Prisoners of Conscience

Prayer for the Day presented by Mark Oakley, Dean of Southwark.

Good morning.

On this day 65 years ago, a British barrister, Peter Benenson, wrote an article in the Observer newspaper called ‘The Forgotten Prisoners’. In it he expressed his anger that two Portuguese students had been imprisoned in their homeland for raising a toast to ‘freedom’. Benenson asked the public to write letters and protest on behalf of, what he termed, these ‘prisoners of conscience’.

Support for Benenson’s article eventually led to the creation of the organisation Amnesty International, which continues today to campaign on behalf on anyone who is imprisoned for their identity or the non-violent expression of conscientiously held beliefs. ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’, said Martin Luther King Jr.

Human rights can get sniggered at in some places today. They are, however, built on a beautiful and strong perception – that to be a human being is to have dignity, and that dignity demands equal and fair treatment for all. And even when someone abuses that dignity, it mustn’t be responded to by reflecting the abuse, but by maintaining that dignity and protecting it, and especially when it is unpopular to do so.

I’m guessing that most of us are beginning this day in relative freedom. We have things to do, but the day is ours. I’m praying with those words of Nina Simone’s haunting song, for those whose conscience or identity is imprisoned right now as I speak:

I wish I could say
All the things that I should say
Say 'em loud, say 'em clear
For the whole round world to hear’.

Amen.