Anti-Sochi environmentalist on hunger strike against three year prison sentence
Moscow (AsiaNews)
- The Russian environmentalist Yevgeny Vitishko who denounced the damage caused
to the territory during construction for the Sochi Winter Olympics currently
underway on the Black Sea , has been transferred to an undisclosed penal colony,
where he will serve three years. This was
decided by a court of Krasnodar on 12 February. The
forty year old geologist has become a symbol of the ongoing repression against
the environmental movement in the Russian Caucasus. According
to the Russian-Norwegian NGO Bellona, he was illegally transferred from the
case to the administrative penal colony February 19, without being able to
return home to his family and collect his things as allowed by the court of the
Territory of Krasnodar region which
includes Sochi.
The
day on which the association for which he works (Environmental Watch on the North Caucasus, Ewnc) presented a report
on the environmental damage of the Olympics in Moscow, the judges rejected Vitishko's
lawyers appeal against the Tuapse court judgment (village near Sochi) , commuting
into a jail term the probationary sentence imposed in 2012 for damage to the
property of the local governor, Aleksand Tkachev. Along
with another activist, the man is charged with having daubed a fence that
surrounded the residence of the politician, in a protected forest, with slogans
of protest.
The
court had decided that it was hooliganism and had ordered his imprisonment, but
with a suspended sentence and two years of probation. According
to the judges, however, Vitishko repeatedly infringed the terms of his
probation, not showing up on time to sign on at the police station. For
groups such as Greenpeace Russia and Human Rights Watch the court's decision masks
the political will to silence the local environmental movement and journalists
who criticize the plans of the Winter Games , greatly desired by President
Vladimir Putin.
"The
decision to imprison Vitishko is based on the pressures of the political
authorities - his lawyer Alexander Popkov said in court - The objective is to
isolate him from the local and international community because of his activism".
The
activist learned of the judgment while he was already in prison serving 15 days
of administrative detention for "foul language in a public place",
another accusation held by the defenders of human rights as a pretext to keep
him away from the media, in the days of the Olympics. Vitishko
immediately began a hunger strike and a vast campaign of solidarity with him has
been launched.
The
now famous feminist punk band Pussy Riot, who arrived on the Black Sea to shoot
a new video of protest against Putin, dedicated their performance to Vitishko. During
their stay in Sochi, the girls were detained several times by police and FSB,
on 18 February they were questioned for several hours about an alleged theft. According
to their leader, Nadia Tolokonnikova , the episode - which attracted the
attention of the international press - was a trick by authorities to divert
attention from Vitishko's case. The WWF
and Greenpeace have sent a letter to the President of international
Olympic Committee (IOC ), Thomas Bach, to intervene in the case. "The
story of Vitisko is not related to the preparation for the Olympics," IOC
official Mark Adams limited himself to saying, adding: "We can not
interfere with the affairs of a sovereign state". Since
November, at least six members of EWNC have been arrested , some of them have
also spent two weeks in jail. (N.A.)
.png)
18/02/2020 10:04
23/12/2013
