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Quote by Zia Haider Rahman

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Zia Haider Rahman
Zia Haider Rahman

Zia Haider Rahman is a novelist known for his deep exploration of history, politics, and personal identity in his works. His writing has received critical acclaim and praise from readers. more

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“What have I ever done that God should make me suffer so? I feel that my abnormality bars me out of the ministry, the profession of my choice, and most likely out of all other professions. I feel that this passion is going to wreck my life, and never permit me to make any return to my parents for all they have done for me. I have no hope for the future. In the convention, while I would be singing, I was in thought hacking my body to pieces with a sword, or piercing my breast with a dagger. My continuous prayer was : ‘ Father, Father, hear my humble cry. While on others thou art smiling, Do not pass me by !”

PrayerMinistryJoblessTransgenderComplaintTransgender IssuesTransgenderismTransgender WomenTrans PeopleCalling To Ministry
Book:Autobiography of an Androgyne
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“Isolation of catastrophic experiences. Dissociation may function to seal off overwhelming trauma into a compartmentalized area of conscious until the person is better able to integrate it into mainstream consciousness. The function of dissociation is particularly common in survivors of combat, political torture, or natural or transportation disasters.”

ConsciousnessPsychologyMemoryTraumaTortureSurvivorCombatCatastropheSoldiersDissociationAmnesiaDissociativeTrauma SurvivorsPolitical PrisonersComplex TraumaDissociatedConcentration CampsConcentration Camp Survivor
Author:Marlene Steinberg
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“At no time have governments been moralists. They never imprisoned people and executed them for having done something. They imprisoned and executed them to keep them from doing something. They imprisoned all those POW's, of course, not for treason to the motherland, because it was absolutely clear even to a fool that only the Vlasov men could be accused of treason. They imprisoned all of them to keep them from telling their fellow villagers about Europe. What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve for.”

Soviet UnionTotalitarianismRepressionTreasonImprisonmentStalinismPolitical PrisonersPrisoner Of War19451973
Book:The Gulag Archipelago
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“Some are condemned to remain mere “clock and smart phone watchers”, inasmuch as they are not able to read and interpret the lines of their life or don't even treasure the enchantment of daily captivating moments. If we are not prepared to give some personal time to social time, we walk like blind men through gloomy alleys of our existence. ( " Please. Just a bit of a chat " )”

LifeMomentsAbleLinesExistencePreparedTreasureClockReadGiveWalkGloomyAlleysEnchantmentWatchersDailyCaptivatingRemainChatInterpretPersonal TimeCondemnedSmart PhoneBlind MenSocial Time
Author:Erik Pevernagie
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“Marx, concerning himself with a less remote time ("Critique of the Gotha Program"), declared with equal conviction that the one and only means of correcting offenders (true, he referred to criminals; he never even conceived that his pupils might consider politicals offenders) was not solitary contemplation, not moral soul-searching, not repentance, and not languishing (for all that was superstructures!)—but productive labor. He himself had never taken a pick in hand. To the end of his days he never pushed a wheelbarrow, mined coal, felled timber, and we don't even know how his firewood was split—but he wrote that down on paper, and the paper did not resist.”

HypocrisyMarxismPolitical PrisonersKarl MarxGulag1974Prison LaborFor Profit PrisonsWhat The Archipelago Stands On
Book:The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV
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“It would be hard. After all, I'm working. I'm a mother. Number one, I'm a mother & housewife, so there's the house kind of chores. In the evenings, I might attend some meeting, & then late at night, I would be either writing to the brothers & sisters in prison or working on the leaflets of their cases. Then on the weekend, at least every other weekend, we'd visit the political prisoners...I mean everybody has their whole life & things they have to do at home. But I'll tell you, we were busy during this time. Every week, more brothers & sisters would be arrested. We were working on scores of cases at the same time--trying to keep up with visiting, writing, attending court hearings. If I could show you all the leaflets we made, you'd get an idea of how expansive the work was.”

1960sPolitical PrisonersPolitical OrganizingBlack Liberation MovementYuri Kochiyama
Book:Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama
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“The liberal international human rights community often defines political internees as those incarcerated for their beliefs, not necessarily their actions. While such instances abound, they are not the only or even the best examples of politically motivated incarceration. Whether someone “did it” ought not to determine fully who receives our support. Instead, political prisoners are best conceived as active participants in resistance movements. Thus the central issue for thinking about political prisoners is not whether they “did it” but what movements did they come from and what are the broader circumstances surrounding their arrest. Most of those incarcerated participated in radical movements seeking fundamental overhauls of structures of power. (...) Political prisoners emerged from movements seeking to stop, to overturn, to develop alternatives to state and extralegal violence of the system. All of America’s political internees did something; some resisted with force, some put their bodies on the line, and others used words and propagated ideas the state deemed too powerful to let slide as just so much free speech. The issue of political prisoners is less one of “innocence” than of defending people’s ability and capacity to resist.”

PolicePrisonPolitical Prisoners
Book:The Struggle Within: Prisons, Political Prisoners, and Mass Movements in the United States
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“I hated the threat that if I did not appear on television, I would not be released on the 31st day. Why should a television appearance affect the length of my detention? Surely they must decide whether to release me or not according to culpability, not according to whether I agree to a television appearance. What has a television appearance got to do with the security of my country?”

PoliticsPolitical PrisonersPublic Humiliation
Book:Beyond The Blue Gate: Recollections of a Political Prisoner
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