11 February 2020
More than one hundred writers, poets, journalists, translators, literary critics, publishers and other figures from the worlds of culture and civil society have signed an appeal expressing solidarity with Russia’s political prisoners. COLTA.RU has published the appeal in full. All those wishing to add their signatures can do so via this link.
Source: Colta.ru
To Russia’s political prisoners, prisoners of conscience
Friends! Whether far or near, well-known or known only as names in press reports, languishing in prisons and penal colonies or still awaiting trial on remand, please know you are not alone, you are not forgotten: those at liberty remember you and wait for you.
Every day in all weathers in many cities across our country – in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Ekaterinburg and Kazan, Novosibirsk and Dubna, Rostov-on-Don, Ivanovo and Nizhny Novgorod – we are holding pickets, demanding your freedom. Every Friday hundreds of picketers in Moscow and St. Petersburg stand outside metro stations demanding justice and freedom for you. And this weekly picket is becoming a tradition in other Russian cities.
Every day via the Internet we spread the truth about you, about the charges against you, about their unlawfulness, about the invalidity of your convictions. Every day we seek out and find means to help your families and those close to you.
We hope that our appeal today in one way or another will reach each of you in a prison cell or in camp barracks, and you will again be certain you are not alone, that tens and hundreds of people at liberty constantly think about your fate, about your future, and do everything in their power for the sake of your freedom and our freedom, striving and hoping to make our meeting at liberty come sooner.
The future belongs to us!
[The list of signatories can be seen here]
Translated by Simon Cosgrove
