James Mawdsley

James Rupert Russell Mawdsley is a Catholic Priest in the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, who is also a human rights activist campaigning for democracy in Burma. He is a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and Australia.

Mawdsley was born in 1973. His parents are David and Diana, and he has three siblings. He gave up his study at Bristol University, and while backpacking met Burmese refugees who engaged his interest in the plight of ethnic minorities in Burma.

He married his wife, Elizabeth, in January 2005. They honeymooned in Rome, where their union was blessed by Pope John Paul II.

Mawdsley took up teaching English at a Burmese refugee camp, and became further involved when government forces burnt down the school. He was arrested three times for his involvement and deported three times. The second arrest was in May 1998, for handing out stickers and playing songs for the pro democracy movement. On arrest, he was tortured for 15 hours, and sentenced to five years imprisonment, which was suspended after 98 days.

He was rearrested a third time in September 1999, for illegal entry and sedition, and was sentenced to seventeen years in jail. His imprisonment was held to be arbitrary by the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in 2000. This time, he spent 415 days in solitary confinement, before his release in October 2000, after pressure was exerted by the United Kingdom Foreign Office on the authorities in Myanmar.

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 October 2005. At the 2004 European Parliament Election, Mawdsley was a candidate on the Conservative Party list for the North West England. However, he was placed ninth on the list, so was not one of the three Conservatives who won a seat.

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