THE IRISH BRANCH of Amnesty International celebrated the organisation’s 50th anniversary at a concert in Dublin on 10 December.
Renowned musicians Eleanor McEvoy, Brian Kennedy, Gavin Friday and Kate Tempest performed at the free event alongside the Gort Community College Choir.
Colm O’Gorman, executive director of Amnesty International in Ireland, commented: “This event is a celebration, but also an opportunity to renew our determination to keep fighting for women and men imprisoned simply for what they say or think, to keep working for human rights, until they are all free.”
Amnesty International was founded on 28 May 1961 when lawyer Peter Benenson wrote an article in British newspaper The Observer calling for a campaign he termed the ‘Appeal for Amnesty’.
Benenson was outraged by what he called the “forgotten prisoners” held on both sides of the Iron Curtain and suggested that people write letters on their behalf.
By the end of the 1960s, more than 2,000 people had been released out of the 4,000 cases adopted by Amnesty.
Amnesty took as its symbol a candle enclosed in barbed wire, and the first Amnesty candle was lit on 10 December 1961.
In Ireland, a meeting of human rights activists took place in the Clarence Hotel in Dublin on 6 June 1961. This group sent delegates to a meeting in Luxembourg on 23 July, where Ireland was one of six countries represented, and this meeting agreed to formally establish Amnesty as a permanent organisation.
Amnesty International’s first chairperson was Irish politician Seán MacBride and the Irish section was officially established on 29 May 1962.
Since 1961 Amnesty International has carried out more than 3,341 missions to investigate human rights abuses. It was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 and published its first report on Ireland in that same year, looking at the abuse of republican prisoners by some gardaí.
