Eric Baker

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Eric Baker (born September 22, 1920 , † July 11, 1976 ) was a British activist and co-founder of the human rights organization Amnesty International (AI).

overview

He was the organization's second general secretary and founded the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament . Baker was a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and also headed Quaker Peace and Social Witness , an organization of Quakers in England to support and implement the virtues of Quakerism .

life and work

As a pacifist , Baker refused military service during World War II. During the war he worked for the Famine Relief campaign, where he raised funds to send food packages to Europe and helped educate the British people about the political situation. From 1946 to 1948 he headed a Quaker center in Delhi . Baker was Secretary General of the National Peace Council from 1954 to 1959.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Baker undertook four peace missions to Cyprus , where he wrote reports on the peace process there. While working in Cyprus he met Peter Benenson , the founder of Amnesty International, and became friends with him. They discussed political, ethical and religious matters and together they led the Appeal for Amnesty 1961 project, for which they were able to win some supporters. They also corresponded with politicians and representatives of the media and the church. Baker helped Benenson research and design his book Persecution '61 on cases of political prisoners, which Benenson noted that it would not have been written without this help.

The expression "political prisoner" used today goes back to Baker and has become just as central to AI's concern as his position that prisoners who are not represented in court and who experience violence in captivity must be supported. The German journalist Carola Stern met Baker in June 1961 at a congress for freedom of culture together with Gerd Ruge . She reports: " ... in came an English man named Eric Baker, who was a friend of Peter Benenson, the founder of Amnesty International. He told us about this new organization and we decided that night to found the German section . "

In 1966, Baker became general secretary of AI. The organization was in crisis at the time because of Benenson's resignation as president of the organization. The office of president was abolished and Eric Baker was elected general secretary. Baker had to restore the internal stability of the organization and redefine its goals. By July 1968, when Martin Ennals was appointed General Secretary, the number of AI groups grew again and more than ten percent of the political prisoners the group had taken on were released. Baker was also chairman of the UK section of AI, the Amnesty Sub-Committee on the Elimination of Torture, and vice chairman of the International Executive Committee of Amnesty . He continued his commitment to peace in the spirit of the Religious Society of Friends and directed meetings on political prisoners and torture at the annual meeting of the Religious Society of Friends in London in 1974 and at the Triennial Meeting of the Friends World Committee for Consultation in 1976 out.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. AI Germany, report from 2008 ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.amnesty.de
  2. AI biographies (English)