Amnesty International

From TinWiki.org

Amnesty International Logo.

Amnesty International is a non-profit, non-governmental organization whose stated purpose is the elimination of abuse and preserving human rights. Founded in the United Kingdom in 1961, AI draws its attention to human rights abuses and campaigns for compliance with international standards. The way AI works is to mobilize public opinion and then with it, exert pressure on the people that are abusing others in one way or another. AI was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 for its battle against torture, and again in 1978 for its fight to preserve human rights.

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History

A London lawyer named Peter Benenson founded Amnesty International in July 1961. His story about AI's origin has come under scrutiny. According to Benenson, he was traveling on the London Underground on November 19th in 1960, reading a newspaper. He read about two Portuguese students who had been imprisoned for having drunk a toast to liberty. In "The Forgotten Prisoners", a newspaper article that he WROTE, he described his reaction as follows: "Open your newspaper any day of the week and you will find a story from somewhere of someone being imprisoned, tortured or executed because his opinions are unacceptable to his government..., the newspaper reader feels a sickening sense of impotence. Yet if these feelings of disgust could be united into common action, something effective could be done." So after he sent his letter to a newspaper it was released and it mentioned the branches in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So after this Peter and some friends decided to make AI.

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