Jane and Amnesty International Amnesty International or AI as it's called, was founded in 1961 by Peter Benenson, a Catholic lawyer of Jewish descent. Benenson set it up when he heard about two Portuguese students living in Portugal, which was then ruled by a brutal dictator called Salazar. The two students were having a drink and they raised their glasses and said in effect, "Let's make a toast to freedom." Just for doing that they were thrown into prison for seven years. Benenson, who was living then in London England, heard about this. He was outraged. He gathered together several people. They set up Amnesty International to free persons who were in prisons around the world. These persons were prisoners of conscience who had been locked away for struggling for basic human rights, like the right to protest for example. And these prisoners waged their struggles non-violently. AI would try to free these people by writing letters to their governments. By 2013 AI has grown into a worldwide organization. "It has many enemies," writes Jonathan Power in his book on Amnesty called 'Like Water On Stone', "and lots of friends. Its membership, now more than a million world-wide is still increasing." Power points out tha AI's impact has been huge. And it has rescued thousands of political prisoners from jails and torture. So far so good. But then I met Jane in a local church about twenty years ago. "I set up a local chapter of Amensty," Jane told me, which was true. Jane had spent many years trying to free political prisoners and sometimes she'd succeeded. But Jane was quite conservative. She loathed feminists. "They're all disturbed," she said. She didn't like environmentalists either, and she bristled when I told her how I admired a local ecologist.She also thought that no Canadian government should spend money on teaching immigrants to speak or write English. Also she praised the austerity program that's ravaging Greece. "The Greeks must pay their debts," she said. "If people lose their jobs and schools are shut down, that's too bad. But debts must be paid." Jane's work in Amnesty International focused on China. "it's the one country that I am doing all I can do to change," she said. Jane rarely put down the U.S. of A., Britain or Canada. "They are democracies," she said, "and democracies are too precious to criticize." Now Amnesty has many types of members. But the longer I knew Jane, who was after all my only Amnesty contact, the more I kept thinking how conservative Amnesty was. "It's just run by a group of west side right wingers," I told someone who once asked me about it. But then Jane and I stopped being friends. I didn't like her politics and she didn't like mine. Then one day I came across Jonathan Power's book on AI. I started to read it and was astounded to find out that Amnesty criticized many countries, including China. But it also had harsh words for the U.S. of A. and many other democratically-ruled places including Britain. Progressive people joined Amnesty and worked for it. So did some conservatives. In short, not all AI people were like Jane. And some people in Amnesty were feminists. At last, I realize how diverse AI people are. They don't all share Jane's politics and I'm sure glad they don't. By DAVE JAFFE
↧
