The ALDE party, 08.07.2014

Yevgeny Vitishko, imprisoned in Russia
Last week, the leader of Russian ALDE Party member Yabloko, Sergei Mitrokhin, visited one of his party’s members, Yevgeny Vitishko, who is currently serving a three year prison sentence in a penal colony for having criticised Sochi’s governor of corruption and the severe destruction of ecological systems in and around Sochi in connection with the Olympic games. A distinguished geologist and environmental activist from the Sochi region in Russia, “Mr Vitishko can be called a prisoner of the Olympics,” wrote Sergei Mitrokhin on his blog.

For Mitrokhin it was very symbolic that during the Olympics, on 12 February 2014, the Krasnodar Regional Court rejected an appeal about the replacement of probation by a real prison term, after which the decision on putting Vitishko to a penal colony for three years came into force. In a report of the visit he wrote that: “I came to the penal colony with Valery Borschev, human rights activist and member of YABLOKO’s Political Committee, and my advisor Sophia Rusova. In addition to YABLOKO members, Alexandra Pavlikova, Chair of the Public Monitoring Commission in the Tambov region, and Lidia Rybina, human rights activist and member of the Public Monitoring Commission, were present at the meeting with Vitishko. Yevgeny was escorted to the meeting with us and we were told that we could communicate up to four hours. Before that we had sent him a parcel: food-stuffs and magazines and newspapers. Before a parcel is handed to a prisoner it is tested for “extremism”. For four hours we tore Yevgeny from the main thing in the colony – forced labour.”

Mitrokhin continues: “for all those who have not seen Yevgeny for a long time – please watch the video from the colony. This interview was erased by the UFSIN penal colony staff who tore the camera from Sophia Rusova, but our experts managed to restore the recording.”

Yevgeny Vitishko had an opportunity to leave Russia in order to avoid this modern Gulag. Answering Mitrokhin’s question on why he had not done it, Vitishko said: “I believe that it would have been a manifestation of inconsistency. Let those who have been destroying our country, run from it, and I, on the contrary, am saving the country from them. And I have to be here, whatever this may cost me. I was even lucky to some extent: I got a chance to prove that we can fight against the system even in the place where it tries to destroy you.”

Therefore Mitrokhin calls Yevgeny Vitishko a “real hero of Russia”.

ALDE Party President Sir Graham Watson earlier this year stated that he “finds it cynical against the background of the Winter Olympics that a respected environmentalist from the Sochi region, who was protesting against the severe destruction of ecological systems in and around Sochi in connection with the Olympic games, receives such a lengthy sentence. It represents another episode in the ongoing wave of reprisals against civil society activists in Russia. Yevgeny Vitishko must be freed.”

Should you wish to support the release of Evgeny Vitishko, please support the online petition launched by the Swedish Olympic committee: http://www.change.org/petitions/the-swedish-olympic-committee-act-for-the-release-of-russian-political-prisoner-evgeny-vitishko