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James Throws
Light |
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| "Darkness hates
having light thrown on it." This is the core belief that drove James
Mawdsley twice to confront the dictatorship that is oppressing and ruining
Burma, deliberately provoking them to imprison him in horrific conditions.
The story of his imprisonment for daring to distribute literature that told
the truth about one of the world's most brutal regimes has been made famous
by television and newspaper coverage. He described torture deliberately
inflicted by his guards, and the equally dreadful tonnent of being exposed
without protection to the bites of mosquitos and to scabies. Having suffered
such conditions for more than a year before international outrage forced his
release, he returned, and within ten hours was being sentenced again to
fifteen years' imprisonment.
But he made all of that seem insignificant compared with the suffering of the Burmese people. They had to endure far more terrible torture than their oppressors would ever risk inflicting on an Englishman in whom the US State Department and the United Nations were deepry interested. He spoke of elderly people burnt alive in their homes, of a fourteen year old girl who pressed her stomach against a soldier's gun knowing that he would shoot her. The only way he could unite with these brave people was to endure imprisonment with them. It was no good going as a reporter and being expelled. In prison you stay. In prison you can actually shine a light on that darkness, by bearing witness to the atrocities committed in the next cell .With a clear cut certainty that is some times frightening, this quietly spoken, neatly dressed young man left a meeting, arranged by Egremont Churches Together and Amnesty International at Wyndham School on 16th October, shaken by the graphic horror of the regime's tyranny and uplifted by the faith that drove him to confront it. "God wants us to confront dictatorship, " he asserted, and the whole of his riveting address was illuminated by his burning obedience to his vision of God as creator and judge. He needed no visual aids except the images which the simple passion of his words created. He spoke of his joy at being allowed a Bible in his cell, and his sense of the overwhelming love of God which he discovered from reading it. "Prison is a wonderful place to study the Bible! " he declared, with a sense of conviction which would bear no contradiction, and his audience had never heard interpretations of the Book of Job or St John's Gospel which held such a challenging mirror up to our own age. Yet that faith never tempted him to feel superior to people of other beliefs. Buddhists, Muslims, Jews seek God just as truly as Christians do. One of the most moving parts of his story was of his relationship with the lowliest of menials, the man who had to clear out his latrine bucket. By treating him as a brother and sharing with him the best of his food parcels, James was able to give an example to prisoners and guards of the respect with which all people should be treated. |
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