by de Gondi
Mon Oct 20th, 2008 at 05:26:08 AM EST
An appeal for Roberto Saviano has been made by several Nobel winners. Roberto Saviano has declared his desire to leave Italy after repeated death threats and tentative evidence to carry out the threat with the use of explosives by the end of the year.
Roberto Saviano is under death threats for denouncing the criminal deeds of the Camorra in his book Gomorra, translated and read all over the world. His freedom is under threat as well as his autonomy as a writer, his chances to meet his family, to enjoy a social life, to take part in public life, to travel in his own country.
A young writer, guilty of having investigated organized crime, revealing its methods and its structure, is forced to live a hidden, underground life, while the Camorra bosses send him death threats from prison ordering him to stop writing for his newspaper, La Repubblica, and to keep silent.
The State must make every effort to protect Saviano and to defeat the Camorra. But this is not a mere police case. It's a problem of democracy. Saviano's freedom and safety concerns everyone of us as citizens.
Signing this appeal we intend to take charge of it, as a personal commitment, urging the State at the same time to assume its responsibilities because it's intolerable that something like this can happen in Europe in 2008.
DARIO FO
MIKHAIL GORBACIOV
GUNTHER GRASS
RITA LEVI MONTALCINI
ORHAN PAMUK
DESMOND TUTU
You can sign the letter here.
(More beneath the fold...)
Promoted with fold inserted by DoDo edited by afew
As the Minister of Interior has noted, Saviano would not be safe anywhere in the world- especially after his declaration that he would like to get back on the reporter's beat and investigate the international ramifications of Italian organized crime.
I'm afraid that's wishful thinking. He's too well known, easily identified. In that the Camorra has won: He can no longer work anonymously on the beat. Fortunately, he continues to write exceptional scoops.
Other than Saviano I want to recall the many courageous reporters who continue their work against the Italian mafias and their political accomplices at great personal risk.
I have also signed the letter with them in mind since Saviano represents them as well as the dozens of courageous reporters and activists who have been slaughtered by the mafias these past decades.
You can sign the letter here.
UPDATE:
In the first day over 100,000 people signed the appeal. The initiative has also been taken up by numerous foreign newspapers, /El Pais, Courrier International, Nouvelle Observateur, Al-Arabiya/ and reported by the Cnn.
Other prominent writers have signed, most notably Nobel winner José Saramago as well as Jonathan Franzen, Jonathan Lethem, Martin Amis, Chuck Palahniuk, Nathan Englander, Ian McEwan, Jonathan Safran Foer, Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Javier Marias.
Source: Per Saviano in campo gli scrittori
boom di adesioni all'appello dei Nobel
