People unfamiliar with Camorra power dynamics often think that killing an innocent person is a naive gesture on the part of the clans because it only legitimizes and amplifies the victim's example and words, a confirmation of the truths he spoke.
Wrong.
That's never the way it is.
As soon as you die in the land of the Camorra, you're enshrouded in countless suspicions, and innocence is a distant hypothesis, the last one imaginable.
You are guilty until proven innocent.
In the land of the Camorra, the theory of modern rights is turned on its head.

— (Roberto Saviano, Gomorrah, translated by Virginia Jewiss)
On October 20, 2008, six international Nobel Prize winners rallied in support of Roberto Saviano, asking the Italian government to do something to protect him and to defeat the Camorra and emphasizing the fact that organized crime is not merely a problem for police that only concerns the writer, but is a problem for democracy that concerns all free citizens.
The appeal of the six Nobel laureates concludes that these citizens cannot tolerate the fact that the events described in Saviano's book are taking place in 2008 in Europe, just as they can't tolerate that the price one pays for denouncing these events means losing one's freedom and safety.
The six Nobel Prize winners who launched the appeal are Dario Fo, Mikhail Gorbachev, Günter Grass, Rita Levi-Montalcini, Orhan Pamuk and Desmond Tutu.

The appeal was signed by writers such as Jonathan Franzen, Javier Marías, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jonathan Lethem, Martin Amis, Chuck Palahniuk, Nathan Englander, Ian McEwan, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, José Saramago, Elfriede Jelinek, Wislawa Szymborska, Betty Williams, Lech Wałęsa, Paul Auster, Siri Hustvedt, Peter Schneider, Colum McCann, Patrick McGrath, Cathleen Shine, Junot Diaz, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Taslima Nasreen, Caro Llewelyn, Ingrid Betancourt, Adam Michnik and Claudio Magris.
Foreign media—from El País to Le Nouvel Observateur and from Courrier International to Al Arabiya and CNN—also spread the initiative.

After the initiative, various radio stations opened their microphones to debates and comments on the subject.
The program Fahrenheit on Italy's Rai Radio 3 organized a marathon reading of Gomorrah in which celebrities from the world of culture, news, theater, and civil society participated.
Numerous Italian cities also offered honorary citizenship to the writer, while many schools subscribed to the appeal.
The Casa della Memoria e della Storia ("House of Memory and History") in Rome hosted an eight-hour choral reading of Gomorrah.

In addition to the signatures of the six prominent figures, normal citizens were able to sign the appeal on a special page created by the newspaper La Repubblica.
More than 250,000 signatures were collected.
People unfamiliar with Camorra power dynamics often think that killing an innocent person is a naive gesture on the part of the clans because it only legitimizes and amplifies the victim's example and words, a confirmation of the truths he spoke. Wrong. That's never the way it is. As soon as you die in the land of the Camorra, you're enshrouded in countless suspicions, and innocence is a distant hypothesis, the last one imaginable. You are guilty until proven innocent. In the land of the Camorra, the theory of modern rights is turned on its head.
— (Roberto Saviano, Gomorrah, translated by Virginia Jewiss)
On October 20, 2008, six international Nobel Prize winners rallied in support of Roberto Saviano, asking the Italian government to do something to protect him and to defeat the Camorra and emphasizing the fact that organized crime is not merely a problem for police that only concerns the writer, but is a problem for democracy that concerns all free citizens. The appeal of the six Nobel laureates concludes that these citizens cannot tolerate the fact that the events described in Saviano's book are taking place in 2008 in Europe, just as they can't tolerate that the price one pays for denouncing these events means losing one's freedom and safety. The six Nobel Prize winners who launched the appeal are Dario Fo, Mikhail Gorbachev, Günter Grass, Rita Levi-Montalcini, Orhan Pamuk and Desmond Tutu.
The appeal was signed by writers such as Jonathan Franzen, Javier Marías, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jonathan Lethem, Martin Amis, Chuck Palahniuk, Nathan Englander, Ian McEwan, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, José Saramago, Elfriede Jelinek, Wislawa Szymborska, Betty Williams, Lech Wałęsa, Paul Auster, Siri Hustvedt, Peter Schneider, Colum McCann, Patrick McGrath, Cathleen Shine, Junot Diaz, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Taslima Nasreen, Caro Llewelyn, Ingrid Betancourt, Adam Michnik and Claudio Magris. Foreign media—from El País to Le Nouvel Observateur and from Courrier International to Al Arabiya and CNN—also spread the initiative.
After the initiative, various radio stations opened their microphones to debates and comments on the subject. The program Fahrenheit on Italy's Rai Radio 3 organized a marathon reading of Gomorrah in which celebrities from the world of culture, news, theater, and civil society participated. Numerous Italian cities also offered honorary citizenship to the writer, while many schools subscribed to the appeal. The Casa della Memoria e della Storia ("House of Memory and History") in Rome hosted an eight-hour choral reading of Gomorrah.
In addition to the signatures of the six prominent figures, normal citizens were able to sign the appeal on a special page created by the newspaper La Repubblica. More than 250,000 signatures were collected.
Roberto Saviano