“Amnesty International is a global movement of more than 3 million supporters, members and activists in over 150 countries and territories who campaign to end grave abuses of human rights.”
What is your right as a human? Do you believe that you are entitled to fair trial, as well as the right to live? Hundreds of people worldwide are suffering from the repression of their governments and being sentenced to capital punishment. Amnesty International seeks to provide fundamental rights to each human being. It seeks to abolish the death penalty, the disregard of the sole most irrefutable of a human’s rights.
“International human rights law lays down obligations of Governments to act in certain ways or to refrain from certain acts, in order to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms of individuals or groups.”
Do you believe that stripping someone of the most basic aspect of humanity, being alive, is a just promotion of human rights?
May 28, 1961, a British lawyer named Peter Benenson wrote an article for The Observer called “The Forgotten Prisoners” after learning that two Portuguese students from Coimbra had been imprisoned for raising a toast to freedom. This article went on to be printed internationally, triggering a mass response from people seeking to scrutinize the disregard for human rights in countries such as Portugal at the time and demanding basic privileges for every person.
“Article 19.—
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression: this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
The death penalty is fine as long as the majority of the public supports it. Slavery, racial segregation, lynching, even rape have all been supported in the past, yet these acts are today seen as gross violations of human rights. Hundreds of prisoners are executed after unfair trials. However, these tragedies can be prevented by raising awareness. Last year, this school helped save the life of Hakamada Iwao, giving him a retrial for his unfair trial conducted 45 years ago. He is recorded to have been imprisoned on death-row for the longest time in the world.
The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty established the 10th of October as the date for The World Day Against the Death Penalty. Join Amnesty International in the abolition of the death penalty, come sign the petition.