Our Daily Dead

LA Times
Peter Benenson, the British lawyer who founded the human rights organization Amnesty International with his stated goal “to condemn persecution regardless of where it occurs or what are the ideas suppressed,” has died. He was 83.

Benenson died Friday night at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England, of pneumonia, Amnesty International USA spokesperson Wende Gozan said Saturday. Benenson had been in ill health for several years.

With a social conscience developed in early childhood, he laid the foundation for Amnesty International in 1961 after becoming incensed over an article he read about the imprisonment of two students in Portugal. The youths were sentenced to seven years after their arrest at a Lisbon cafe for drinking a toast to liberation from then-dictator Antonio Salazar.

Benenson set off for the Portuguese Embassy in London to protest, but suddenly decided to get off the subway at Trafalgar Square and went inside the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields to think.

“I went in to see what could really be done effectively, to mobilize world opinion,” he told his friend and former Amnesty International spokesman Richard Reoch, according to a statement issued Saturday by Reoch. “It was necessary to think of a larger group which would harness the enthusiasm of people all over the world who were anxious to see a wider respect for human rights.”

Peter Benenson: Taking a Stand Against Injustice Amnesty International (People Who Have Helped the World)
Torture in the Eighties (Amnesty International Report)

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