Paolo Pietrosanti died today in Rome, after a long and debilitating cancer. Journalist and writer, Mr. Pietrosanti was born in June 1960, he was a member of the General Council of the Nonviolent Radical Party transnational and transparty, which he joined in the end of the 1970s. His political activism started in the 19070s and 1980s with the nonviolent struggled against the military draft together with the League of Conscientious Objectors, for his militancy he was arrested in Comiso. His writings addressed issues related to theoretical and practical nonviolence, anti-racism and anti-semitism; he was a fervent promoter of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King's thinking.
Throughout the years, Mr. Pietrosanti ran as a 'head of list' for the Radicals in local, national and European elections.

Mr. Pietrosanti became eventually active in the struggle against the death penalty in the United States leading in Italy a campaign to save Paula Cooper. At the center of his work there was also the protection of the rights of the Roma and the preservation of their traditions. In 1986, he was arrested in Warsaw and eventually expelled from that country; the European Roma Organization proclaimed him honorary president. At the fall of the Berlin Wall, Mr. Pietrosanti was among the most convinced and committed promoters of the Transnational Radical Party. From 1990 to 1993 he coordinated the activities of the Party from Prague. In the aery 1990s he also became the Permanent Representative of the Roma to the United Nations.

Because of his illness, in the late 1990s he became blind. From the year 2000 he fought for the audio-digital accessibility of information and cultural material, a campaign that culminated during the years 2006-2008, when the Prodi Government nominated him advisor for the final negotiation of a convention between the Ministry of culture and the association of Italian publishers.

Until 8 January at 12 noon, it would be possible to bid him farewell at the 'Clinica Villa Speranza', via della Pineta Sacchetti, 235, Rome. His Funeral will be held in a strictly private form. A secular ceremony in his honor will be organized in Rome in the coming days.