Montserrat Issue On Human Rights

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32068, 16 August 1969, Page 5

Montserrat Issue On Human Rights

(By KENNETH ANTHONY) Most of the numerous stamps issued during 1968 for International Human Rights Year have been highly symbolic in character. -For example, designers have worked all sorts of variations on the theme of a flame representing human rights. Jamaica even showed the flame cupped in the hands. This depicted the desire of the human race to foster and protect human rights; but also gave the impression that someone was about to burn his fingers. It has been left to another island of the West IndiesMontserrat—to put the subject into simple, human terms, with a set of five stamps showing portraits of men who devoted their lives to human rights in one way or another. The 25c value illustrated here shows William Wilberforce, who for 40 years dominated the anti-slavery movement, dying in 1833 on the eve of its success. In the West Indies, where the slaves were freed many years before those in the United States, the choice of this portrait has special significance. More recent defenders of human rights are seen on two other stamps of the s«: Dag I Hanifflarskjold, seeretary-gen-

eral of the United Nations, who lost his life in an air crash while on a peace mission to the Congo in 1961, seen on the 50c value; and Dr Martin Luther King on the $l. Montserrat, though by no means the first country to issue a stamp in honour of Dr King, was the first to decide to do so, the an-

nouncement being made on the very day after his assassination on April 4, 1968. Both these leaders, incidentally, received the Nobel Peace Prize, Dag Hammarskjold in 1961 and Dr King in 1964.

The remaining values of the series are devoted to Alexander Hamilton, a leader of the American Revolution and at one time confidential secretary to George Washington and to Albert T. Marryshow, a leading exponent of greater unity among the West Indian islands, who died in 1958. - “ -