James Mawdsley
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James Rupert Russell Mawdsley is a human rights activist campaigning for democracy in Myanmar. He is a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and Australia.
Mawdsley was arrested several times for his involvement and deported three times. He spent over a year in a prison in Myanmar during 2000 and 2001, as part of a seventeen year jail sentence, after taking part in pro-democracy protests in Rangoon.
His imprisonment was held to be arbitrary by the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in 2001. Mawdsley was released from jail in 2001 after pressure was exerted by the United Kingdom Foreign Office on the authorities in Myanmar. A condition of his release was that he would never return.
In February 2003 he co-authored New Ground with Benedict Rogers, a pamphlet advocating foreign policy based around freedom, dignity and the rule of law. This document has helped give rise to the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, founded in 2005.
In the UK 2005 general election, he unsuccessfully contested the Hyndburn constituency for the Conservative Party.
He wrote The Heart Must Break: the Fight for Democracy and Truth in Burma, published in the US as The Iron Road: A Stand for Truth and Democracy in Burma by North Point Press in 2002.
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James Mawdsley (trade unionist) was a trade union leader during the late 19th and early 20th century, who, as a Conservative, ran alongside Winston Churchill in a by-election for the constituency of Oldham.
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