This is the compelling story of James Mawdsley, a 27 year old man from Lancashire who returned home to Britain at the end 2000 having endured 14 months of solitary confinement and torture in a Burmese prison. Sentenced to 17 years imprisonment for his protests against the brutal military regime of the junta, this was not Mawdsley’s first time to be captured but his third trip to Burma in what was a well thought-out, determined exercise in his campaign to publicize human rights violation in a country terrorised by an illegal regime. Mawdsley describes how he came to leave university, and the promise of academic success, to pursue instead something more purposeful, charting with sensitivity, intelligence and humour, the experiences the lead him to Burma. He goes on to describe his fellow prisoners and his torturers with irony and a kind of sympathetic tenderness. Mawdsley rejects any claim of heroism or bravery and instead reflects on his motives, his ability to survive such isolation and terror - how he discovered a kind of spiritual solace and peace despite his terrifying situation - and what now lies ahead, both for himself, with his new freedom, and for the people of Burma.
About the Author
Fr. Mawdsley
Born in 1973, James Mawdsley grew up in Lancashire, England. During 17 months of solitary confinement as a prisoner of conscience in Burma (in 1998 and 1999-2000), he received the Bible which helped turn his cell from “hell to heaven”, beginning a passion for studying Scripture. From 2003 to 2004 he served as Secretariat to the British-North Korean All-Party Parliamentary Group, sitting in on high-level political-military meetings in Pyongyang and London. Having met former prisoners and guards who had defected, Mawdsley’s priority in arranging these exchanges was to challenge the North Korean government for their gulag system. Slowly realising the futility of political attempts to overcome evil unless Jesus Christ is honoured as King of Kings, Mawdsley was surprised on 3rd September 2005 by a crystal-clear call to the priesthood. Fr Mawdsley was ordained a Catholic priest in 2016, celebrating the traditional Roman rite only. His New Old book series, a discovery of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament read in the light of the New, is offered both for spiritual nourishment and to address the problem of evil: personal (our own sin), global (look around!) and cosmic (satan). Christus vincit!