Peter Benenson Quotes

Many instances of persecution and killing have occurred in countries with atrocious human rights records such as Sri Lanka, Guatemala and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Torture is not a thing we can tolerate.

In countries where innocent people are dying, the leaders are following their blood rather than their brains.

So war is an extremely sad business, because the majority of people don't want to be in it.

Torture is banned but in two-thirds of the world's countries it is still being committed in secret. Too many governments still allow wrongful imprisonment, murder or 'disappearance' to be carried out by their officials with impunity.

World history is tragic.

I had seen people who had lost everything and everyone they loved to war, famine, and natural disasters.

I was arrested three times and tortured once.

My mind revolts and my soul cannot support the weight of so much evil: theft, rape, pillage, deaths, and murders, fires and devastation; the virgin violated, the cry of the widow and the orphan; the father armed against his son and each one looking for his brother to kill him; of those who have migrated; of the thousands who have fled; of the bodies stretched out in the public streets; of the bones which cover the fields and of so much blood shed on Venezuela’s soil.

Torture of a person anywhere in the world causes humanity everywhere in the world to suffer.

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 ... The newspaper reader feels a sickening sense of impotence. Yet if these feelings of disgust could be united into common action, something effective could be done

There were 40,000—45,000 people killed. They were no less important than I am. I want to bring Habre to justice. I can name names and clear up many things. I am ready to face justice as well for what I have done …. During the night, prisoners were executed discretely …. I knew that everyone I arrested would be tortured.

We know that Maduro's armies are riddled with persecution, torture, threats, and wrongful arrests.

I have made my living bearing witness to some of the most horrific events of the end of our century, at the end of the 20th century.

I hope the example of Saddam Hussein will give a lesson to leaders of other countries where human rights are not respected.

It makes me actually quite angry to think about people writing about torture with a sort of relish. Horrible.

I couldn't stand the idea of bloodshed, casualties.

Governments that block the aspirations of their people, that steal or are corrupt, that oppress and torture or that deny freedom of expression and human rights should bear in mind that they will find it increasingly hard to escape the judgement of their own people, or where warranted, the reach of international law.

We who came here saw what was happening. This was far more than a war in a faraway place. This was a moral imperative, a terrible vision of the future.

My giving birth was nothing when I think about all the people in Sri Lanka that have to give birth in a concentration camp.

When men talk about war, the stories and terminology vary - it's this battle, these weapons, this terrain. But no matter where you go in the world, women use the same language to speak of war. They speak of fire, they speak of death, and they speak of starvation.

My wife runs the charity Reprieve, and so rendition, droning, and capital punishment are very much the topics of our dinner table because of that.

It's good to focus on the universal suffering that goes on in any war. Whatever the right and wrongs of the war, there is always universal suffering.

War is organized murder and torture against our brothers.

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.