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Journalists as Political Prisoners Journalists are among a special group of political prisoners: those trying to report on corrupt governments. The Committee to Protect Journalists (www.cpj. org) noted in December 2015 that there were 199 reporters imprisoned around the world for trying to do their jobs. The countries with the most were China (49), Egypt (23), Eritrea (17), and Ethiopia (10).

Famous Political Prisoners in History The term political prisoner is sometimes confused with another expression, prisoner of conscience , but they are not the same thing. A political prisoner is someone jailed primarily because of his or her beliefs, but a political prisoner could also have engaged in violent acts. Contrasting with this, a prisoner of conscience is jailed because of his or her beliefs but has not engaged in any form of violence. To illustrate the difference, let’s look at Nelson Mandela, who became one of history’s most famous political prisoners when the South African govern- ment incarcerated him for 27 years for opposing the practice of apartheid . Amnesty International (amnesty.org) refused to categorize Mandela as a pris- oner of conscience because some of his fellow activists in organizations that he belonged to advocated violence in their struggle for racial justice. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on the other hand, who steadfastly opposed violence in his fight for racial equality in the United States, was considered both a political prisoner and a prisoner of conscience when held in the Birmingham, AL, jail in 1963. Other famous political prisoners include the American writer and antiwar activist HenryDavidThoreau, whowas jailed for two nights in July 1846 for failure to pay taxes that would go to fund the Mexican-American War, and the Quaker leader William Penn, who was jailed in England in the 1660s for his religious be- liefs. Penn went on to found the colony of Pennsylvania, whose charter, drafted by Penn, among other things guaranteed freedom of religion and freedom from unjust imprisonment. Whether someone is a “political prisoner” depends on one’s perspective. In the 21st century, most national governments agree that political imprisonment is immoral; likewise, most governments deny holding political prisoners.

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Political Prisoners