Political prisoner

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A political prisoner , also a political prisoner , is a person who is in custody for political or ideological reasons . This extends not only to persons detained for offenses of opinion or political activities that are prohibited in the respective state , but also to all cases in which the prisoner's political attitudes or political activities had a significant influence on the sentencing. The distinction between political and legitimate prisoners is ambiguous on a right positivist basis.

definition

Stefan Trechsel , Professor of Criminal Law at the University of Zurich and former President of the European Commission on Human Rights , defines political imprisonment, among other things, as referring, for example, to people who, for political reasons, are disproportionately high compared to the criminal offense committed has failed. Or to prisoners who have been mistreated for political reasons or who have not received appropriate legal assistance.

The Council of Europe considers a person deprived of his or her freedom as a political prisoner if one of the following conditions is met:

The assessment of whether a specific person should be classified as a political prisoner is often controversial and varies depending on the political point of view. From the west - democratic view such prisoners are seen as political prisoners in general, because of their opposition against a dictatorial regime are imprisoned ( dissidents ). According to this understanding, people who are imprisoned for ideologically justified acts of violence ( terrorism ) are not regarded as political prisoners.

The ICCPR includes in Art. 19 and 26 a conviction because of political views and guarantees all people the right to freedom of expression. As a result, political imprisonment violates international law , which is why the term has developed into a political battle term. In connection with the conviction of members of the Red Army faction for membership in a terrorist organization , RAF sympathizers in the Federal Republic of Germany spoke of "political imprisonment" of those imprisoned in the Stammheim prison in the 1970s .

The distinction between political and legitimate prisoners is not clear on a right positivist basis, since almost all states have covered detentions that are criticized from the outside as political by corresponding criminal offenses . Whether a prisoner is a political prisoner can therefore usually only be judged by evaluating the legitimacy of the law on which the imprisonment is based on the basis of over-positive standards.

In many countries, political prisoners have historically enjoyed privileged status over “ordinary” criminals.

In Germany, until the end of the Weimar Republic, people convicted of political offenses were generally not sentenced to jail or prison , but to fortress imprisonment, which was considered less defamatory and generally had better conditions of detention.

In the GDR, political prisoners were often subjected to repression by prison staff as well as measures of so-called " operational psychology " by the state security , which led to numerous documented physical and psychological consequential damage, especially post-traumatic stress disorders .

In the course of the persecution of communists in the Federal Republic of Germany, there were also political prisoners there.

Organizations that work for political prisoners are in particular Amnesty International , Human Rights Watch , Red Aid and the Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l'Homme .

Categorization / identification of prisoners

Political Prisoners Day

Many countries celebrate March 18 as Political Prisoner Day with events, demonstrations, special editions of newspapers and magazines, lectures and film screenings.

“Political” as prisoners in concentration camps

Under National Socialism , political prisoners were exposed to massive repression. Between 1933 and 1945 an increasing number of people came to the concentration camps because of allegations of political crimes, membership of political parties and party-affiliated organizations, or simply because of their origin . The term protective custody was a widely used euphemism . Especially with the beginning of the Second World War , the number of death sentences by special courts ( People's Court ) for such reasons, the often only suspected resistance, rose steadily.

The marking on the clothing, a triangular red scrap of material - the red triangle , was also often used in the camp language to denote membership of this prisoner category.

In order to prosecute suspected “political crimes”, the Gestapo, as a political police force, was set up and expanded separately from other tasks at the beginning of the Nazi regime.

See also

Web link

Commons : Political Prisoners  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. http://www.coe.int/t/d/com/dossiers/interviews/20040712-int-Trechsel.asp
  2. ^ Council of Europe, SG / Inf (2001) 34 of October 24, 2001
  3. Archived copy ( Memento of February 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) p. 8f
  4. Klaus-Dieter Müller (Ed.): The past does not let us go. Conditions of detention of political prisoners in the Soviet Zone / GDR and their health consequences . 2nd Edition. Berlin-Verlag Spitz, Berlin 1998. ISBN 3-87061-812-4 .
  5. ↑ Persecution of Communists in the old Federal Republic , Federal Center for Political Education
  6. ^ So also the arrests of the special war campaign