Political prisoner

A political prisoner is anyone held in prison or otherwise detained, perhaps under house arrest, because their ideas or image either challenge or pose a real or potential threat to the state. In many cases, a veneer of legality is used to disguise the fact that someone is a political prisoner. Trumped-up criminal charges may have been used to imprison the political prisoner, or he or she may have been denied bail unfairly, denied parole when it would reasonably have been given to another prisoner, or special powers may be invoked by the judiciary. Who is or is not regarded as a political prisoner may depend upon one's own subjective political perspective.

Further reading

• n.a. 1973. Political Prisoners in South Vietnam. London: Amnesty International Publications.
• Luz Arce. 2003. The Inferno: A Story of Terror and Survival in Chile. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0299195546
• Stuart Christie. 2004. Granny Made Me An Anarchist: General Franco, The Angry Brigade and Me. London: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0743259181
• Christina Fink. 2001. Living Silence: Burma Under Military Rule. Bangkok: White Lotus Press and London: Zed Press. (See in particular Chapter 8: Prison: 'Life University' ). In Thailand ISBN 9747534681, elsewhere ISBN 1856499251 and ISBN 185649926X
• Marek M. Kaminski. 2004. Games Prisoners Play. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691117217
• Ben Kiernan. 2002. The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1975. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300096496
• Stephen M. Kohn. 1994. American Political Prisoners. Westport, CT: Praeger. ISBN 0275944158
• Barbara Olshansky. 2002. Secret Trials and Executions: Military Tribunals and the Threat to Democracy. New York: Seven Stories Press. ISBN 1583225374