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. There are several million such people in prison - by no means all of them behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains - and their numbers are growing. 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.
In 1945 the founder members of the United Nations approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 18: Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in company with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance. 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.
There is at present no sure way of finding out how many countries permit their citizens to enjoy these two fundamental freedoms. What matters is not the rights that exist on paper in the Constitution, but whether they can be exercised and enforced in practice. There is a growing tendency all over the world to disguise the real grounds upon which 'non-conformists' are imprisoned.
Yet governments are by no means insensitive to the pressure of outside opinion. And when world opinion is concentrated on one weak spot, it can sometimes succeed in making a government relent. The important thing is to mobilise public opinion quickly and widely, before a government is caught up in the vicious spiral caused by its own repression and is faced with impending civil war. By then the situation will have become too desperate for the government to make concessions. The force of opinion, to be effective, should be broadly based, international, nonsectarian and all-party.
That is why we have started Appeal for Amnesty, 1961. The campaign, which opens today, is the result of an initiative by a group of lawyers, writers and publishers in London, who share the underlying conviction expressed by Voltaire: 'I detest your views, but am prepared to die for your right to express them.' We have set up an office in London to collect information about the names, numbers and conditions of what we have decided to call Prisoners of Conscience, and we define them thus: 'Any person who is physically restrained (by imprisonment or otherwise) from expressing (in any form of words or symbols) an opinion which he honestly holds and which does not advocate or condone personal violence.'
In October a Penguin Special called Persecution 1961 will be published as part of our Amnesty Campaign. In it are stories of nine men and women from varying political and religious outlooks, who have been suffering imprisonment for expressing their opinions. One story is of the revolting brutality with which Angola's leading poet, Agostino Neto, was treated before the present disturbances there broke out. Dr Neto was one of the five African doctors in Angola. His efforts to improve the health services for his fellow Africans were unacceptable to the Portuguese. In June last year the political police marched into his house, had him flogged in front of his family and then dragged him away. He has since been in prison in the Cape Verde Isles without charge or trial.
From Rumania, we shall print the story of Constantin Noica, the philosopher who was sentenced to 25 years' imprisonment because, while 'rusticated', his friends and pupils continued to visit him, to listen to his talk on philosophy and literature. The book will also tell of the Spanish lawyer Antonio Amat, who tried to build a coalition of democratic groups and has been in prison without trial since November 1958; and of two white men - the American Ashton Jones and Patrick Duncan from South Africa - persecuted by their own race for preaching that the coloured races should have equal rights.
The technique of publicising the personal stories of a number of prisoners of contrasting politics is a new one. It has been adopted to avoid the fate of previous amnesty campaigns, which so often have become more concerned with publicising the political views of the imprisoned than with humanitarian purposes.
How can we discover the state of freedom in the world today? The American philosopher John Dewey once said, 'If you want to establish some conception of a society, go find out who is in gaol.' This is hard advice to follow, because few governments welcome inquiries about the number of Prisoners of Conscience they hold in prison. But there are other tests of freedom: are the press allowed to criticise the government? Does the government permit a political opposition? Do those accused of offences against the state receive a speedy and public trial before an impartial court? Are they allowed to call witnesses, and is their lawyer able to present the defence in the way he thinks best?
The most rapid way of bringing relief to Prisoners of Conscience is publicity, especially publicity among their fellow citizens. With the pressure of emergent nationalism and the tensions of the Cold War, there are bound to be situations where governments are led to take emergency measures to protect their existence. It is vital that public opinion should insist that these measures should not be excessive, nor prolonged after the moment of danger. If the emergency is to last a long time, then a government should be induced to allow its opponents out of prison, to seek asylum abroad.
This is an especially suitable year for an Amnesty Campaign. It is the centenary of President Lincoln's inauguration, and of the beginning of the Civil War which ended with the liberation of the American slaves; it is also the centenary of the decree that emancipated the Russian serfs. A hundred years ago Mr Gladstone's budget swept away the oppressive duties on newsprint and so enlarged the range and freedom of the press.
The success of the 1961 Amnesty Campaign depends on how powerfully it is possible to rally public opinion. It depends, too, upon the campaign being all-embracing in its composition, international in character and politically impartial in direction. Any group is welcome to take part which is prepared to condemn persecution regardless of where it occurs, or what are the ideas suppressed. Inevitably, most of the action called for by Appeal for Amnesty, 1961 can only be taken by governments. But experience shows that in matters such as these, governments are prepared to follow only where public opinion leads. Pressure of opinion a hundred years ago brought about the emancipation of the slaves. It is now for man to insist upon the same freedom for his mind as he has won for his body.