Amnesty hero hailed as his battles go on

[struggle4progress]

Antony Barnett
Sunday July 10, 2005
The Observer

Amnesty International has followed a moving memorial service for its late founder - held amid the wailing of sirens just hours after last week's bomb attacks in central London - by launching a new campaign to secure the release of prisoners of conscience.

It is highlighting the cases of six prisoners in particular, in Indonesia, China, Burma and South America. The campaign is being announced through the pages of The Observer - the paper in which Eton-educated lawyer Peter Benenson wrote an impassioned article in May 1961 that led to his founding of Amnesty. His original article also highlighted six cases. <snip>

Among the cases being highlighted in Amnesty's new campaign is that of a Burmese man sentenced to 59 years in prison for organising a peaceful student demonstration in 1998, as well as two Indonesians jailed and allegedly beaten by police for burning photographs of the country's President and Vice-President during a demonstration.

Benenson, who died in February at the age of 84, decided to launch Amnesty after receiving a huge response to his 1961 Observer article, which began with the words: '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.' <snip>

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1525301,00.html