Hafez Ibrahim, at the time aged 16, was attending a wedding in his hometown of Ta’izz in Yemen. Sometime during the night, celebrations boiled over. A struggle broke out, a gun went off and someone was killed. A bewildered Hafez was later sentenced to death for the killing. Somehow he managed to get hold of a mobile phone while in prison, sending a desperate message to Amnesty International activist Lamri Chirouf. The text read: “Brother Lamri, they are going to execute us. Please get in touch.”
“We were devastated by this news and immediately sent appeals to the Yemeni President and authorities,” said Lamri. “We also mobilised our membership by issuing an Urgent Action on behalf of Hafez.”
Amnesty International acted, and Hafez was freed.
Now in his third year at Sana’a University studying law, Hafez is determined to make the most of his reprieve. “I owe my life to Amnesty International,” he said. “Now I am dedicating that life to campaigning against the death penalty and raising awareness about human rights.”
Hafez’s story, among many others, would not have been told were it not for the actions of an English lawyer 50 years ago.
In Portugal in 1961, at the height of the Salazar dictatorship, two students were imprisoned simply for raising a toast to freedom in a Lisbon café. Peter Benenson could not contain his outrage, sending a letter first published in The Observer newspaper. This was how Amnesty International began.
Benenson conceived a global campaign for the students’ release and the freedom of others like them, an “Appeal for Amnesty”. Thousands of men and women were held on both sides of the Iron Curtain, not for any crime but for believing in something their government disagreed with. Benenson was not willing to stand idly by.
The response to the call to action was staggering. Within months his idea had evolved into a movement. Amnesty International sections appeared around the world, including in Ireland. Former Irish foreign minister Seán McBride would go on to be the organisation’s first secretary-general.
Today Amnesty International, an organisation that began with a letter to a newspaper, has 3.2 million supporters in 150 countries around the world. Over the past five decades we have helped to free thousands of prisoners of conscience around the world, and to abolish the death penalty in 123 countries.
We’ve helped to protect human rights activists who spend every day of their lives in danger and we’ve given a voice to the victims of the powerful. We’ve pursued war criminals and human rights abusers, no matter how powerful they were or how long it took, and ensured they faced justice.
Ordinary people have done this. Members of Amnesty International meeting in a friend’s house once a month or getting petitions signed on the town’s main street, tirelessly writing letters and making phone calls on behalf of people they will never meet.
Peter Benenson believed that ordinary people can stand up and change the world, but change only happens when it is demanded. In 50 years much has improved, but much has not; many people still live in appalling conditions, under dictatorships, and are imprisoned solely for their beliefs.
In 1961 Benenson started Amnesty International by writing: “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. There are several million such people in prison … and their numbers are growing.
“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.”
Half a century later, his words echo as loudly now as they did then.
Colm O'Gorman is executive director of Amnesty International Ireland.
