The man of rights

This candle does not burn for us, but for all those people who we were unable to save from prison, who were killed, tortured, kidnapped, or "disappeared".
Peter Solomon Benenson (1921-2005), English lawyer, founder of Amnesty International.

Benenson became a champion of human rights after reading the seven-year prison sentences of two Portuguese students guilty of having toasted freedom. Born in London to a wealthy Jewish family, already during his studies at Eton and Oxford he was interested in the fate of the less fortunate, such as Jewish refugee children and war orphans in Spain. As a lawyer he goes to Spain to defend trade unionists accused by the fascist regime, managing to get them acquitted. He founded the Justice group, which offered legal assistance to unsecured people, and in 1961 he denounced the condition of prisoners of conscience with an article in the Observer, The forgotten prisoners,.
International public opinion got involved and from then on Benenson's work unfolded through various other initiatives in the name of human rights. Prisoners of conscience enters common use, as does the Amnesty logo: a candle wrapped in barbed wire, a symbol of hope and freedom. The fight continues, because «Only when the last prisoner of conscience is freed, when the last torture chamber is closed, will our work be finished».


Annamaria Gobbato
NP February 2024