Every year, thousands of people around the world are
imprisoned and killed for their beliefs. They stand up to the cruel treatment of their governments or believe differently and in doing so get their human rights taken away. People are beaten, imprisoned, kicked, whipped and killed, just because they do not see things the same way that their government does. They need someone on the outside to stand up and go against their governments and Amnesty International does just that. They want to see that everyone has the same rights, and will not give up until they reach this goal. The intent of this paper is to describe Amnesty International and its stand on human rights. A British lawyer named Peter Benenson started Amnesty International in 1961. He was reading a newspaper when a small item grabbed his attention. In the Portuguese city of Lisbon, two citizens were arrested for toasting to "freedom" and sentenced to seven years in jail. He wanted to take a stand, to help out these men, but he knew that he could not change the mind of the government alone. So, on May 28, 1961, he wrote an article in the London Observer, entitled "The Forgotten Prisoners," pleading for help to ensure human rights. He wanted everyone who was detained for his or her beliefs or origins, and had not used or advocated violence, to be set free. More than a thousand people offered to help with his idea, and in the first year they had taken up 210 cases in four countries (Ostrowski). Amnesty International has the same views in mind today that Mr. Benenson had back in 1961. They are still trying to help people who are detained unfairly. They base their work on the "Statute of Amnesty International," which describes what they will stand up against and what they will do in each situation. The opening point in the "Statute of Amnesty International" is: "The object of Amnesty International is to contribute to the observance throughout the world of human rights as set out in the 'Universal Declaration of Human Rights'" ("Statute"). The “Universal Declaration of Human Rights" is all of the rights given to all people around the world. It lists everything that one is entitled to, and what they can do that would wave those rights. Some of these rights are the right to life, liberty, and security of person and the right not to be tortured. Amnesty International stands against all death penalties, no matter what the conviction, and the death penalty is used in over one hundred different countries. If anyone is mistreated because of their beliefs, color, ethnic origin, language or religion, Amnesty International will step in and stand up for him or her. Their views are all based on their statute, and these same views allowed them to get the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 (“What”).. Amnesty International is now in its twenty-seventh year, and since 1961, they have handled over 42,000 cases (Ostrowski). There are over 1,100,000 members, subscribers and regular donors in over one hundred countries and 4,287 different local groups around the world. These totals do not include all of the different schools, universities, professional and other groups that are not regularly registered internationally. The main center, or International Secretariat, is in London, and has over three hundred permanent workers and ninety-five volunteers from around the world, with Pierre Sane being the Secretary General of Amnesty. Amnesty International is run democratically by an International Council, elected from its fifty-four different sections ("Facts"). They rely strictly on the contributions from their members and other people who are willing to help with their cause to pay for their work. Even without the help from governments, they make enough money to run. In 1992, their budget for the headquarters was at twenty-four million dollars and for all over the world they were expecting to reach three times that (Ostrowski). Amnesty International’s Research Department collects information about human rights violations from many different sources, like magazines, journals, newspapers, transcripts, and other written sources. They also can get information about human rights violations from prisoners, prisoner’s families, refugee centers, and other people who have first hand experience ("What"). Even though Amnesty International is impartial to both the beliefs of the government or the victims, members are not to act on cases within their own country. Amnesty International is now pushing to get rights for more groups. One of these groups is the homosexuals. The argument that homosexuals are "prisoners of conscience" was first brought up by the Danish delegation in 1974, but is was not for five years that Amnesty International finally officially recognized that being imprisoned for one’s sexuality was violating that person’s human rights. The first chapter of Amnesty International Members for Lesbian and Gay Concerns (AIMLGC) was formed by a group of United States members in 1990. In some countries, the battle between homosexuals and the governments can become fierce. Mark Ungar, a Steering Committee member of AIMLGC, estimate’s: "an absolute minimum of three hundred people have been executed since 1990 in Iran alone for violation of laws prohibiting homosexuality" (Pool). I think that this is a group that should have been added to the list a long time ago. They are ridiculed all over the world, and there is no need to do what is being done to them. At its International Council Meeting in December, held in South Africa, they approved this, and now homosexuals are on the list. Amnesty International is also pushing to get the Chinese government to start following the human rights laws. China has many different policies that go against the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” including the “One Child Policy”, the use of the death penalty, and administrative detention. In 1996 alone, the Chinese executed at least 4,367 people. That is more than all of the rest of the world combined. A human rights report on China, taken by the US State Department, state’s: “all public dissent against the party and the government was effectively silenced by intimidation, exile, the imposition of prison terms, administrative detention or house arrest. No dissidents were known to be active at the year’s end” (Kumar). Again, I think that this is going to far. All people can believe whatever they want, and the government should not mind, as long as those people are being peaceful and not harming anyone. Unfair trials, torture and ill treatment, and religious persecution are also present in China. In one instance, Wang Dan, a student leader during the Pro-democracy protests in 1989, was arrested for conspiring to overthrow the government. The trial was without any observers, and no witnesses for the defense were called up. There also was evidence that the verdict was decided in advance, and when Mr. Dan tried to appeal, it was turned down in ten minutes. There are many other countries that Amnesty International is trying to help, but China is the most dramatic example (Kumar). Amnesty International is constantly working to help everyone get his or her human rights enforced, and they will not stop until everyone gets this. There are hundreds of other human rights groups, all who have worked wonders for the people who are violated, but Amnesty is the most well known and the biggest. They have already helped thousands of people, and will no doubt help thousands more in the years to come.=================================================================
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