5th anniversary of Oleg Sentsov’s arrest: activists prepare 14 letters for European embassies. Photos

10.05.2019 16:18

Ukrinform

Rally "Do you remember?" is held in Kyiv on the fifth anniversary of the arrest of Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov and on the eve of the Session of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers.

As an Ukrinform correspondent reports, about 50 people take part in the rally.

According to Andriy Marushchak, a representative of the Ukrainian Leadership Academy, the activists prepared 14 letters for the embassies of the Council of Europe member states in Kyiv.

"We chose the two streets with the biggest concentration of European embassies. In Bohdan Khmelnytsky Street, we will visit the embassies of Germany, Austria, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Denmark and Cyprus. In Yaroslaviv Val Street, we will come to the embassies of Poland, Norway, Finland, France, Italy, Hungary and Slovakia. A total of 14 embassies out of 47 Council of Europe member states. However, we will send these appeals to the rest as well,” said Oleksandra Romantsova, the executive director of the Center for Civil Liberties.

The rally is held in form of performance: participants have their hands chained and mouths sealed with tape with the names of Ukrainian political prisoners written on it. According to the rally organizers, they aim to remind the member states of the Council of Europe that any dialogue with Putin should begin with the issue of release of Oleg Sentsov and all Kremlin’s hostages who were jailed illegally in Russia and in the occupied Ukrainian territories.

The activists are convinced that this issue should be the main one at the Session of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, which will be held in Helsinki on May 16-17, 2019.

The rally was initiated by the Ukrainian Leadership Academy, the Center for Civil Liberties and the PEN Ukraine.

Five years ago, May 10, 2014, Oleg Sentsov was arrested in Simferopol. In August 2015, a Russian court sentenced him to 20 years in maximum security penal colony on charges of plotting terrorist attacks in the annexed Crimea. Sentsov is serving his sentence in Labytnangi town in the far north of the Russian Federation.

Oleg Sentsov is a Ukrainian film director, screenwriter and writer, civil society activist. He was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought and the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine.