Better to light a candle, than to curse the darkness

Peter Benenson, who founded Amnesty International, has died at 83. He started the group when he was outraged after two men in Lisbon were arrested and imprisoned for drinking a toast to liberty, in 1961.

‘Open your newspaper any day of the week and you will find a report from somewhere in the world of someone being imprisoned, tortured or executed because his opinions or religion are unacceptable to his government. The newspaper reader feels a sickening sense of impotence. Yet if these feelings of disgust all over the world could be united into common action, something effective could be done.’

‘When I first lit the Amnesty candle, I had in mind the old Chinese proverb: Better light a candle than curse the darkness,‘ Benenson said.

I started volunteering for Amnesty International in high school. The concept seems almost too simple–the idea that people around the world writing letters on behalf of tortured people could make a difference. I believe it does.

In high school, we wrote to express concern for the treatment of an imprisoned Nelson Mandela and his wife Winnie. Only a few years later, he’d be running South Africa.

Funny how fast things some things change.

Sad how most things don’t. Or haven’t yet.

Countries and territories which retain the death penalty for ordinary crimes:

AFGHANISTAN, ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA, BAHAMAS, BAHRAIN, BANGLADESH, BARBADOS, BELARUS, BELIZE, BOTSWANA, BURUNDI, CAMEROON, CHAD, CHINA, COMOROS, CONGO (Democratic Republic), CUBA, DOMINICA, EGYPT, EQUATORIAL GUINEA, ERITREA, ETHIOPIA, GABON, GHANA, GUATEMALA, GUINEA, GUYANA, INDIA, INDONESIA, IRAN, IRAQ, JAMAICA, JAPAN, JORDAN, KAZAKSTAN, KOREA (North), KOREA (South), KUWAIT, KYRGYZSTAN, LAOS, LEBANON, LESOTHO, LIBERIA, LIBYA, MALAWI, MALAYSIA, MONGOLIA, MOROCCO, MYANMAR, NIGERIA, OMAN, PAKISTAN, PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY, PHILIPPINES, QATAR, RWANDA, SAINT CHRISTOPHER & NEVIS, SAINT LUCIA, SAINT VINCENT & GRENADINES, SAUDI ARABIA, SIERRA LEONE, SINGAPORE, SOMALIA, SUDAN, SWAZILAND, SYRIA, TAIWAN, TAJIKISTAN, TANZANIA, THAILAND, TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO, UGANDA, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES,

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

UZBEKISTAN, VIET NAM, YEMEN, ZAMBIA, ZIMBABWE

(I apologize for the capitals, but I wasn’t about to try and re-type that.)

Many countries who we in the US might consider to have less-than-stellar human rights records don’t routinely execute their own citizens. Some of them appear in this list.

Japan and the US are the only “Group of Eight” major industrialized nations to still use the death penalty.

I think I was always instinctively against the Death Penalty, but Amnesty International taught me lots of practical reasons for being against it–the kinds of reasons which help convince people who do not reject it on principle. Like the fact that in the US, it costs more than life imprisonment. Or the fact that there’s no proof the death penalty deters crime more than other punishments do. And, as Amnesty says, “The death penalty is discriminatory and is often used disproportionately against the poor, minorities and members of racial, ethnic and religious communities. It is imposed and carried out arbitrarily.” In the U.S. we see how the racial imbalance–as well as a socio-economic imbalance–plays itself out in this arena.

But for me, it always comes back to, “it’s just wrong.”

One after another, British Prime Ministers of the last 40 years offered Peter Benenson a knighthood. Each time, he’d write back to them, detailing the human rights abuses Amnesty was currently fighting in the UK, and asking them–if they wanted to honor his work–to make things right. He did good work.

As the tribute on the Amnesty home page states,

In an age of self-aggrandisement, his modesty was almost hard to fathom. He never went forward to receive the numerous accolades showered upon Amnesty, known universally by its candle in barbed wire. His mind was always fixed on what had not been accomplished and the countless victims still to be rescued.

“The candle burns not for us,” he declared, “but for all those whom we failed to rescue from prison, who were shot on the way to prison, who were tortured, who were kidnapped, who ‘disappeared’. That is what the candle is for.”