Forty years on, Amnesty International has secured many victories. Its files are full of letters from former prisoners of conscience or torture victims thanking the organisation for making a difference. Torture is now banned by international agreement. Every year more countries reject the death penalty. The world will soon have an International Criminal Court that will be able to ensure that those accused of the worst crimes in the world will face justice. The Court's very existence will deter some crimes. But the challenges are still great. Torture is banned but in two-thirds of the world's countries it is still being committed in secret. Too many governments still allow wrongful imprisonment, murder or "disappearance" to be carried out by their officials with impunity. Those who today still feel a sense of impotence can do something: they can support Amnesty International. They can help it to stand up for freedom and justice.
Peter BenensonRelated topics
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I shut my eyes and clenched my hands behind me and saw, in lightning flashes, myself doing ferocious things, like pushing him down an endless flight of stairs, or dropping him without warning into a bottomless well, or stringing him up to a stout beam and leaving him to dangle, or - or other things of the sort; no guns, no knives, no baseball bats, nothing to cause outright bloodshed, just silent, grim, sudden murder by hand was my intention. All this was far beyond my bodily powers of course, and I like to believe beyond my criminal powers too. For I woke when we struck the searing hot light of the August morning as if I had come out of a nightmare, horrified at my own thoughts and feeling as if I had got some incurable wound to my very humanity - as indeed I had. However inflicted, a wound there was, with painful scar tissue, left upon my living self by that appalling event. My conscience stirs as if, in my impulse to do violence to my enemy, I had assisted at his crime.
Katherine Anne Porter
Most American officials viewed Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic as the Bosnia leader with the broadest vision - an eloquent advocate of a multiethnic state. But his power struggles with Izetbegović and Sacirbey and other members of the Bosnian government often isolated him. His collegues complained that he was difficult to work with. He carried a serious additional burden: Tuđman and Milošević distrusted him. Nevertheless, Silajzic was one of the two msot popular Muslim politicians in Bosnia, along with Izetbegović. My own feelings about Silajdzic shifted frequently. There was something touching about his intensity and energy, and his constant desire to improve himself intellectually. Although always busy, he seemed alone - his wife and son lived in Turkey. Silajdzic was the only Bosnian official who seemed genuinely to care about economic reconstruction of his ravaged land. His unpredictable moods worried us, but his support would be essential for any peace agreement.
Richard Holbrooke
The effort necessary to remain uncorrupted in an environment where fear is an integral part of everyday existence is not immediately apparent to those fortunate enough to live in states governed by the rule of law. Just laws do not merely prevent corruption by meting out impartial punishment to offenders. They also help to create a society in which people can fulfil the basic requirements necessary for the preservation of human dignity without recourse to corrupt practices. Where there are no such laws, the burden of upholding the principles of justice and common decency falls on the ordinary people. It is the cumulative effect on their sustained effort and steady endurance which will change a nation where reason and conscience are warped by fear into one where legal rules exist to promote man's desire for harmony and justice while restraining the less desirable destructive traits in his nature.
Aung San Suu Kyi
They show as little Reason as Conscience who put the matter by with saying-"Men, in some cases, are lawfully made Slaves, and why may not these?" So men, in some cases, are lawfully put to death, deprived of their goods, without their consent; may any man, therefore, be treated so, without any conviction of desert? Nor is this plea mended by adding-"They are set forth to us as slaves, and we buy them without farther inquiry, let the sellers see to it." Such men may as well join with a known band of robbers, buy their ill-got goods, and help on the trade; ignorance is no more pleadable in one case than the other; the sellers plainly own how they obtain them. But none can lawfully buy without evidence that they are not concurring with Men-Stealers; and as the true owner has a right to reclaim his goods that were stolen, and sold; so the slave, who is proper owner of his freedom, has a right to reclaim it, however often sold.
Thomas Paine
We will not be picking up axes and breaking into people's homes. But we will not remain silent either. Moderation in the face of evil is not what our age needs. As Ronald Reagan declared, "The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted." We must uncap our pens; we must speak words of truth. We are facing a determined enemy who is striving through all means to destroy the West and snuff out our traditions of free thought, free speech, and freedom of religion. Make no mistake: if we fail, we will be enslaved. We must not let the violent fanatics dictate what we draw, what we say, and what we read. We must rebel against their suffocating rules and thuggish demands at every turn. You can help the fight just by reading this book, which explains the many ways in which Islam has marked for death not just me, but all of Western civilization. We must, in the words of Revolutionary War veteran General John Stark, "Live free or die."
Geert Wilders