"The Forgotten Prisoners" is an article

Article (publishing)

An article is a written work published in a print or electronic medium. It may be for the purpose of propagating the news, research results, academic analysis or debate.-News articles:...

 by Peter Benenson

Peter Benenson

Peter Benenson was an English lawyer and the founder of human rights group Amnesty International . In 2001, Benenson received the Pride of Britain Award for Lifetime Achievement.-Biography:...

 published in The Observer

The Observer

The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...

on 28 May 1961 citing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled...

 articles 18 and 19, announcing the campaign "Appeal for Amnesty, 1961" and calling for "common action". The article also announced the book Persecution 1961 and its stories of doctor Agostino Neto, philosopher Constantin Noica

Constantin Noica

Constantin Noica was a Romanian philosopher, essayist and poet. His preoccupations were throughout all philosophy, from epistemology, philosophy of culture, axiology and philosophic anthropology to ontology and logics, from the history of philosophy to systematic philosophy, from ancient to...

, lawyer Antonio Amat and Ashton Jones

Ashton Jones

Ashton Bryan Jones was an American Quaker minister active from the 1930s to 1970s as an advocate of Civil Rights for African Americans in the United States. Though White and from the deeply segregated state of Georgia, Jones was arrested dozens of times throughout the American South for preaching...

 and Patrick Duncan

Patrick Duncan (anti-apartheid activist)

Patrick Baker Duncan was a political thinker and activist, whose three books promoted human rights in South Africa and expressed concern regarding the relationship of humans with the Earth...

.

Benenson wrote the article after learning that two Portuguese students from Coimbra

Coimbra

Coimbra is a city in the municipality of Coimbra in Portugal. Although it served as the nation's capital during the High Middle Ages, it is better-known for its university, the University of Coimbra, which is one of the oldest in Europe and the oldest academic institution in the...

were imprisoned in Portugal for raising a toast to freedom. The article was reprinted in newspapers across the world and provoked a flood of responses from the readers and marshalling groups in several countries to examine human rights

Human rights

Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...

 abuses.

The appeal marks the beginning of Amnesty International

Amnesty International

Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...

, founded in London the same year following the publication after Benenson enlisted a Tory

Conservative Party (UK)

The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...

, a Liberal

Liberal Party (UK)

The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...

 and a Labour

Labour Party (UK)

The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...

MP.