Press Release, 9.02.2021

Photo by Alexander Dybin/ znak.com

Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov sent an official letter to the Public Prosecutor of St. Petersburg Sergei Litvinenko demanding that he take measures to cancel the punishment imposed upon a citizen with deaf dumbness.

Yevgeny Agafonov was detained during a protest in St. Petersburg on January 31, 2021. According to the security officers, a citizen with almost complete deaf dumbness who is physically unable to speak or hear, shouted slogans and ignored the verbal demands of the police officers. That is, the person was actually punished for what he could not do due to his disabilities.

In addition, the unlawful detention of the man occurred in violation of his rights. Thus, during the entire process of detention, a sign language interpreter was not provided to him, which means that he was not informed in an accessible form about the arrest and his rights were not explained. Agafonov’s right to understand the ongoing process, including the judicial one, was violated. The detainee was literally deprived of his right to defend himself.

“If some deaf and hard of hearing people could read some words from the lips before the pandemic, today, because of the masks, this has become absolutely impossible. Yevgeny was brought to court and punished literally “for nothing”. The cynical use of people’s disabilities for their own purposes is a completely immoral act of law enforcement agencies,” Rybakov noted.

According to lawyer Sergei Loktev, despite the absence of corpus delicti, the Krasnoselsky District Court of St. Petersburg examined the case of Yevgeny Agafonov on February 5, 2021, and issued a decision to impose a fine on him. In the meantime, Yabloko’s lawyers found information on the web-site of the court, which shows that the last change in the status of Agafonov’s case was made a day before the actual trial, i.e. the court had already made a decision a day before the trial without holding a hearing.

According to the Constitution, “the dignity of the individual is protected by the state; nothing can be the basis for belittling it; no one should be subjected to degrading treatment or punishment.” The Yabloko party demands from the Public Prosecutor of St. Petersburg to find and punish the law enforcement officers guilty in violation of procedural rights and humiliation of human dignity of Yevgeny Agafonov.