AB Newsletter (28th May)

[Greenbhoy]

This article appeared:

In 1961, during the despotic regime of prime minister Ant�nio de Oliveira Salazar, two students were jailed in Portugal for seven years. Their crime: raising a toast to freedom in a public restaurant.

When English lawyer Peter Benenson read of their plight, he was outraged. He expressed his anger in a letter to The Observer, which published Benenson's piece on 28 May under the headline The Forgotten Prisoners.

The letter called for the release of all people imprisoned for the peaceful expression of their beliefs, and asked the newspaper's readers to write letters in support of the Portuguese students.

To co-ordinate such letter writing campaigns, Amnesty International was founded. It immediately received overwhelming support, and by the middle of 1962 the organisation had groups working or forming in 24 countries across six continents. Later the same year, the candle-and-barbed-wire logo was designed by member Diana Redhouse.

Today, Amnesty International - which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 - has around 7,500 groups operating in more than 160 countries and territories, with about one million members fighting for the victims of human rights violations.

Were the students ever released as the article doesn't tell us?

[RevShirls]

According to the following article, one of the prisoners was released within 18 months of Benenson's article. I'm not sure about the other one.

http://www.amnesty.ca/about/history/