THE PAUL ROUGEAU COMMITTEE

The purpose of the Paul Rougeau Committee, a non profit organization, is to support and help in many ways, also through the financing of legal defence, inmates who are waiting to die on the death rows of United States of America, in the context of the abolitionist movement. The choice of limiting the Committee action to American prisoners is motivated by the following reasons:

a) the spontaneous initial correspondence of 200 people and Paul Rougeau, an inmate convicted to death in Ellis One Unit in Huntsville, Texas;

b) to be in contact with other death row inmates in the United States of America, with the help of Paul Rougeau too;

c) concrete possibilities of intervention. America, despite the fact that it is the sole western democracy which adopts the death penalty, allows people, lawyers and organizations to contact inmates on death row;

d) particular unfair judicial procedures, which lead to inflict the death penalty on the poor and disadvantaged.

To attain their purposes, the Paul Rougeau Committee intends to:

a) raise funds to help and support death row inmates and to finance abolitionist enterprises through free offerings and through the promotion and the organization of protests, meetings, concerts, conferences, debates, shows, the production and distribution of information, press campaigns, TV, radio;

b) choose inmates to help and to support according to principles of necessity, urgency and effectiveness without political, religious or racial discrimination. The crime committed by the inmate or the fact that he/she is declared to be innocent or guilty is irrelevant to the choice;

c) inform, awaken and intervene on the death penalty issue and its application in the world and particularly in the USA;

d) work so that the fundamental human and legal rights be granted to death row inmates;

e) develop, keep and consolidate the relationships with those national and international organizations which work in the social area with particular regard to the ones which operate for the respect for human rights and for the abolition of the death penalty in the world;

f) promote the awareness of the necessity to reach the total and undiscriminated abolition of the death penalty in the world.

The Paul Rougeau Committee is independent from any governmental, political or religious affiliation and apart from any tendency concerned with them.