Trying to throw their arms around the world
Boguslaw Stanislawski, the president of Amnesty International in Poland, had reason to celebrate at the organization's Zamek Ujazdowski party last week: not only had Amnesty's Polish section been promoting human rights for 10 years, but it was his birthday, too.
Present at the Ujazdowski festivities were some key Amnesty figures from around the world, such as Secretary General Pierre Sane. "They came here not only to support Amnesty's activities in Poland," Stanislawski said. "But also to show their appreciation of Poland's attitude (toward human rights)." Aside from meeting the organization's local members, Sane and Mahmoud Romdahe, the chairman of Amnesty's international executive committee, also visited Parliamentary Speaker Maciej Plazynski and Foreign Affairs Minister Bronislaw Geremek.
The international committee took advantage of the anniversary to conduct other, time-related activities in the form of holding the quarterly meeting and releasing the annual report. "It was a happy coincidence for us that this visit came at the same time as the report being released," Stanislawski said. "It is a promotion for the Polish Amnesty." The report is published by the international secretariat in the U.K. and released each June in whatever country the general secretary is in at that moment.
Stanislawski hopes the report's Polish release will heighten awareness of Amnesty's presence in the country and lead to more signatures on Amnesty's famous petitions and letters regarding the persecuted, the abandoned, and the unjustly detained.
The first Amnesty International chapter was set up in 1961 after Peter Benenson, a London lawyer, read about a group of students in Portugal who were arrested and jailed for raising a toast to freedom in a public restaurant. This incident prompted him to launch a one-year campaign called "Appeal for Amnesty 1961" in a local paper, the London Observer.
Today, Amnesty has around 170 units run by about 1 million members and supporters. The organization aims at the full realization of the principles contained within the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights regardless of race, color, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
In Poland, there are about 30 groups with a total of 200-300 members in about 20 cities, said Joanna Pertkiewicz, Amnesty's fundraiser. "I hope that the visit of Pierre Sane in Poland will boost the number of our members and supporters," Pertkiewicz said. She admitted that finding sponsors is no easy task. "It is difficult because the Polish chapter of Amnesty doesn't speak up for the rights of Poles (according to Amnesty statues, the organization's chapters cannot campaign for the rights of the citizens of the country they are based in)," she said. In addition to fees and donations, Amnesty receives funds from London because it is still a section rather than a self-supporting association. "We don't take money from the government and its institutions or from pre-accession funds," Pertkiewicz added.
Since its inception in Poland, a lot has changed. "Ten years ago when we collected signatures for persecuted people in Bangladesh and China, nobody here knew what was sgoing on," Stanislawski said. "People asked us why we weren't speaking up for people in Poland."
Now it's different. "It (Amnesty's activity) has influenced Poles' awareness," Stanislawski said. "And after all, awareness is a good start to doing more."
Amnesty constantly lobbies in Parliament. "We remind deputies, ministers and members of Parliament that Poland calls itself a democratic country and because of that it is obliged to respect the European Human Rights Convention," Stanislawski said, which obliges Poland to speak up for human rights whenever and wherever they are being violated or ignored. "We try to remind (politicians) of that but it's difficult to say with what results," Stanislawski said. "Still, doing something is better than doing nothing."
Stanislawski fondly remembers some of Amnesty's local successes. "Poland was the fourth country in the world in terms of the number of collected signatures when Amnesty organized a campaign on the 10th anniversary of the tragedy in China's Tianamen Square," he said. "We collected about 10,000 signatures."
