BBC Four / OU Programme on Amnesty International & Human Rights

I received the following email from my Open University course mailing list and thought it may be of interest to some of you.

The BBC FOUR Year of Justice will be broadcasting another new programme which has been produced in partnership with The Open University

Amnesty! When They Are All Free will be shown on BBC FOUR on Tuesday 31st May at 9.00pm.

This special 70 minute programme has been produced to mark the 50th anniversary of Amnesty International in May 2011. This independent and critical documentary brings together an extraordinary cast of interviewees, from Sting to Rowan Atkinson, from Sir Louis Blom Cooper, one of the founders to Jack Straw, the British Home Secretary who released General Pinochet. They shed light on how Amnesty International has changed the world, and how the world has changed Amnesty International.

Amnesty! When They Are All Free, mixes contemporary events and Amnesty’s history to reveal how a ‘letter-writing organisation’ has developed into one of the world’s most influential NGOs. It portrays Amnesty’s successes and failures over the decades, and the challenges it now faces as a multinational movement that is trying to hold its ground in a shifting human rights landscape.

Made with unprecedented access to Amnesty, the camera follows the new Secretary General Salil Shetty as he battles with the problems of prisoners in China and homophobia in
Uganda. It also journeys with Amnesty’s researchers into the devastation of Haiti and the tumult of
Egypt’s elections and subsequent revolution.

Amnesty! When They Are All Free poses the fundamental question: has the human rights movement been able to hold back mankind’s capacity for atrocity?