(Media release info).

World’s Most Extreme Escape Artist Plans to use Use Restraint Collection to Raise Public Awareness of Human Rights Violations

Escape Artist and restraint collector/historian Steve Santini is using rare and diverse historical restraints from his personal collection to raise public awareness of human rights violations such as false imprisonment and torture .

Santini, named “The World’s Most Extreme Escape Artist” by the legendary Ripley’s Believe it or Not! , plans to lock up over 100 volunteers with a myriad assortment of diverse and historical restraints from his personal collection to make the world’s longest continuous chain of restrained humans.

While he admits that as a professional escape artist he himself has escaped from many such devices, Santini is quick to point out that this public display is focused on drawing attention to the fact that around the globe there are countless numbers of people falsely imprisoned and tortured every day.

Many of the devices Santini will use to connect people in a continuous chain have direct links to this sad reality. In fact, all are authentic restraints spanning over 500 years of human history and all have been used for actual human restraint or confinement at some time in the past. Included are; Authentic Medieval manacles and instruments of torture, leg shackles and handcuffs used during the reign of the Apartheid regime in South Africa, hand irons used by the dreaded Gestapo in WW 2, leg fetters used in the slavery trade, high security leg irons and cuffs used at “Super Max” prisons throughout the world, and even straitjackets and leather limb binders used to confine psychiatric patients.

Santini hopes that the restraining of the volunteers as well as the symbolic releasing of them at the conclusion of the lock down will call attention to the fact that humankind needs to work together to break the bonds of oppression and stand as one to fight injustice and human rights abuses worldwide.