May 28: Amnesty International

Peter Benenson (Peter James Henry Solomon) founded Amnesty International fifty years ago (1961) on this date. Benenson was a London-born Jewish attorney who had been active in Spanish Civil War relief and other causes since his teenage years. (He became a convert to Catholicism in 1958.) On May 28, 1961 he wrote an article in the London Observer protesting the imprisonment of two Portuguese students by the Salazar regime for the crime of lifting their wine glasses in a toast to freedom. Benenson’s article asked readers to write letters of support for the students, and two months later, Amnesty International was founded in Luxembourg by Benenon and six others to coordinate such letter-writing campaigns — which were taking place in more than a dozen countries.

“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.” —Peter Benenson