KYIV-OTTAWA-CHICAGO – A worldwide campaign to call for the release of Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov from a Russian penal colony spanned at least three continents with over three dozen cities taking part on June 1-3.
Led by a coalition of advocacy groups like Let My People Go and Save Oleg Sentsov, thousands took the streets to draw attention to the plight of the 41-year-old Crimea native who opposed Russia’s annexation of Crimea and is currently on a hunger strike while serving a 20-year prison sentence on what human right groups say are trumped-up charges of terrorism.
The global rallies were meant to call attention to the award-winning director’s unlawful incarceration as well as nearly 70 other Ukrainian political prisoners ahead of the quadrennial World Cup soccer tournament that Russia will host for a month starting on June 14.
Mr. Sentsov said he won’t stop his hunger strike until all the political prisoners are freed.
Rallies were staged in over 15 Ukrainian cities, as well as Sydney and Melbourne in Australia, Stockholm in Sweden, Helsinki in Finland, Toronto and Calgary in Canada, New York, Chicago and San-Francisco in the U.S., Moscow and St. Petersburg in Russia, as well as Tel-Aviv (Israel), London (the United Kingdom), Brussels (Belgium), Berlin (Germany) and Geneva (Switzerland).
Currently in a high-security Russian prison above the Arctic Circle, Mr. Sentsov was arrested by Kremlin authorities in May 2014 and convicted in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, in August 2015. Initially detained in the Crimean capital of Symferopol on the peninsula that Moscow annexed four years ago, the artist refused Russian citizenship during his trial.
According to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, it is illegal to impose citizenship upon residents by an occupying force.
Mr. Sentsov is considered a prisoner of conscience by the international human rights group Amnesty International and Russia’s Memorial. The free speech advocacy organization PEN America, in a June 1 letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, called for the political prisoner’s “immediate and unconditional release” and asserted that he was “wrongfully imprisoned.”
The filmmaker has said through interlocutors that he timed his hunger strike for it to fatally end on the opening day of the World Cup on June 14.
The freedom of media chief for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Harlem Desir, on June 4 “urged” Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov to re-examine the filmmaker’s case.
“I call on the Russian authorities to review Sentsov’s case and to release him immediately,” Mr. Désir wrote in a letter to Mr. Lavrov. “His continued detention is unjustified and creates a strong chilling effect for those in Crimea who have the right to express their views and opinions freely. His voice should not be silenced, no matter how critical.”
Ukraine
Hundreds came to the Ukrainian capital’s main square of Maidan Nezalezhnosty (Independence Square) on June 3 as President Petro Poroshenko acknowledged the global campaign to free the film director a day earlier ahead of an official trip to Spain.
Marko Suprun
A group of protesters carries letters that spell “Free Sentsov” on Kyiv’s Independence Square on June 3 in Kyiv.
He said he was “grateful to everyone who joined” the call for Mr. Sentsov’s release, denouncing what he called the Kremlin’s “lawlessness and totalitarian methods,” in a June 2 Facebook post.
Protests were held in more than 15 other cities, including Kharkiv, Odesa, Lviv, Rivne, Ivano-Frankivsk, Khmelnytsky, Lutsk, Berdiansk, Kremenchuk, Sumy, Poltava, Zhytomyr, Kherson, Ostroh, Mykolayiv, Chernihiv and elsewhere in the country.
United States
Some 150 protesters took a bus to rally in front of the Chicago Tribune tower on Michigan Avenue on Sunday, June 3.
Maryna Prykhodko
In New York City, on Astor Place on June 2, demonstrators get the message out: “Free Sentsov.”
“Putin is not only bringing back Stalin as a hero of Russia, he is recreating Stalin’s Gulag,” said attorney Marta Farion on behalf of the Illinois branch of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA). “We are here to stand for Sentsov and all the political prisoners held by Putin… and we demand his release along with his colleagues… We see how history is repeating itself as the world looks on. We must stand in the way to this abuse.”
Separately, UCCA President Andriy Futey and Executive Vice-President Michael Sawkiw said that as the representative of “over 1.5 million Americans of Ukrainian descent,” the UCCA remains “deeply concerned about the condition of Ukrainian activist Oleh Sentsov and the over 60 other political prisoners currently being held in Russian custody, and calls upon the government of the United States to demand from Russia their immediate release.” They sent this message on June 1 in a letter to Sens. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
In New York City, several dozen demonstrators gathered on Saturday, June 2, on Astor Place (near the “Alamo” sculpture that most know as “the cube”) to get the message out: Save Oleh Sentsov. The protesters also highlighted the cases of the more than 64 other Ukrainian political prisoners being held by Russian authorities on falsified charges.
The New York protest was organized by Razom for Ukraine, which created an event page on Facebook to promote participation and later reported on the demonstration’s results on social media.
Canada
Canada’s main Ukrainian advocacy group – the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) – staged at least eight rallies for Mr. Sentsov’s cause in: Victoria and Vancouver in British Columbia; Edmonton and Calgary in Alberta; Winnipeg, Manitoba; Halifax, Nova Scotia; Toronto, Ontario; and Montreal, Quebec.
Ukrainian Canadian Congress
Protesters gather in a Winnipeg park in front of the Taras Shevchenko statue on June 2.
“Every person has the right to life, liberty and security. This is everyone’s constitutional right that should be protected,” said UCC Halifax-Dartmouth (Nova Scotia) President Ihor Yuschenko. “Sentsov’s case is one of the examples when the foundational right of the person has been disregarded to achieve some political motives.”
The UCC’s chief executive officer, Ihor Michalchyshyn, told The Ukrainian Weekly that he was “pleased to see rallies and public actions being organized on short notice literally from coast to coast – Ukrainian Canadians are very concerned about the ongoing conditions of the many Ukrainian political prisoners being held by Russia, and will continue to ensure that they are not forgotten.”
Russia
About two dozen protesters gathered in the capital of Moscow and the country’s second largest city, St. Petersburg.
While no arrests took place in the capital, at least two were arrested in St. Petersburg. Russian police detained artist Elena Osipova and activist Vladimir Ivaniutenko. There were reports in the Russian media of at least three others being detained during the protest to free Mr. Sentsov. Mr. Ivaniutenko was later released on June 1, while Ms. Osipova spent the night in a police cell on suspicion of “causing a public disturbance.”
Australia and beyond
Sydney and Melbourne, where the largest Ukrainian communities reside in Australia, also held protests.
“Thank you to everyone who volunteered to aid this cause and endured cold weather last night in order to collect signatures in support of Oleh Sentsov,” the Princess Olha branch of the Ukrainian Women’s Association in Sydney tweeted on June 1. “We received overwhelming support from the crowd and met so many Ukrainians!”
Princess Olha branch, Ukrainian Women’s Association
An Australian protester holds a sign with pictures of Ukrainian political prisoners held in Russia along a pedestrian street in Sydney on June 1.
The Ukrainian Weekly found tweets of rallies in Warsaw and Krakow, Poland; Milan, Italy; Tel Aviv, Israel; Bonn, Germany; Geneva, Switzerland; Marseille and Paris, France; Vienna, Austria; and Athens, Greece.
Facebook posts about the Sentsov global initiative highlighted demonstrations held in such cities as Toulouse, Lyon and Strasbourg, France; Vilnius and Kaunas, Lithuania; Hamburg, Stuttgart, Munich and Leipzig, Germany; Naples, Italy; Tallinn, Estonia; Gdansk, Poland; Stockholm, Sweden; Lisbon, Portugal; Prague, Czech Republic; as well as Washington, D.C., and Ottawa, Ontario.
With Marta Farion in Chicago, Ihor Michalchyshyn in Ottawa and Roma Hadzewycz in Parsippany, N.J., contributing.