Press Release, photographs, 13.02.2014
A serious of one-person pickets in support of Evgeny Vitishko was conducted outside Public Prosecutor General’s office. Earlier the Krasnodar Regional Court has dismissed the complaint submitted by lawyers of environmental activist Evgeny Vitishko which means that the verdict of the court of a lower instance is coming into force. This verdict envisages a three-year imprisonment term for Vitishko due to his criticism of Governor of the Krasnodar Territory. Earlier Vitishko had been sentenced to three years of probation for making inscriptions on the fence unlawfully erected in the nature reserve. Now probation has been replaced by a real imprisonment term.

The YABLOKO party is outraged by the cruel sentence against civil activist. A sentence to Evgeny Vitishko represents another episode in the ongoing wave of reprisals against civil society activists and all the dissenting with the policies of the Governor of the Krasnodar Territory. [Governor] Alexander Tkachyov has been settling accounts with his opponents, and this looks especially cynical against the background of the Olympics.

According to leader of the Moscow branch of Youth YABLOKO Oleg Naumov, there would be no changes until the people show their protest. “Every time another person is arrested, the people start to ask about the consequences. This is not correct, as we already live in the consequences of our actions. The civil society didn’t struggle for Vitishko and the other political prisoners. Now Vitishko is in jail. And once again the authorities show that they are indifferent to us and the world community,” he said.

A number of politicians in Russia and abroad consider Evgeny Vitishko a political prisoner. Among them is President of the ALDE Group in the European Parliament Guy Verhofstadt, who said that the sentence to Vitishko is discrediting the Sochi Olympics.

YABLOKO’ statement on the arrest of Evgeny Vitishko