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Campaign Launched to End the Solitary Confinement Torture
of Russell Maroon Shoatz
16
February 2012
Join the
Center for Constitutional Rights, National Lawyers Guild, and the Human
Rights Coalition in
supporting the call to release Maroon from his 20+ years of
solitary confinement
Supporters of Russell Maroon Shoats have launched a campaign to have him
released from the torturous solitary confinement that he has been held
in for more than twenty years. A letter-writing and
petition campaign has been launched and supported by the nation's
leading human rights legal organizations, the
Center for Constitutional Rights and the
National Lawyers Guild, along with the
Human Rights Coalition, a prison abolitionist organization
co-founded by Maroon.
Visit the campaign's
website here and sign up for email updates by clicking the "Follow"
link at the bottom right.
Commentary by Mumia Abu-Jamal on Maroon:
Memories of Maroon
Please take a second to
sign the petition and help push back against solitary confinement
torture!
Russell Maroon Shoats, a 68-year-old prisoner held at the State
Correctional Institution (SCI) Greene in southwestern Pennsylvania, has
been kept in solitary confinement for more than 21 years. He has been
unable to hold his children or grandchildren or interact with others in
a humane setting during this time, despite not having violated prison
rules in two decades. He has suffered severe psychological anguish and
his physical health has been worsened by the stress of prolonged
isolation.
Maroon has spent nearly 40 years within the Pennsylvania prison system,
30 of those in solitary confinement. During this time he has earned a
reputation amongst prison staff and prisoners as a leader because of his
consistent support for human rights inside and outside the walls. Prison
officials claim that Shoats is a security threat due to past escapes and
attempts, though new evidence has surfaced that his continued solitary
confinement is based on secret and fraudulent evidence of a non-existent
plan to takeover a prison in the 1980s. Prison officials also identified
Maroon's political associations as a basis for continuing to torture him
via solitary confinement.
We are distressed and outraged that an elderly man who is nearing his
70th birthday continues to be treated in such a cruel manner based on
his constitutionally-protected support for human rights and in
retaliation for his expressing political opinions disfavored by the
prison administration. Not having committed an infraction in more than
two decades reveals that Russell Shoats is more than ready to re-enter
the general prison population.
Click this link to join us in calling on prison officials to end the
solitary confinement torture of Russell Maroon Shoatz by releasing him
into the general population of the prison immediately.
SOURCE
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA
94110,
415 863-9977
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