Human rights education must be given to children from as early an age as possible, a former Chinese labour camp prisoner said at the weekend.
Mr Zhao Ming, a computer science student at Trinity College Dublin, who was released from a Chinese labour farm in March last year after 22 months, was speaking at the Irish launch of a new music video of John Lennon's Imagine.
"You have a good basis and good education for human rights here. It is a good and important job," he said.
Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, has donated the rights of the famous song until the end of next year to the international human rights charity, at the request of Dublin actor Gabriel Byrne. Ono is said to have agreed to donate rights to use the song because the work of Amnesty "embodies the spirit of Imagine".
On Saturday the international charity's Imagine campaign was launched in 40 countries.
The new video, which features the song being sung by children from Cambodia, Northern Ireland, Croatia, Kenya, South Africa and the US, is spearheading the campaign which a spokesman said aimed "to counter the prevailing international mood of gung-ho militarism and cracking down on militarism" - the possible human rights effects of which are of enormous concern to Amnesty.
The video moves from country to country as the children sing individual lines from the song, and ends with one child asking, "Imagine if there were human rights for everyone. Imagine."
Some €64,000 worth of advertising time has been made available to Amnesty Ireland by Viacom Outdoors/Dublin Bus, Tower Records, HMV, DART TV and Carlton Screen Advertising.
As a result the video is currently playing on DART television in the network's 27 stations. It is also playing on screens in HMV and Tower Records outlets, and in the Carlton cinema group.
Amnesty's Ireland section director, Mr Seán Love, said the Imagine campaign was a "fantastic opportunity for Amnesty to share of a world where human rights are protected."
