Like Water on Stone : The Story of Amnesty International - Softcover

Power, Jonathan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0713993197 ISBN 13: 9780713993196

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2001

Synopsis

Forty years after it was created in the office of a London lawyer, Amnesty International is now the most influential non-governmental organisation in the world. With a million strong membership, its power to influence political debate has become legendary. Its almost daily press releases are given front page treatment and studied in the corridors of power. Human rights at government level has evolved from a backburner issue to become a central tenet of the policy if not always the practice of democratic governments everywhere. Even totalitarian governments are now wary of its influence.This book tells the story of the organisation from its first days to the present, examining its successes and failures with a sympathic if detached eye

About this title

About the Author

Jonathan Power was a foreign affairs columnist for the International Herald Tribune for seventeen years. His column is now syndicated worldwide, appearing in such newspapers as the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, and Taipei Times. He is also a regular contributor to the New York Times, Washington Post, Encounter, and Prospect. He is the editor of A Vision of Hope: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the United Nations, and his documentary film, "It's Ours Whatever They Say," won the silver medal at the Venice Film Festival. He lives in England.

From Publishers Weekly

In 1961, a news report about human rights violations in Portugal motivated a British lawyer named Peter Benenson to set up a group to push for the release of prisoners locked up solely for exercising their freedom of speech on political matters. Forty years later, as British journalist Power puts it in this sympathetic account, Amnesty International "has been the catalyst that has transformed, invigorated and even transfigured the debate" over human rights. A chapter in the middle of the book relates the history of Amnesty, but Power focuses more on specific countries Nigeria (where a former prisoner "adopted" by Amnesty is now the country's president), Guatemala, Northern Ireland, Chile, China and the U.S. (Amnesty opposes capital punishment). Power, an internationally syndicated columnist (and editor of A Vision of Hope: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the United Nations) strongly supports the increased attention that groups like Amnesty have brought to human rights, and he devotes a good deal of discussion to the group's "success stories" from released "prisoners of conscience" to an overall improvement in the human rights climate in countries like Morocco. To his credit, Power is willing to offer some criticisms of the group where its efforts have gone awry as in Germany, where the local branch became too close with the violent Baader-Meinhof gang in the 1970s but, even here, he includes some positive comments about Amnesty's activities. The organization "was right to intervene and insist on a decent prison regime" for members of the radical group. Some may wish that Power had more distance from his subject, but this book is a valuable addition to a growing library on the recent advances in human rights.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0713993197
• ISBN 13: 9780713993196
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1