Incarcerated Russian Gulag Historian Wins 2021 Sakharov Freedom Award

Jailed Russian gulag historian Yuri Dmitriyev, who is offering 13 years behind bars, has won the Sakharov Freedom Award on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Nobel laureate and also civils rights activist Andrei Sakharov.

Dmitriyev was identified for his operate in identifying victims of Soviet suppressions in Karelia by reassembling the bones from mass tombs, the Norwegian Helsinki Committee civils rights NGO claimed in a declaration.

” Dmitriyev’s work on so-called liquidations throughout the Stalin era are taken into consideration so threatening by the current Russian government that complaints of paedophilia and also sexual abuse have been made against him,” claimed Secretary General of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee Geir Hønneland.

In 2016, Dmitriyev was charged with the producing porn sexually abusing his embraced little girl. He was acquitted in the springtime 2018 only to have a 2nd criminal situation opened up against him a couple of months later.

Last summer, Dmitriyev was punished to 3.5 years in prison in the sex-related physical violence versus his embraced daughter instance. In September, the term was increased to 13 years.

” You can draw a line from Andrei Sakharov’s time as a political prisoner, from his struggle to make sure that Russia faces up to its previous and also the significance of paperwork and truth to stop new wrongs, directly to Yury Dmitriyev’s struggle in modern Russia,” Hønneland claimed.

The issue of political detainees has actually gained increased focus in Russia after the jailing of the Kremlin doubter Alexei Navalny as well as the prosecutions of his supporters and resistance lobbyists.

Sakharov’s stormy background as a political objector in the Soviet Union has won him adoration in the West and also among Russian intelligentsia. The Sakharov Prize is awarded every year by the European Parliament to companies and also people devoted to civils rights and flexibilities.

Previously this week, Moscow authorities canceled an event devoted to Sakharov’s 100th anniversary.

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