APPENDIX 6
Concerning Political Prisoners
Definitions
James Bryce:[1]
[1] James Bryce made this distinction in 1889 between the two kinds of offenders. Letter Introductory to “Political Prisoners at Home and Abroad,” Sigerson.
“Perhaps we may say that whenever the moral judgment of the community at large does not brand an offence as sordid and degrading, and does not feel the offence to be one which destroys its respect for the personal character of the prisoner, it may there be held that prison treatment ought to be different from that awarded to ordinary criminals.”
George Sigerson:[2]
[2] “Political Prisoners at Home and Abroad.”
“Men may differ, in thought and deed, on many questions without moral guilt. Forms of government and measures relating to the welfare and organization of society have been, in all ages and countries, questions on which men have entertained divergent convictions, and asserted their sincerity by conflicting action, often at grave personal sacrifice and the loss of life. On the other hand, all people are agreed in condemning certain acts, stigmatized as crimes, which offend against the well-being of the individual or the community.
“Hence, civilized states distinguish between actions concerning which good men may reasonably differ, and actions which all good men condemn. The latter, if permitted to prevail, would disintegrate and destroy the social life of mankind; the former, if successful, would simply reorganize it, on a different basis . . . . The objects may, in one generation, be branded as crimes, whilst in the next those who fail to make them triumph and suffered as malefactors are exalted as patriot martyrs, and their principles incorporated amongst the foundation principles of the country’s constitution.
“Attempts to effect changes by methods beyond the conventions which have the sanction of the majority of a community, may be rash and blameworthy sometimes, but they are not necessarily dishonorable, and may even occasionally be obligatory on conscience.”
As to the incumbency upon a government to differentiate in punishments inflicted upon these two classes of offenders, he further says: “When a Government exercises its punitive power, it should, in awarding sentence, distinguish between the two classes of offenders. To confound in a common degradation those who violate the moral law by acts which all men condemn, and those who offend against the established order of society by acts of which many men approve, and for objects which may sometime be accepted as integral parts of established order, is manifestly wrong in principle. It places a Government morally in the wrong in the eyes of masses of the population, a thing to be sedulously guarded against.”
George Clemenceau:[1]
[1] Clemenceau in a speech before the French Chamber of Deputies, May 16th, 1876, advocating amnesty for those who participated in the Commune of 1871. From the Annals de la Chambre des Deputies, 1876, v. 2, pp. 44-48.
“Theoretically a crime committed in the interest of the criminal is a common law crime, while an offense committed in the public interest is a political crime.” He says further, “That an act isolated from the circumstances under which it was committed . . . may have the appearance of a common law crime . . : while viewed in connection with the circumstances under which it is committed (in connection with a movement) . . . it may take on a political character.”
Maurice Parmelee:[1]
[1] “Criminology” by Maurice Parmelee, Chap. XXVIII. Author also of “Poverty and Social Progress,” “The Science of Human Behavior,” “The Principles of Anthropology and Sociology in their relation to Criminal Procedure.” During the late war Dr. Parmelee was a Representative of the U. S. War Trade Board stationed at the American Embassy, London; economic advisor to the State Department, and Chairman of the Allied Rationing Committee which administered the German Blockade.
“Common crimes are acts contrary to the law committed in the interest of the individual criminal or of those personally related to the criminal. Political crimes are acts contrary to the law committed against an existing government or form of government in the interest of another government or form of government . . . . .
“Furthermore, there are other offenses against the law which are not common crimes, and yet are not political crimes in the usual criminological sense . . . .
“Among these crimes, which are broader than the ordinary political crimes, are offenses in defense of the right to freedom of thought and belief, in defense of the right to express one’s self in words in free speech, . . . and many illegal acts committed by conscientious objectors to the payment of taxes or to military service, the offenses of laborers in strikes and other labor disturbances, the violations of law committed by those who are trying to bring about changes in the relations between the sexes, etc.
“Common crimes are almost invariably anti-social in their nature, while offenses which are directly or indirectly political are usually social in their intent, and are frequently beneficial to society in their ultimate effect. We are, therefore, justified in calling them social crimes, as contrasted with the anti-social common crimes . . . . .”
TREATMENT ACCORDED POLITICAL PRISONFRS ABROAD
It is interesting to note what other countries have done toward handling intelligently the problem of political offenders.
Russia was probably the first country in modern history to recognize political prisoners as a class,[1] although the treatment of different groups and individuals varied widely.
[1] Siberia received its first exiles [non-conformists] in the 17th Century.
First of all, the political offender was recognized as a “political” not by law, but by custom. When sure of a verdict of guilty, either through damaging evidence or a packed jury, the offender was tried. When it was impossible to commit him to trial because there were no proofs against him, “Administrative Exile” was resorted to. These judgments or Administrative orders to exile were pronounced in secret on political offenders; one member of the family of the defendant was admitted to the trial under the law of 1881. Those exiled by Administrative order were transported in cars, but stopped en route at the etapes, political prisoners along with common law convicts. Since 1866 politicals condemned by the courts to hard labor or to exile, journeyed on foot with common law convicts.[1]
There were no hospitals for political exiles; doctors and ‘ surgeons among the exiled helped their sick comrades.
Families were permitted to follow the loved ones into exile, if they chose. For example, wives were allowed to stay at Lower Kara, and visit their husbands in the prison in Middle Kara twice a week and to bring them books.
When criminal convicts were freed in Siberia after serving a given sentence at hard labor, they received an allotment of land and agricultural implements for purposes of sustenance, and after two years the government troubled no more about them. They became settlers in some province of Southern Siberia. With political exiles it was quite different. When they had finished a seven, ten, or twelve year sentence, they were not liberated but transferred to the tundras within the Arctic Circle.
Fancy a young girl student exiled to a village numbering a hundred houses, with the government allowance of 8 to 10 shillings a month to live on. Occupations were closed to her, and there was no opportunity to learn a trade. She was forbidden to leave the town even for a few hours. The villagers were for the most part in fear of being suspected if seen to greet politicals in the street.
“Without dress, without shoes, living in the nastiest huts, without any occupation, they [the exiles were mostly dying from consumption,” said the Golos of February 2, 1881. They lived in constant fear of starvation. And the Government allowance was withdrawn if it became known that an exile received any monetary assistance from family or friends.
Those politicals condemned to hard labor in Siberia worked mostly in gold mines for three months out of twelve, during which period meat was added to their diet. Otherwise black bread was the main food of the diet.
When held in prisons awaiting trial or convicted and awaiting transfer into exile, politicals did no work whatever. Their only occupation was reading. Common criminals had to work in prison as well as in Siberia.
In the fortress of Sts. Peter and Paul,[1] Kropotkin was lodged in a cell big enough to shelter a big fortress gun (25 feet on the diagonal). The walls and floor were lined with felt to prevent communication with others. “The silence in these felt- covered cells is that of a grave,” wrote Kropotkin . . . . “Here I wrote my two volumes on The Glacial Period.” Here he also prepared maps and drawings. This privilege was only granted, to him, however, after a strong movement amongst influential circles compelled it from the Czar.[1a] The Geo- graphical Society for whom he was writing his thesis also made many pleas on his behalf. He was allowed to buy tobacco, writing paper and to have books—but no extra food.
[1] In the Trubeskoi bastion, one building in the fortress.
[1a] Set Memoirs of a Revolutionist, Kropotkin.
Kropotkin says that political prisoners were not subjected to corporal punishment, through official fear of bloodshed. But he must mean by corporal punishment actual beatings, for he says also, “The black holes, the chains, the riveting to bar rows are usual punishments.” And some politicals were al- leged to have been put in oubliettes in the Alexis Ravelin[2] which must have been the worst feature of all the tortures. This meant immurement alive in cells, in a remote spot where no contact with others was possible, and where the prisoner would often be chained or riveted for years.
[2] Another section of Sts. Peter and Paul Fortress.
More recently there was some mitigation of the worst fea- tures of the prison régime and some additional privileges were extended to politicals.
All this applied to old Russia. There is no documentary proof available yet, as to how Soviet Russia treats its offenders against the present government. The Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic does not provide a status for political prisoners, but it does provide for their re lease. It specifically deals with amnesty which is proof of the importance with which it regards the question of political offenders. It says: “The All-Russian Central Executive Com mittee deal with questions of state such as . . . the right to declare individual and general amnesty.[4]
[3] Adopted by the 5th All-Russian Congress of Soviets, July 10, 1918. Reprinted from The Nation, January 4, 1919.
[4] Article 3, Chapter 9 . . . 49 q.
France has had perhaps the most enlightened attitude of all the nations toward political offenders. She absolutely guarantees special treatment, by special regulations, and does not leave it to the discretion of changing governments.
On August 7, 1834; Thiers, in a ministerial circular, laid down the fundamental principles upon which France has acted. The only obligation upon the defendant, according to this circular, was to prove the political nature of the offense,—“that it should be demonstrated and incontestable that they have acted under the influence of their opinions.”[1] Theirs advocated superior diet for political prisoners and no work.
[1] Sigerson, Political prisoners at Home and Abroad, p. 89.
His edict was followed by special regulations issued for politicals under the Empire, February 9th, 1867, through M. Pietri, Prefect of the Seine. These regulations, illustrative of the care France exercised at an early date over her politicals, defined the housing conditions, diet, intercourse with comrades inside the prison and with family and friends from the outside. Their privacy was carefully guarded. No curious visitor was allowed to see a political unless the latter so desired.
Kropotkin wrote[2] of his incarceration in Clairvaux prison in 1888, to which he and twenty-two others were transferred from Lyons after being prosecuted for belonging to the International Workingmen’s Association: “In France, it is generally understood that for political prisoners the loss of liberty and the forced inactivity are in themselves so hard that there is no need to inflict additional hardships.”
[2] Memoirs of a Revolutionist, Kropotkin.
In Clairvaux he and his comrades were given quarters in spacious rooms, not in cells. Kropotkin and Emile Gautier, the French anarchist, were given a separate room for literary work and the Academy of Sciences offered them the use of its library.
There was no intercourse with common law prisoners. The politicals were allowed to wear their own clothes, to smoke, to buy food and wine from the prison canteen or have it brought in; they were free of compulsory work, but might, if they chose, do light work for which they were paid. Kropotkin mentions the extreme cleanliness of the prison and the “excellent quality” of the prison food.
Their windows looked down upon a little garden and also commanded a beautiful view of the surrounding country. They played nine- pins in the yard and made a vegetable and flower garden on the surface of the building’s wall. For other forms of recreation, they were allowed to organize themselves into classes. This particular group received from Kropotkin lessons in cosmography, geometry, physics, languages and bookbinding. Kropotkin’s wife was allowed to visit him daily and to walk with him in the prison gardens.
Sebastian Faure, the great French teacher and orator, was sentenced to prison after the anarchist terrorism in 1894 and while there was allowed to write his “La Douleur Universelle”
Paul La Fargue, son-in-law of Karl Marx, wrote his famous “The Right to be Lazy” in Sainte Pelagie prison.
France has continued this policy to date. Jean Grave, once a shoemaker and now a celebrated anarchist, was condemned to six months in La Sante prison for an offensive article in his paper, Les Temps Nouveaux. Such is the liberty allowed a political that while serving this sentence he was given paper and materials with which to write another objectionable article, called “La Société Mourante et l’Anarchie,” for the publication of which he received another six months.
It is interesting to note the comparatively light sentences political offenders get in France. And then there is an established practice of amnesty. They rarely finish out their terms. Agitation for their release extends from the extreme revolutionary left to the members of the Chamber of Deputies, frequently backed by the liberal press.
Italy also distinguishes between political and common law offenders. The former are entitled to all the privileges of custodia honesta[1] which means they are allowed to wear their own clothes, work or not, as they choose; if they do work, one half their earnings is given to them. Their only penal obligation is silence during work, meals, school and prayers. A friend of Sr. Serrati, the ex-editor of the Italian journal Il Proletario, tells me that Serrati was a political prisoner during the late war; that he was sentenced to three and a half years, but was released at the end of six months, through pressure from the outside. But while there, he was allowed to write an article a day for Avanti, of which paper he was then an editor.
[1] Sigerson, pp. 154-5.
Even before the Franco-Prussian War German principalities recognized political offenders as such. The practice continued after the federation of German states through the Empire and up to the overthrow of Kaiser Wilhelm. Politicals were held in “honorable custody” in fortresses where they were deprived only of their liberty.
For revolutionary activities in Saxony in 1849, Bakunin[2] was arrested, taken to a Cavalry Barracks and later to Koeriigstein Fortress, where politicals were held. Here he was allowed to walk twice daily under guard. He was allowed to receive books, he could converse with his fellow prisoners and could write and receive numerous letters. In a letter to a friend[3] he wrote that he was occupied in the study of mathematics and English, and that he was “enjoying Shakespeare.” And .. : . “they treat me with extraordinary humanness.”
[2] The Life of Michael Bakunin—Eine Biographie von Dr. Max Nettlau. (Privately printed by the author. Fifty copies reproduced by the autocopyist, Longhaus.)
[3] To Adolph R—— (the last name illegible) October 15, 1849.
Another letter to the same friend a month later said he was writing a defense of his political views in “a comfortable room,” with “cigars and food brought in from a nearby inn.” The death sentence was pronounced against him in 1850 but commuted to imprisonment for life. The same year he was extradited to Austria where the offense was committed, then to Russia and on to Siberia in 1855, whence he escaped in 1860 in an American ship.
In 1869 Bebell[1] received a sentence of three weeks in Leipzig (contrast with Alice Paul’s seven months’ sentence) “for the propagation of ideas dangerous to the state.” Later for high treason based upon Social-Democratic agitation he was sentenced to two years in a fortress. For lèse majesté he served nine months in Hubertusburg—a fortress prison (in 1871). Here politicals were allowed to pay for the cleaning of their cells, to receive food from a nearby inn, and were allowed to eat together in the corridors. They were only locked in for part of the time, and the rest of the time were allowed to walk in the garden. They were permitted lights until ten at night; books; and could receive and answer mail every day. Bebel received permission to share cell quarters with the elder Lielr knecht (Wilhelm), then serving time for his internationalism. He says that political prisoners were often allowed a six weeks’ leave of absence between sentences; when finishing one and beginning a second.
[1] My Life, August Bebel.
According to Sigerson, politicals in Austria also were absolved from wearing prison clothes, might buy their own food and choose their work. I am told the same régime prevailed in Hungary under Franz Joseph.
The new constitution of the German Republic adopted at Weimar July 31, 1919, provides that[2] “The President of the Republic shall exercise for the. government the right of pardon .. . . . Government amnesties require a national law.”
[2] Article 49.
In the Scandinavian countries there is no provision for special consideration of political prisoners, although a proposed change in Sweden’s penal laws now pending includes special treatment for them, and in Denmark, although politicals are not recognized apart from other prisoners, the people have just won an amnesty for all prisoners convicted of political offense as I write. Neither Switzerland nor Spain makes separate provision for politicals, although there are many prisoners confined in their prisons for political offenses, especially in Spain, where there are nearly always actually thousands in Monjuich. Portugal also subjects political offenders to the same regime as criminals.
Concerning Turkey and Bulgaria, I appealed to George Andreytchine, a Bulgarian revolutionist who as protégé of King Ferdinand was educated at Sofia and Constantinople, knowing his knowledge on this point would be authentic. He writes: “Turkey, which is the most backward of all modern states, recognized the status of political prisoners before 1895, or shortly after the Armenian massacres. Thousands of Bulgarian, Greek, Armenian and Arabian insurgents, caught with Arms in their hands, conspiring and actually in open rebellion against the Ottoman Empire, were sentenced to exile or hard labor, but were never confined in the same prisons with ordinary criminals and felons. They were put in more hygienical prisons where they were allowed to read and write and to breathe fresh air. Among some of my friends who were exiled to Turkish Africa for rebellion was a young scholar, Paul Shateff, by name, who while there wrote a remarkable monograph on the ethnology and ethnography of the Arabian Tribes in which he incidentally tells of the special treatment given him and his fellow exiles as political prisoners.
“There is something to be said for the political wisdom of the Sultans. Amnesty is an established practice, usually at the birthday of the Sultan or the coming to power of a new Sultan, or on Ramadan[1], a national holiday.
[1] The month (the ninth in the Mohammedan year) in which the first part of the Koran is said to have been received.
“In 1908 when the young Turks assumed control of the government, all political prisoners were released and cared for by the state. My friend Paul Shateff was sent at state expense to Bruxelles to finish his studies.
“Bulgaria, another one of those ‘backward countries,’ established the political regime even earlier than Turkey. Politicals are allowed to read, to write books or articles for publication, to receive food from outside, and are periodically released on amnesty.”
And now we come to England. In general England, too, give’s political offenders much lighter sentences than does America, but, except in isolated cases, she treats them no better. She does not recognize them as political prisoners. If they are distinguished prisoners like Dr. Jamison, who was permitted to serve the sentence imposed upon him for leading an armed raid into the Transvaal in 1895, in a luxuriously furnished suite, to provide himself with books, a piano, and such food as he chose, and to receive his friends, special dispensation is allowed; or like William Cobbett, who was imprisoned for writing an alleged treasonable article in his journal, The Register, in 1809; or Leigh Hunt for maligning the Prince Regent who, he believed, broke his promise to the Irish cause; Daniel O’Connell and six associates in 1844 for “seditious activity”; John Mitchell, who in 1848 was sent to Bermuda and then to Van Dieman’s Land.[2] These British prisoners, while not proclaimed as politicals, did receive special privileges.[3]
[2]English penal colony in Tasmania.
[3]For details of their handsome treatment see Sigerson, pp. 19–20,
More recently Bertrand Russell, the distinguished man of letters who served sixty-one days in lieu of payment of fine for writing a pamphlet intended to arouse public indignation against the treatment of a certain conscientious objector, received special privileges. In England the matter of treatment rests largely with the will of the Prime Minister, who dictates the policy to the Home Secretary, who in turn directs the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Prisons. The Home Secretary may, however, of his own accord issue an order for special privileges if he so desires, or if there is a strong demand for such an order. Many government commissions and many distinguished British statesmen have recommended complete recognition and guarantee of the status of political prisoners, but the matter has been left to common law custom and precedent, and the character of the prime minister. In the case of Ireland the policy agreed upon is carried out by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
It is difficult to generalize about England’s treatment of Irish political offenders. From the earliest nationalist activities she has treated them practically all as common criminals, or worse, if such a thing is possible. She has either filled English prisons, or, as in the sixties, put them in convict ships and sent them to Bermuda and Australia for life sentences along with common convicts where they performed the hardest labor.. Irish prisoners have fought with signal and persistent courage for the rights due political offenders. Lately, after militant demonstrations within the prisons and after deaths resulting from concerted hunger striking protests, some additional privileges have been extended. But these can be and are withheld at will. There is no guarantee of them.
As early as 1885 Canadian nationalists who had taken part in an insurrection in Upper Canada on behalf of self-government and who were sent to Van Dieman’s Land in convict ships, entered a vigorous protest to Lord Russell, the Home Secretary, against not receiving the treatment due political prisoners.
England has to her credit, then, some flexibility about extending privileges to politicals. We have none. England has to her credit lighter sentences—Irish cases excepted. No country, not excluding imperial Germany, has ever given such cruelly long sentences to political offenders as did America during the late war.
I have incorporated this discussion in such a book for two reasons: first, because it seemed to me important that you should know what a tremendous contribution the suffrage prisoners made toward this enlightened reform. They were the first in America to make a sustained demand to establish this precedent which others will consummate. They kept up the demand to the end of the prison episode, reinforcing it by the hunger strike protest. The other reason for including this discussion here is that it seems to me imperative that America recognize without further delay the status of political offenders. As early as 1872 the International Prison Congress meeting in London recommended a distinction in the treatment of common law criminals and politicals, and the resolution was agreed upon by the representatives of all the Powers of Europe and America with the tacit concurrence of British and Irish officials. And still we are behind Turkey in adopting an enlightened policy. We have neither regulation, statute nor precedent. Nor have we the custom of official flexibility.
Note—The most conspicuous political prisoner from the point of view of actual power the United States has ever held in custody was Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States, during the rebellion of the South against the Union. He was imprisoned in Fortress Monroe and subjected to the most cruel and humiliating treatment conceivable. For details of his imprisonment see the graphic account given in “Jefferson Davis—A Memoir” by his wife, Vol. II, pp. 653-95.