15 May 2021
Hi, this is Dmitry Zair-Beck from Team 29!
For three days in a row every night in Moscow, there have been concerts by the band Kino. Tickets are terribly expensive, and in general, full halls in the midst of the pandemic are not how things should be, but I cannot go, because I’m a fan. Our newsletter today is also, in a sense, for fans. Emails from Team 29 are constantly going into Spam and Promotions – and in this newsletter I’m going to try to fix that. Now all the links will be combined into one big one at the very end of the letter.
Solidarity Without Borders
The case against Ivan Pavlov, head of Team 29, has barely moved so far. We don’t even know the date of the appeal against the ban on him using the Internet and the phone. One thing is clear now already – the case will have large-scale political implications. Ivan has the support of more than thirty international organizations, including the prestigious International Commission of Jurists, Amnesty International and Article 19. Many thanks to colleagues; together we can do more!
Happy Birthday to Ivan Safronov!
Our client, the journalist Ivan Safronov, has a birthday on 18 May. He will be 31 and will celebrate in Lefortovo, one of the strictest pre-trial detention facilities in the country. We join the support group FreedomforSafronov! and ask you to help make Vanya happy in such difficult circumstances.
On May 18 after 19:00 come to Beavers & Ducks, 1A, Chistoprudny Boulevard. Volunteers will be there waiting for you with various cards – you can sign them on the spot and the support group will forward them to Ivan the next day, so that everything arrives before the appeal hearing. We look forward to seeing you ❤️
Watch, listen, and read
This week’s guest on the The Team, our YouTube project, is Galina Timchenko, founder of Meduza, recognized as a media foreign agent. Olga Shakina, editor of Team 29’s website visited the publication’s famous office in Riga, which nowadays journalists are leaving. Timchenko is sure Meduza is not the last in the list of media to get the ‘foreign agent’ tag. Unfortunately, she proved right. A few days later VTimes was recognized as a foreign agent. Check out our interview and support independent journalism – follow the link at the end of this letter.
Team 29’s literary project continues its online anthology on the traumatic relationship between people and their government. This week we have a story about a migrant woman from Central Asia, ‘Tajikiston’:
I am one of – a fellow migrant, a cellmate, a citizen of any country.
I am a woman, I smell like soap, I can do something.
I am standing on the porch, which is opposite the cheburek stall, and I am waiting for the door to open. But it won’t open and won’t open. I keep on freezing in the cold.
Я стою у крыльца, которое напротив ларька с чебуреками, и жду, когда откроется дверь. Но она не открывается и не открывается, поэтому я мерзну дальше.
Read the story by following the link at the end of this message.
Well, I’m off to the Kino concert. I have to to take a break sometimes! Peace.
No prison is scarier than the one in your head.
Dmitry and K29
Translated by Simon Cosgrove
