Amnesty International on Friday celebrates 60 years since its foundation by lawyer Peter Benenson back in 1961. Over the past six decades, the rights organisation has worked to empower people to take…
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Some of those letters take the form of ‘Write for Rights’ cards sent to imprisoned human rights defenders every year in December: more than 6.5 million such actions were taken in 2019. In St Albans that year a stall in the Abbey enabled them to spread the message more widely.
St Albans Cathedral stall candles from Amnesty.
- Credit: St Albans Amnesty
A central plank of Amnesty’s activity has always been writing letters to those in authority over Prisoners of Conscience. In the early, pre digital , pre-‘clickactivist’ days life was rather different: when an Urgent Action needed to be taken on behalf of those at imminent risk of being tortured or killed handwritten drafts would be circulated to members to revise and send.
28 May 2021, 01:01 UTC
Since it was founded in 1961, Amnesty International has been empowering people like you to take action for a better world. This is a snapshot of what you have made possible.
“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.”