IN THE 4Oth ANNIVERSARY OF AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

By Ricardo Bofill, June 7, 2001

Amnesty International, the human rights organization has celebrated a 4oth anniversary in London, reaffirming the principles that originated this to fight for the freedom and personal guarantees to which all citizens are entitled.  The message of Amnesty International has been repeated with the same courage of always:  those who suffer and those who are abused in the world, are not alone.  The human rights activist movement is with them.

For those of us who fight for the human rights in Cuba since some time back.  Amnesty International has always been a "paradigm".  I remember that it was in 1965 that we had the first time we had an interchange of ideas with Amnesty International.  The contact was made by an Irishman, Sean McBride, who through Marta Frayde made some books available to us explaining some of the projects of this organization established as a watchdog and for the protection of human rights.

Using those documents that Amnesty International sent us, and that outlined methods to fight for the people in death row, the people who had been attacked and incarcerated for their political beliefs, we conducted an informal seminar with close friends in Havana.

It wasn't long before we, ourselves, were brutalized by Fidel Castro and thrown in jail because we disagreed with his ideas.  In a campaign of misinformation and slander started by the Granma the communist paper in 1968 against the group of dissident of which I was a member, and called "Taking off the Micro-fraction mask" they talk about a brief against Castro's doctrine, that the G-2 confiscated when I was on my way to deliver it to Mijail Roy correspondent of the Novosti Press in Havana.  In this writing that was meant for Amnesty International and which I still have the original, many violations of human rights in Cuba are denounced.

In fact the Lithuanian journalist, Mijail Roy years later became a human rights activist involved with the Andrei  Sajarov movement which cost him several years in the Gulag, the Russian prison.

With this precedent, when we created the Cuban Committee for Human Rights we sent a copy of our by-laws to Amnesty International through the British Ambassador in Cuba, David Thomas.  This procedure probably saved our lives as when we returned to Cuba.

Amnesty International named "prisoners of conscience" and began an international campaign to make Fidel Castro respect our rights and our lives and to spot the torture and attacks of which we were being victims.

A few years later we had the visit in Havana of Ian Martin who was at that time the President of Amnesty International and by this a permanent cooperation system between this prestigious organization and the Cuban citizens movement for human rights was established and it has helped save the lives of many Cubans who otherwise would have died at the execution wall, has saved many from the atrocious tortures and often has helped liberate political prisoners.