Praying on the Edge: Human Rights for Concerned Christians [Hardcover]

This is a book for groups. It's for believing groups and doubting groups and concerned groups and groups who are not sure where they're going. It's a book for groups that want to do something, for groups that want to change a bit of the world - maybe their bit of the world - for the better. It's for groups that are no longer content just to sit and talk and pray, important as that is, but for people who now want to add meaningful action to their being together. We live in a painful world so there is much for us to do. We can do it individually or we can do it with others. We can do it denominationally or we can do it ecumenically. We can do it from within the Christian ghetto or we can do it hand in hand with those on the edge of faith and with our secular neighbours in the wider community. There is much to do and what we choose to do we do simply because we want to be faithful to Jesus. And because there is so much to do someone's life somewhere in this world may depend on the decision we make.

Bryan Owen is a former schoolteacher and Anglican vicar who now writes full-time. He's travelled widely in Eastern Europe and the developing world and specialises in human rights, the work of the United Nations and the development of democracy. He was a UN superviser in the 2000 Kosovo elections and has offically observed other elections in a number of Balkans countries. The author of 'The Evil Eye of Gondor' - a play for children - and with two further books on social issues to be published in 2005, Bryan Owen is married with two children and lives near Glasgow in Scotland. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

THE USE OF TORTURE: In our own country we enjoy having the freedom to express our views, to protest against wrongdoing and to demand political and social change. In many parts of the world these simple human rights are denied and those who demand them are accused of being enemies of the state. They can be imprisoned and subjected to torture often with implements made in the West.
Totalitarian regimes from Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union, from Pinochet’s Chile to apartheid South Africa, have used torture as a matter of course. In the Iraq conflict in 2004, however, we discovered that some coalition soldiers, men and women who had been sent there to free the Iraqi people from tyranny, had themselves become as cruel as the interrogators of Saddam’s regime they had replaced. The realisation that those who are supposed to be on the side of the good are as corruptible as the people they came to oust shocks many people to the core.
Although the following example comes from Tibet it could come from any number of places around the world --This text refers to the Paperback edition.