BERTHOLD UNFRIED Lecturer, Cultural Studies, Vienna University ALEKSANDR VATLIN S
This book offers an analysis of paramilitary imprisonment in Northern Ireland, in particular the thirty year struggle concerning the prisoners' assertion of their political status. Based upon interviews with former prisoners and staff, this book locates that experience within the broader literature on imprisonment. Four forms of prisoner resistance are examined including dirty protest and hunger strike; violence, destruction, and intimidation; escape; and resorts to the law. In addition three models of prison management are developed including reactive containment, criminalization, and managerialism. Finally the book considers the release of paramilitary prisoners and its relevance to the conflict resolution process in Northern Ireland.
The United Nations has called violence against women "the most pervasive, yet least recognized human rights abuse in the world" and there is a long-established history of the systematic victimization of women by the state during times of peace and conflict. This book contributes to the established literature on women, gender and crime and the growing research on state crime and extends the discussion of violence against women to include the role and extent of crime and violence perpetrated by the state. State Crime, Women and Gender examines state-perpetrated violence against women in all its various forms. Drawing on case studies from around the world, patterns of state-perpetrated violence are examined as it relates to women's victimization, their role as perpetrators, resistors of state violence, as well as their engagement as professionals in the international criminal justice system. From the direct involvement of Condaleeza Rice in the United States-led war on terror, to the women of Egypt's Arab Spring Uprising, to Afghani poetry as a means to resist state-sanctioned patriarchal control, case examples are used to highlight the pervasive and enduring problem of state-perpetrated violence against women. The exploration of topics that have not previously been addressed in the criminological literature, such as women as perpetrators of state violence and their role as willing consumers who reinforce and replicate the existing state-sanctioned patriarchal status quo, makes State Crime, Women and Gender a must-read for students and scholars engaged in the study of state crime, victimology and feminist criminology.
Jan Gross describes the terrors of the Soviet occupation of the lands that made up eastern Poland between the two world wars: the Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. His lucid analysis of the revolution that came to Poland from abroad is based on hundreds of first-hand accounts of the hardship, suffering, and social chaos that accompanied the Sovietization of this poorest section of a poverty-stricken country. Woven into the author's exploration of events from the Soviet's German-supported aggression against Poland in September of 1939 to Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, these testimonies not only illuminate his conclusions about the nature of totalitarianism but also make a powerful statement of their own. Those who endured the imposition of Soviet rule and mass deportations to forced resettlement, labor camps, and prisons of the Soviet Union are here allowed to speak for themselves, and they do so with grim effectiveness.
This is the remarkable and wrenching memoir of a South Korean dissident who was unjustly accused of spying for the North Koreans and jailed for nineteen years as a political prisoner. The updated English-language edition traces Suh Sung's experiences as a Korean citizen of Japan before his incarceration, his time in prison, and his subsequent release. Readers will be moved and awed by Suh's courage under torture and solitary confinement. This memoir is an invaluable document for all concerned about human rights and a moving testimony to one man's incredible determination.
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