The fight for human rights: Amnesty and the Observer

The spark that ignited a human rights revolution, and how you can take action now

Gemma Kappala-Ramsamy

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Amnesty International, the human-rights campaigning organisation founded after the English lawyer Peter Benenson wrote an impassioned article in the Observer, entitled "The Forgotten Prisoners", highlighting the plight of people around the world who had been jailed for peacefully expressing their views.

Published in 1961, it provoked a flood of responses from Observer readers. Within weeks Benenson's 'Appeal for Amnesty' had marshalled groups in several countries to examine human rights abuses.

Since then, Amnesty has secured the release of thousands of prisoners of conscience. Four shared their stories in the Observer earlier this year - to read more, click here. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/03/amnesty-political-prisoners) In celebration of five decades of courageous and tireless campaigning by Amnesty International, the Observer and the Guardian have started a new online series. Every month we will publish news of an individual or group of people whose lives and liberty are imminently threatened.

Amnesty issues this information, called an "urgent action", to encourage people around the world to send letters and emails to government leaders with the power to intervene, or to sign petitions calling for change. It typically does this when it finds evidence that people have been imprisoned for exercising the right to protest, denied a fair trial in court, forcibly evicted from their homes or been discriminated against because of their sex, race or ethnicity, in the hope of stopping such human-rights abuses.


(2011-5-29/guardian)