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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-05-18 Daily Xml
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AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. I.K. Hunter:

That this council congratulates Amnesty International on its 50th anniversary which will be celebrated on 28 May 2011.

(Continued from 4 May 2011.)

The Hon. S.G. WADE (17:23): I am pleased to rise on behalf of the opposition to indicate support for the motion. Amnesty was founded in London in 1961 when Peter Benenson, a British Labor lawyer, was reading a newspaper on the London Underground. He read of two students in Antonio Salazar's Portugal who dared to toast liberty in a cafe in Lisbon. They were arrested, tried and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment each. His first impulse was to get off the train and protest at the Portuguese Embassy. He thought better of it and went instead to reflect in St Martin-in-the-Fields church at Trafalgar Square, where the seed of an idea for a worldwide human rights movement germinated.

Within a few weeks, on 28 May 1961, The Observer newspaper carried a long article written by Benenson called 'The Forgotten Prisoners', which suggested a worldwide 'Appeal for Amnesty 1961', a call to governments to let their political prisoners go or at least give them a fair trial. Benenson described his disgust at the global trend of people being imprisoned, tortured or executed because their political views or religious orientation were unacceptable to their government. Benenson had the vision that the problem could be solved by collective action. He wrote:

If these feelings of disgust all over the world could be united into common action, something effective could be done.

The appeal was reprinted in newspapers globally. In July 1961, at the first international meeting, delegates decided to establish 'a permanent international movement in defence of freedom of opinion and religion'. On 10 December 1961, World Human Rights Day, the first Amnesty candle was lit in the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, London. The first Amnesty campaign in 1961 highlighted the fate of six prisoners of conscience: Angolan anti-colonialist poet and resistance leader, Agostinho Neto; the Greek communist Toni Ambatielos; Archbishop Josef Beran of Prague and Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty of Budapest, both imprisoned by communist dictators; the Reverend Ashton Jones, a campaigner for the rights of blacks in the United States; and the Romanian philosopher Constantin Noica.

A number of the early figures of Amnesty had strong religious connections: Benesson was a Catholic and Eric Baker was a leading Quaker. Other founders were Jews and Protestants. Amnesty had its origins in the religious commitment to justice. In his history of Amnesty, Keepers of the Flame, Stephen Hopgood writes, 'The Amnesty movement was to be a spiritual awakening that would stimulate moral change in members' own societies as well.' Given this history, it is apt that on 28 May 2011—in 10 days' time—Amnesty will celebrate its 50th anniversary with a celebratory ceremony at St Martin-in-the-Fields church in London. The event will feature Lord Peter Archer, one of the movement's founding members, who will lead a symbolic toast to freedom, which of course evokes memories of those two Portuguese students.

Over those 50 years, Amnesty has become the world's largest human rights organisation. A largely volunteer organisation, it has 3 million supporters across 150 countries, with over 100,000 supporters here in Australia. Traditionally, Amnesty International has worked to defend civil and political rights, working for prisoners of conscience and campaigning against torture and the death penalty. It has drawn heavily on the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. As the Hon. Ian Hunter highlighted in his moving speech, as international human rights standards have diversified Amnesty has broadened its focus to encompass a range of economic, social and cultural rights. In 1977, Amnesty International was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its work.

A bedrock of Amnesty International's success has been its impartiality. It does not promote one political system as superior to another. Amnesty International never engages in comparisons between countries; it never accepts funds from government. In an era when political activism seems to be becoming more and more aggressive, Amnesty's cautious, research-based, politically neutral approach can often seem timid and old-fashioned, but in my view it is these traits that are the bedrock of the enduring potency of Amnesty as the world's witness for human rights. One study, over a three-year period the 1970s, found that of the approximately 6,000 prisoners for whom Amnesty International was working 3,000 had been released.

Late last week, the Amnesty annual report was launched. For those of us who have had the opportunity to read such statements in the past, it was a remarkably optimistic report. It found that the growing demands for freedom and justice across the Middle East and North Africa and the rise of social media offered an unprecedented opportunity for human rights change but that this change stands on a knife edge. In the report, Salil Shetty, Amnesty International Secretary-General, is quoted as saying:

Fifty years since the Amnesty candle began to shine a light on repression, the human rights revolution now stands on the threshold of historic change. People are rejecting fear. Courageous people, led largely by youth, are standing up and speaking out in the face of bullets, beatings, tear gas and tanks. This bravery—combined with new technology that is helping activists to outflank and expose government suppression of free speech and peaceful protest—is sending a signal to repressive governments that their days are numbered.

But there is a serious fight back from the forces of repression. The international community must seize the opportunity for change and ensure that 2011 is not a false dawn for human rights. The critical battle is under way for control of access to information, means of communication and networking technology as social media networks fuel a new activism that governments are struggling to control. As seen in Tunisia and Egypt, government attempts to block internet access or cut mobile phone networks can backfire—but governments are scrambling to regain the initiative or to use this technology against activists.

Corporations that provide internet access, cellular communications and social networking sites, and that support digital media and communications, need to respect human rights. They must not become the pawns or accomplices of repressive governments who want to stifle expression and spy on their people.

Salil Shetty's comments are a challenge for each of us to do all that we can as both citizens of the international community, but also as customers of these communications and technology organisations, to ensure that communications and the internet that we have free access to are accessible and free for all citizens of the world.

The year 2010 did indeed record some iconic events. Many of us celebrated the release of Aung San Suu Kyi from Burma and the award of the Nobel Peace Price to Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobo. Amnesty International documents, however, that there is still so much work to be done. The 2011 report cites that there are specific restrictions on freedom of speech in at least 89 countries. It highlights cases of prisoners of conscience in at least 48 countries, torture and ill treatment in at least 98 countries, executions in 23, and reports on unfair trials in at least 54 countries.

While there is still much to be done, we can be grateful that an organisation such as Amnesty International exists—an organisation which fights for the most vulnerable and oppressed in our world, which acts to deter further human rights abuses and which aims to strive for a fairer and more secure world.

Amnesty International operates through networks of local groups of members. In four countries, you can find Amnesty groups within the parliaments. Those four countries are Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Sweden. These groups communicate Amnesty International's concerns to the parliaments in question but, in accordance with Amnesty's policy of impartiality, these groups always include representatives of the various political streams. The following are examples of the kind of activities that these groups are involved in:

the promotion of parliamentary debate on subjects put forward by Amnesty International;

support and promotion of international initiatives or domestic legislation related to human rights;

intervention at an individual or group level, with governments in support of Amnesty International's actions;

advocacy through letters or delegations on behalf of parliamentarians who have been, or are, the victims of human rights violations; and

public support for Amnesty International's work.

The Amnesty International Parliamentary Group in the federal parliament was formed in 1973, making it the oldest parliamentary group of Amnesty in the world. It has been recognised in every parliament since. In a speech delivered to the Society for International Development in Rome in 1985, Liberal senator Alan Missen, then chairman of the group, said:

The Amnesty parliamentary group is in no way a servant of the government, and often presses the latter to act in a stricter and more rigorous fashion in the field of foreign affairs. The group has thus shown itself to be one of the most influential tools in the promotion of our ideas regarding human rights.

Amnesty International parliamentary groups operate in four state and territory parliaments. My understanding is that there are parliamentary groups in the New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, and Australian Capital Territory parliaments.

I am very pleased to join the mover of the motion, the Hon. Ian Hunter, and the Hon Tammy Franks in co-sponsoring the formation of a parliamentary group in this parliament. I thank the Hon. Ian Hunter for the initiative, not only of this motion, but also for the establishment of a parliamentary group. I understand that there may have been a parliamentary group of Amnesty in the past, but that it lapsed some 15 years ago or more.

I would encourage all members to consider joining the parliamentary group as it is established and, in conclusion, I congratulate Amnesty International on 50 years of great work and commend the motion to the council.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. T.J. Stephens.

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