Forty-five years ago, in an article called The Forgotten Prisoners, Paul Benenson made an appeal for amnesty.
"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."
That sparked the forming of Amnesty International, and now, they've returned to the home of that article, The Observer, to announce a new fight in the struggle for human rights--online censorship. They've set up a website to help spread information and to have people sign a pledge to "call on all governments and companies to ensure the Internet is a force for political freedom, not repression." They're also asking bloggers and website owners to add a button to their site.
Amnesty is also asking bloggers to "add irrepressible content" to their Websites.
"If you have a website or blog, help us spread the word and undermine unwarranted censorship by publishing censored material from our database directly onto your site," Amnesty suggests. "The more people take part the more we show that freedom of expression cannot be repressed."
Website owners and bloggers can download html code at the Irrepressible Website which will allow new content to "appear each time a page is loaded."
"China has a competent overseas network of informers that regularly report dissident activities to its intelligence services in Beijing," reads one example of such content.
Tags: [Amnesty International], [Amnesty International launches Website in campaign against online censorship], [The Observer], [Peter Benenson], [The Forgotten Prisoners], [appeal for amnesty], [Irrepressible.info]
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