Subject: Founder of Amnesty International dies Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2005 08:27:30 -0600 Message-ID: <B14120EE5C432443B21102F7925DAD02014205AE@COKE.uwec.edu> From: "Grossman, Zoltan C." <GROSSMZC@uwec.edu>
The Man Who Fought for the Forgotten:
PETER BENENSON, 1921-2005
Founder of Amnesty International
By Antony Barnett
Observer/UK, Sunday, February 27, 2005
http://observer.guardian.co.uk
Distributed by Common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0227-21.htm
There are not many newspaper articles that can
genuinely claim to have changed the world for the
better. But on Sunday, 28 May 1961, The Observer
published a campaigning piece on the front of its
Weekend Review section.
The article was entitled 'The Forgotten Prisoners' and
it was by Peter Benenson, an Eton-educated
London lawyer.
Benenson had been angered after learning about two
Portuguese students who had been arrested and
imprisoned for seven years after drinking a toast to
liberty in a Lisbon cafe during the Salazar dictatorship.
As Benenson later said: 'That so enraged me that I
walked up the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields, out of
the Underground, and went in to see what could really
be done effectively to mobilise world opinion.'
His solution seemed simple: to bombard the Portuguese
regime with written protests. As Martin Ennals, a
future Amnesty secretary-general observed later, it was
'an amazing contention that prisoners of conscience
could be released by writing letters to governments'.
But rather than have just one campaign for one country,
why not draw public attention to the plight of
political and religious prisoners throughout the world?
This was the basis of his Observer article, which took
the shape of a series of letters published as an
'Appeal for Amnesty'.
His article began: 'Open your newspaper - any day of
the week - and you will find a report from somewhere in
the world of someone being imprisoned, tortured or
executed because his opinions or religion are
unacceptable to his government. The newspaper reader
feels a sickening sense of impotence. Yet if these
feelings of disgust all over the world could be united
into common action, something effective could be done.'
He could not have predicted how right he has proved to
be. Benenson had intended his campaign to run for a
year, but the response to his article was overwhelming.
The term 'prisoner of conscience', which he coined,
soon became common currency and the movement's logo, a
candle surrounded by barbed wire, became a worldwide
symbol of hope.
Amnesty's campaigns have saved countless prisoners from
torture or death. From South Africa, Chile and Uganda
to Iraq, Burma and China, Amnesty's work has helped
secure the release of political prisoners and
highlighted human rights violations. Closer to home
Amnesty has also been critical of policies of the
former prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, and more
recently Tony Blair's anti-terrorist legislation.
Irene Khan, its present secretary general, said
yesterday: 'His vision gave birth to human rights
activism. Peter Benenson's life was a courageous
testament to his visionary commitment to fight
injustice around the world. He brought light into the
darkness of prisons, the horror of torture chambers and
tragedy of death camps around the world.
'This was a man whose conscience shone in a cruel and
terrifying world, who believed in the power of ordinary
people to bring about extraordinary change and, by
creating Amnesty International, he gave each of us the
opportunity to make a difference.'
The Leader of the House of Commons, Peter Hain, a
long-time campaigner against the former apartheid
regime in South Africa, led the political tributes last night.
'He lit a torch for human rights which Amnesty
International has kept burning across the world in
being constantly vigilant about abuses,' Hain said.
In Amnesty's first few years Benenson's energy was
vital to its success. He provided much of its funding
and was involved in all aspects of the organisation.
'At that time we were still putting our toes in the
water and learning as we went on,' he later said.
'We tried every technique of publicity and we were very
grateful for the widespread help of journalists and
television crews throughout the world who not only sent
us information about the names of prisoners but also,
whenever they could, gave space to stories about
prisoners.'
Amnesty's membership is now more than a million, with
supporters in more than 160 countries and territories.
It has dealt with the cases of 47,000 prisoners of
conscience and other victims of human rights violation.
More than 45,000 of these are now closed. In 1977
Amnesty International was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
for its tireless fight against injustice.
Former prisoner of conscience Julio de Pena Valdez, a
trade union leader in the Dominican Republic, has
spoken of the impact of an Amnesty letter-writing
campaign. 'When the 200 letters came, the guards gave
me back my clothes. Then the next 200 letters came and
the prison director came to see me. When the next pile
of letters arrived, the director got in touch with his
superior. The letters kept coming and coming - 3,000 of
them. The president was informed.
'The letters still kept arriving and the president
called the prison and told them to let me go.'
Benenson was born on 31 July 1921, the grandson of the
Russian-Jewish banker Grigori Benenson. He later
converted to Catholicism. He was tutored privately by
WH Auden, then went to Eton and Oxford, where he
studied history.
His flair for controversy emerged early, when his
complaint to the headmaster of Eton about the poor
quality of the school's food prompted a letter to his
mother warning of her son's 'revolutionary tendencies.
At age 16, he launched his first campaign: to get
school support, during the Spanish Civil War, for the
newly-formed Spanish Relief Committee which was helping
Republican war orphans. He himself 'adopted' one of the
babies, helping to pay for its support.
His concern about political imprisonment and
mistreatment was inspired by Arthur Koestler's Spanish
Testament, which described the horrors of imprisonment
and threatened execution by the Fascists. It was this
concern that led to his next campaign - the plight of
Jews who had fled from Hitler's Germany. Despite some
opposition, he succeeded in getting his school friends
and their families to raise #4,000 to bring two young
German Jews to Britain.
After leaving Eton, he helped his politically committed
mother find homes in various countries for refugee
children who arrived in London.
The Trades Union Congress sent him to Spain as its
observer at the trials of trade unionists in the early
Fifties. He was appalled by what he saw in the
courtrooms and in the prisons. In one instance he was
so outraged by the proceedings that he drew up a list
of complaints with which he confronted the trial judge
over dinner. The trial ended with acquittals, a rarity
in fascist Spain.
Benenson, who had been ill for some time, died on
Friday evening at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford.
Lighting a candle in St Martin-in-the Fields church to
mark the twentieth anniversary of Amnesty, he said: 'I
have lit this candle, in the words of Shakespeare,
'against oblivion' - so that the forgotten prisoners
should always be remembered. We work in Amnesty against
oblivion.'