Tag: Oleg Sentsov

Oleg Sentsov: 115 Days

115 Days“The 115th day of Sentsov’s hunger strike.” Image courtesy of Askold Kurov

Ukrainian political prisoner Oleg Sentsov has been on hunger strike for 115 days in the Polar Bear Maximum Security Prison Camp in Labytnangi, Russia, where he has been serving a twenty-year sentence on trumped-up charges of “terrorism.”

Mr. Sentsov’s only crime was that he opposed the occupation of his native Crimea by neo-imperialist Russia.

Mr. Sentsov’s only demand is that Russian authorities release sixty-four other Ukrainian political prisoners they have incarcerated during their illegal war against Ukraine.

#Free64
#SaveSentsov
#FreeOlegSentsov
#OlegSentsov

97 Days

Capture“The ninety-seventh day of Sentsov’s hunger strike”

Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian filmmaker who was sentenced to twenty years in prison on trumped-up charges of “terrorism” (charges made against him by the wannabe supah powah, Russia, that illegally occupied his homeland of Crimea in spring 2014) has now been on hunger strike for 97 days in a Russian maximum security penal colony north of the Arctic Circle.

From day one, Mr. Sentsov’s only demand has been that Russia free the other 64 political prisoners it incarcerated on trumped-up charges after its attempt to destabilize its “vassal state” Ukraine by occupying Crimea and dispatching “separatists” to Eastern Ukraine in 2014.

Many of the political prisoners are from Mr. Sentsov’s homeland of Crimea. Many of them are Crimean Tatars, a people who were deported en massed by Stalin during WWII and only recently had resettled in Crimea.

As Mr. Sentsov’s hunger strike has gone on, there have been more and more attempts by people all over the world to persuade Russia to show mercy towards him and his fellow political prisoners. Sadly, there is no evidence that any of these calls has had any effect on decision makers in Russia.

I have decided to stop using euphemisms like “the Kremlin” and “the Putin regime” when what I mean is Russia. Of course there are considerable numbers of Russian nationals who would like to see Mr. Sentsov and his fellow Ukrainian political prisoners released, and yet the vast number of these people have been asleep at the wheel, at best, signally and deliberately absent from the fray, at worst. They want the mythical “international community” and the few brave countrymen and countrywomen who openly and publicly call for Mr. Sentsov’s release (and many other things, usually) to do all the heavy lifting.

Is it because they’re scared of the consequences? Partly. But mostly they think politics is a dirty thing, something only fools would get mixed up in.

They think — mistakenly — that there are more important things in life, like driving a nice car and going on holiday. Or, alternately, just struggling to make ends meet, because the capitalist economy and staggering corruption has ensured that, while Moscow has a record number of millionaires and billionaires, tens of millions of Russians do not share in their own country’s vast natural and manufactured wealth, subsisting below or just above the poverty line. {TRR}

#FreeOlegSentsov
#SaveSentsov

Image courtesy of Askold Kurov

Oleg Sentsov: “Catastrophically Bad”

DSCN0173Dmitry Dinze is Oleg Sentsov’s lawyer. Oleg Sentsov is the Ukrainian filmmaker and political prisoner who has been on hunger strike for eight-six days in the Polar Bear Maximum Security Penal Colony in Labytnangi, Yamalo-Nenetsk Autonomous District, Russian Federation. His only demand has been that the Kremlin release the sixty-four other Ukrainian political prisoners currently held in Russian prisons.

Late last night, Mr. Dinze, one of Russia’s best human rights and criminal defense lawyers, wrote, “I’m no fan of rumors, of course. I find facts more interesting, even better, confirmed facts, but in this case the circumstances are different. According to diplomats who have been in contact with Russian officials on resolving the issue of Oleg Sentsov, they have no intention of releasing Sentsov. They are thinking his death should be a lesson to other inmates. If this is true, I don’t know what to say.”

Natalya Kaplan
Facebook
August 8, 2018

Things are not just bad, they are catastrophically bad. Oleg sent me a letter via his lawyer. He almost cannot stand up anymore. He wrote the end was near, and he was not talking about being released from prison. He asked whether anyone was still interested in his hunger strike: he is not given the letters sent to him, none of them. He said was in a news vacuum and had no idea what was happening.

The European Court of Human Rights insisted he be transferred to a civilian hospital, one close to his place of residence. Oleg refused. He said he would simply not survive the trip, and he had been bullied even more in the civilian hospital in Labytnangi, where he was hospitalized in the intensive care ward, than he had been in the prison hospital.

That’s Russia for you. I have no clue what else we can do and how we can save him. Things are really bad.

Natalya Kaplan is Oleg Sentsov’s cousin. Thanks to Yana Teplitskaya for the heads-up. Translation and photo by the Russian Reader

83 Days

83 daysImage courtesy of Askold Kurov

Ukrainian filmmaker and political prisoner Oleg Sentsov has been on hunger strike in a prison in the far north of Russia for eighty-three (83) days. His only demand is that the Kremlin release the other sixty-four (64) Ukrainian political prisoners it has incarcerated on trumped-up charges in the wake of its illegal, unprovoked occupation of Crimea and invasion of Eastern Ukraine. {TRR}

#SaveSentsov
#FreeOlegSentsov
#Free64

Oleg Sentsov

37388658_2052268531474743_764773632051249152_nThe room in the prison infirmary where Oleg Sentsov is kept. 

Anton Naumlyuk
Facebook
July 19, 2019

Oleg Sentsov

Attorney Dmitry Dinze visited Oleg Sentsov in the Labytnangi penal colony today.

“He looked even worse than last time. He was quite pale. He walked under his own power. Around a week ago, he went through a second health crisis. He got sick. The doctors wanted to hospitalize him and force-feed him as much as possible, to give him IV drips with more nutrients. He refused. He was left in the penal colony on the condition he would ingest the nutrient mix himself under a doctor’s supervision. He takes two spoonfuls a day. He is kept in a room in the prison infirmary. He has no intention of quitting the hunger strike. ‘I’ll hold out as long as I can last,’ he says.”

Sentsov also expressed bewilderment as to why Ukraine and Lyudmila Denisova, human rights ombudsman for the Verkhovna Rada, had ended their vigorious campaign of support for Ukrainian political prisoners.

“Sentsov thinks the Ukrainian side should do more to press for the release of the other political prisoners,” said Dinze.

Sentsov also sent his greetings to Yevgeny Panov (Yevhen Panov), a defendant in the case of the so-called Crimean saboteurs, and to Vladimir Balukh.

Thanks to Askold Kurov and Vladimir Akimenkov for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader

 

Emir Hussein Kuku: 23 Days on Hunger Strike

274381Emir Hussein Kuku

Anton Naumlyuk
Facebook
July 19, 2018

Emir Hussein Kuku

Guards did not give Emir Hussein Kuku the baby food his wife Meryem brought and tried to have delivered to her husband,  hoping that, if he did not stop his hunger strike, he would at least ease up a bit. Kuku has been on hunger strike for 23 days. He has demanded the release of all Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia. The guards initially took the care package from his wife, but they quickly returned it, since Kuku refused to quit his hunger strike.

Kuka has written himself about the state of his health.

“On the 22nd day of my hunger strike, my condition leaves much to be desired, to put it mildly. My left kidney (which FSB Special Forces officers beat in 2015) really hurts, as does my heart and something under my left ribs and in the front of my chest; my pancreas, probably. The area around my liver and my right kidney hurt, but they hurt less. I feel the pain if I stand up or sit reading. If I lie down, the pain subsides, but it doesn’t go away entirely. It’s hard to fall asleep. I toss and turn, sleepless, almost until morning. I won’t bother mentioning trifles like dizziness, the weakness I feel when I take five steps in my cell, the constant thirstiness, the vile taste in my mouth, and the smell of acetone.

“On July 16, I was again transported to the hospital for inmates with TB. The doctors have not divulged the outcome of the tests and ECG, but their faces tell me the news is not good. Actually, for several days, the doctors in the remand prison have stopped talking to me about my condition. They have even stopped weighing me. Apparently, this is due to publication of my statement about my health. The big shots with the stars on their epaulettes banned them from playing into the hands of ‘enemies of the state.’ All I found out in the TB hospital was that my ‘official’ weight was 67.8 kilograms, meaning I have lost 11 kilograms. Although, according to my calculations, I should weigh around 66 kilograms, since I weighed 68.5 kilograms on July 12, and I’ve been losing 0.6 kilograms a day.

1530198608-9959Emir Hussein and Meryem Kuku

“They have not been giving me any maintenance therapy—no glucose, no vitamins, nothing. Apparently, top-ranking officials do not want a second Sentsov, someone who would be able to drag out a hunger strike for months if he got care in the form of glucose and vitamins. They realized the mistake they made [with Senstov]. They have to break me quickly.

“Earlier, I was warned that if I didn’t give up the hunger strike, they would be forced to hospitalize me in the TB hospital, a place teeming with inmates infected with tuberculosis and HIV. It’s a TB hospital, after all.”

The trial of the so-called Yalta group in the Hizb ut-Tahrir case is currently underway in the North Caucasus Military District Court [in Rostov-on-Don].

Photos courtesy of 112.International and Unian. Translated by the Russian Reader

Anything Goes

DSCN6137A monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet secret police, in central Petersburg, 6 May 2018. Photo by the Russian Reader

Ukrainian political prisoner Oleg Sentsov has been on hunger strike for sixty-six days.

Can you imagine not eating for sixty-sixty days? I can’t.

Instead of supporting Mr. Sentsov, most of the world decided to turn its back on him by staying glued to their TV sets during Vladimir Putin’s expensive celebration of his despotic regime’s extraordinary ability to pull the wool over nearly everyone’s eyes.

Certainly he didn’t get any pushback yesterday from the putative “leader of the free world,” who is a vain, spineless traitor who has probably never heard of Oleg Sentsov.

Solidarity with Oleg Sentsov doesn’t mean you have to stop eating, too, but it should mean not having your cake and eating it, too.

The World Cup was cake. Nobody can live for a month on a diet of cake without getting sick. The world has just done it, and now, at least as I see it, the world is a lot sicker than before the World Cup.

When infants are baptized in the Lutheran church, the priest asks the godparents and parents whether they “renouce the Devil and all his ways.”

Putin is a devil. You cannot embrace some of his ways while denouncing others. You either take the whole package or reject it. If you reject it, you show a little bit of willpower—for the sake of Crimean political prisoners Vladimir Balukh and Oleg Sentsov, for the sake of people bombed by the Russian airforce in Syria, for the sake of persecuted Karelian historian Yuri Dmitriev, for the sake of Russian Jehovah’s Witnesses, now branded “extremists” and subject to increasingly numerous arrests, for the sake of the innocent young people framed in the New Greatness and Network “terrorist” cases, for the sake of ordinary Russians everywhere fighting the government’s plans to drastically raise the pension age—and you don’t have anything to do with the World Cup or anything else sponsored, promoted, and supported by the current Russian regime.

The sheer number of people, including my own acquaintances, who could not bear to show solidarity with any of these people at all, if only for one month, has shocked me.

Please don’t pretend now that you’re really opposed to the Putin regime. You’ve shown your true colors.

Anything goes, right? || TRR

“A Truly Great Competition”: Yegor Yekimov Jailed in Petersburg for Picketing in Solidarity with Oleg Sentsov

37117187_528244187619896_1623487471700410368_n

St. Petersburg Group for Assistance to Detainees
Facebook
July 15, 2018

On Saturday, Yegor Yekimov was detained in the Petersburg 2018 FIFA World Cup Fan Zone for holding a solo picket in solidarity with Oleg Sentsov and handing out leaflets.

The activist spent the night at the 71st Police Precinct.

Today, the Petrograd District Court sentenced him to five days in jail.

Mr. Yekimov has an illness that requires constant maintenance therapy. He must strictly avoid catching any infection whatsoever.

This fact, however, did not stop Judge Irina Grechishko, who sentenced Mr. Yekimov to jail.

Additionally, Mr. Yekimov is a voting member of an election commission, and the court had no right to try him without authorization from a prosecutor.

Mr. Yekimov has been taken to the detention facility on Zakharyevskaya Street in central Petersburg. Attorney Daniil Semyonov will file an appeal of the verdict tomorrow.

Translated by the Russian Reader

#SaveSentsov

“He’s Lost Fifteen Kilos on the Hunger Strike”: Oleg Sentsov’s Cousin Visits Filmmaker in Prison

oleg

“Oleg has been on hunger strike for 52 days and 20 hours.”

“He Has Lost Fifteen Kilos during the Hunger Strike”: Oleg Sentsov’s Cousin Visits Filmmaker in Prison
Novaya Gazeta
July 5, 2018

Natalya Kaplan, cousin of Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, has visited him at the Polar Bear Penal Colony in Labytnangi, reports Gromadskoe.

“I met with Oleg. We chatted for two hours. It was a short visit. Oleg, who is 190 centimeters tall, now weighs 75 kilos. He has lost 15 kilos during the hunger strike,” said Ms. Kaplan.

According to her, Mr. Sentsov’s health is currently listed as satisfactory. His lab results are not good, but “there is nothing critical.”

“Yesterday, he felt quite sick. Today, he was fine. He came to the meeting on his own. He feels worse in the evenings. He says he now has a much easier time of it. The first three weeks of the hunger strike were the most agonizing period. He has been getting IVs now. He would not survive without them. He has no plans of ending the hunger strike. His outlook is optimistic. He believes what he is doing has a purpose. And he believes he will win,” said the filmmaker’s cousin.

Kaplan added that Sentsov has asked the public not to visit him in prison, but to visit the other political prisoners for whom he has been fighting.

Mr. Sentsov was convicted in Russia on charges of planning terrorist attacks in Crimea. He has been on hunger strike since May 14, demanding the Russian authorities release all Ukrainian political prisoners in their custody except him. Many Russian and international cultural figures and human rights activists have voiced their support for him.

In recent weeks, the Russian and Ukrainian sides have been trying to agree on a prisoner exchange and iron out a schedule of visits to penal colonies. Lyudmila Denisova, the Verkhovna Rada’s human rights ombudsman, has voiced Ukraine’s willingness to implement an exchange of twenty-three prisoners from each side.

Thanks to Dmitry Dinze and Askold Kurov for the heads-up.

___________________________________________________________________

Here is what Novaya Gazeta omitted from the original article as published on the Gromadskoye website.

[…]

Natalya Kaplan told Oleg that Emir Hussein Kuku had joined his hunger strike and about the demonstrations supporting him.

“He is really grateful there have been so many rallies in his support, that people have not given up and keep on fighting. At the same time, however, he is quite disappointed very little attention has been paid to the other political prisoners. He thinks that if he alone were released, it would be a complete failure,” she said.

[…]

“In particular, he asked Ombudsman Denisova, Father Kliment, the independent doctors, and consular officials who have tried to visit him to go visit the other political prisoners, so that no one forgets them,” said Ms. Kaplan.

[…]

According to her, he has television for entertainment, and he has also been writing and editing his old diary entries. He asks that no more books be sent to him. He has lots of books as it is.

It has transpired the former so-called prosecutor of Russia-annexed Crimea, Natalia Poklonskaya, was involved in Mr. Sentsov’s illegal trial in the Russian Federation, during which he was sentenced to twenty years in prison.

On June 29, Mr. Sentsov’s attorney, Dmitry Dinze, reported Mr. Sentsov was in the prison infirmary, but his condition was stable.

Mr. Dinze also reported Russia had received two requests to pardon Mr. Sentsov.

On June 15, Ms. Denisova was not allowed to see Mr. Sentsov. Subsequently, Ms. Denisova was also not allowed to see Ukrainian political prisoner Mykola Karpyuk, imprisoned in the Russian city of Vladimir.

On June 21, the Ukrainian Embassy in Russia demanded Ms. Denisova be granted priority access to the prisons where political prisoners Oleg Sentsov, Stanislav Klykh, Alexander Kolchenko, and Vladimir Balukh have been incarcerated.

On June 21, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko again talked on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, urging him to release the Ukrainian political prisoners.

The ambassadors of the G7 countries have expressed deep concern about the circumstances of Mr. Sentsov and the other Ukrainian political prisoners incarcerated in Russia.

On June 14, the European Parliament passed a resolution demanding the immediate release of Mr. Sentsov and the Kremlin’s other Ukrainian political prisoners.

On June 19, President Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said the Kremlin’s position on Mr. Sentsov had not changed after an appeal to release him was made by prominent Russian cultural figures.

Sixty-four Ukrainian political prisoners are currently being held in Russia and annexed Crimea, twenty-seven of them in Russia proper. Fifty-eight of them were either arrested in Crimea or arrested on charges involving Crimea. These numbers do not take into account the currently held in the self-proclaimed Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Translated by the Russian Reader. Image courtesy of Gromadskoye

 

Kicker Conspiracy

Go to Russia for a few World Cup fixtures, get rip-roaring drunk, hit on a married Russian woman, and you are an instant “Russia expert,” fit for print in the bloody Guardian.

And don’t forget to thank the Russian security forces for their professionalism in keeping your jet-setting, neo-colonialist, neo-imperialist ass safe while you’re making an ass of yourself.

Huge congratulations must go to the law enforcement that’s been put in place to stop both the most fighty Russians and the most fighty English from making their presence felt. But those responsible for the headlines with TOO MANY CAPITAL LETTERS should be ashamed. Not just for denying England fans these experiences, but for allowing the Russian people to feel demonised, and indeed for allowing Putin to capitalise on this othering of the Russian people to support his us-against-them narrative. Every English person that has a positive interaction with a Russian person is a step further away from letting the people in power turn us against each other … is what I drunkenly mumbled into Anastasia’s ear a few minutes before I learned she had a husband, and a few minutes after she’d said there are no good computer hackers in Russia, and about 20 minutes after I’d been singing “Football’s coming home”. We’re all living in our own fantasies I suppose.

_________________________________________

I wish everyone could read this detailed interview with the fearless Russian human rights activist Anatoly Kalyapin and head of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture about the nearly ubiquitous use of torture by Russian law enforcement.

Under ordinary circumstances, I might even think about translating the interview and publishing it on this website.

But these are not ordinary circumstances. As the Putin regime ratchets up its “Great Terror Lite” apparatus, a frighteningly large segment of apparently educated and even liberal Russians and non-Russians have persuaded me that having fun, partying like it’s 1999, and staying glued to their TV sets watching World Cup fixtures trump petty considerations like human rights and international solidarity.

So, if you’d like to read this interview with a knowledgeable, brave man, run it through whatever online translation machine you prefer and see what miserable gobbledygook comes out the other end.

It has finally dawned on me how few people, both inside and outside Russia, really care to know anything about the real Russia, especially since Don Putin started kicking magical, psychedelic, multi-colored sand in their face with his twelve-billion-dollar “kicker conspiracy.”

I have no hope for a planet whose most powerful, empowered, and well-off inhabitants have such a strong will to be fooled and such an insuperable desire to kick up their heels as if they were teenagers. // TRR

Thanks to Lika Frenkel for the heads-up and the late Mark E. Smith (March 5, 1957–January 24,  2018) for not refusing his vision and sharing it with us so generously for so many years.

_________________________________________

Kicker, Kicker Conspiracy
Kicker, Kicker Conspiracy

J. Hill’s satanic reign
Ass-lickers, Keegan’s Team

Kicker, Kicker Conspiracy

In the marble halls of the charm school
How flair is punished
Under Marble Millichip, the F.A. broods 
On how flair can be punished
Their guest is a Euro-State magnate
Corporate-u-lent

Kicker, Kicker Conspiracy 

In the booze club, George Best does rule
How flair is punished
His downfall was a blonde girl,
but that’s none of your business!

Kicker, Kicker Conspiracy

Football fan at the bus stop
Stretched on the balls of his feet
In the Christmas rush
Had in his hands two lager cans
Talks to himself
At the back
At the top

But in the pavement on the club unit
Plastic, Slime, Partitions, Cocktail, Zig-Zag, Tudor Bar

Pat McCat. Pat McCat, the very famous sports reporter is
talking there.

Fans remember, you are abroad!
Remember the police are rough!
Remember the unemployed!
Remember my expense account!

Hot dogs and seat for Mr. Hogg!
Hot dogs and seat for Mr. Hogg
And his grotty spawn!

Lurid brochures for ground unit
How style is punished

Kicker, Kicker Conspiracy
Remember, don’t collect with the rough
Kicker, Kicker Conspiracy

Kicker, destroy the facilities!

Kicker Conspiracy

Source: The Fall, “Kicker Conspiracy” (1983); lyrics courtesy of The Annotated Fall