History - First Prisoner released
Peter Benenson's 1961 newspaper article - launching Amnesty International - focused on eight prisoners of conscience from around the world: a Greek trade unionist, an Angolan poet, a Romanian philosopher, a minister and civil rights leader in the U.S., a Spanish lawyer, a social activist from South Africa, and two religious leaders and dissidents in Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
The selection was deliberately wide-ranging, covering the whole world and most political systems. From the start, Amnesty organizers set out - amidst a climate of political partisanship - to be politically impartial.
First and foremost, Amnesty's work would be based on universal human rights, regardless of who a person was, where they lived, or the government responsible for the violation.
The method of organizing action was simple. Put concerned members of the public in touch with others who live nearby (this was before email and the Internet) and encourage them to work together. Ask each group of these Amnesty volunteers to "adopt" a prisoner and then start pestering the life out of the government responsible until the prisoner was free.
One of the first prisoners to be released was Josef Beran, the archbishop of Prague. When Beran delivered a defiant sermon against the abuses of the Czechoslovakian authorities, he was carted away to prison by the police and not heard from for two years.
Amnesty members sent appeals to the Czech authorities, and Amnesty representatives tried to meet directly with government officials. Nothing seemed to change, so Amnesty stepped up its campaign with more letters, telegrams and embassy visits.
Then suddenly, eighteen months later, the prison gates opened. Beran and four other bishops were freed.
As is often the case, there is no way of knowing the exact impact of Amnesty's campaigns. But Beran himself was sure. He made a point of thanking Amnesty members for helping to gain his freedom - and two years later he went to London to light an Amnesty candle.