I am happy to bring to this first Conference of OLAS the warm personal greetings of Bertrand Russell. In his 96th year, at a time when he has been strenuously concerned to find ways to mobilise world opinion against the unprecedented, sadistic aggression which the most powerful, brutal and irresponsible power in the world has unloosed on the brave people of Vietnam, Lord Russell has, at the same time, found himself increasingly preoccupied with the problems of Latin America, I wish to concentrate upon one aspect of Lord Russell's deep concern for the sufferings of the peoples of Latin America, who swelter under the weight of fiercely authoritarian, irrational and arbitrary regimes. This aspect turns upon a personal: experience of Lord Russell, which gives him the capacity to feel very deeply for the sufferings of the victims of oligarchic repression, Very early in his life, Bertrand Russell became involved in the struggle to defend political prisoners, During the first world war, he himself was herded into prison because he opposed the general carnage, in which European nations slaughtered each others' youth in the interests only of small cliques of imperial promoters. Again, at the beginning of his tenth decade of life, Lord Russell entered a British prison, because of his resistance to the war preparations of the British Government. I tell you this to show you that Lord Russell knows prisons. Today, his busy desk is littered with appeals from victims of tyranny all over the world. But from nowhere does he get so many appeals for help as from this continent, tortured beneath a cruel and conscience-less power which is unable to govern without the almost random use of repressive force. For Lord Russell, the political prisoners of Latin America are a symbol ; they clearly portray the state of the institutions of the continent, in which noble men are incarcerated because of their nobility and humane concern, But at the same time, they are a symbol of the irrepressible yearning for freedom, which, everywhere in the continent, defies the prison walls and bars, and reaches out to inspire the young people, not with fear of repression, but with hope for the future. From the years when he defended Sacco and Vanzetti, down to these days crowded with appeals for such prisoners as Americo Martin, Hugo Blanco, Guillermo Lora, Ricardo Gadea, Regis Debray, incarcerated for no better cause than that he wished to report the truth, for Hector Cordera... but it is impossible to begin to list the names, and perhaps unfair to try, because there are heroes of many countries and numerous political tendencies, who all share the common trait that they had consciences too large and hearts too generous to submit to brutality, however powerful it seemed: Russell has always felt that it is important to do everything possible to arouse public attention and support for such prisoners. Not only does the campaign to sustain and support the victims of oppression help the prisoners themselves: it also educates the people at large, who come very quickly to ask why good men suffer imprisonment and torture. Of course, we know of the immunity of the oligarchs to civilised protest: the cowardly murders they commit in the cells, like that of Fabricio Ojeda, bear all too frequent witness to that. But nonetheless, when we fight to support those who have
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