Today marks Day of Ukrainian Political Prisoner

Today marks Day of Ukrainian Political Prisoner

Ukrinform
The Day of the Ukrainian Political Prisoner is observed on January 12.

As Ukrinform reports, this tradition was established in 1975 at the initiative of Viacheslav Chornovil and dissidents who became victims of the Soviet totalitarian regime.

The date of January 12 was chosen not by chance: on this day in 1972, mass arrests of figures from the national-democratic movement began in Kyiv and Lviv, which lasted for several days. Among those arrested were Ivan Svitlychnyi, Yevhen Sverstiuk, Vasyl Stus, Leonid Pliushch, Zinovii Antoniuk, Ivan Dziuba, Viacheslav Chornovil, Mykhailo Osadchyi, Ivan Hel, Stefania Shabatura, Iryna Stasiv-Kalynets, and later Ihor Kalynets and others.

Almost all of them were sentenced to seven years of imprisonment and five years of exile for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda." Those who were considered the biggest threat by the regime were sent to psychiatric hospitals.

Read also: Lubinets: 219 Crimean political prisoners remain in Russian prisons

Today's Russian authorities continue to follow Soviet methods of dealing with dissenters. Since the beginning of the Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014, a real terror campaign has unfolded against Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars in the territories temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation.

Since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022, Russians have continued to persecute Ukrainians in the occupied territories, committing war crimes and violating human rights and freedoms.

As reported, according to the President's Representative in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the occupiers have illegally imprisoned 218 individuals, of whom 132 are Crimean Tatars.

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