Over 100 famous people sign open letter in support of convicted anarchists

The let­ter says that the sig­na­to­ries con­sid­er the pun­ish­ment of Yemelyanau and Komar to be exces­sive­ly harsh and dis­pro­por­tion­ate to what they have done.

“We demand that the sen­tence of Miki­ta Yemelyanau and Ivan Komar be imme­di­ate­ly reviewed with respect of the right to a fair tri­al. The actions of the young peo­ple have not led to any seri­ous con­se­quences — dam­age to human health, seri­ous dam­age to prop­er­ty. Such an unjust sen­tence against own cit­i­zens is incom­pat­i­ble with the nor­mal devel­op­ment of our coun­try and civ­il soci­ety,” the let­ter says.

At the time of pub­li­ca­tion, 126 peo­ple had signed the let­ter.

The sig­na­ture col­lec­tion was ini­ti­at­ed by the jour­nal­ist Yauheniya Dol­haya. She empha­sizes that this let­ter is not an appeal, but a way to demon­strate one’s civic posi­tion.

The let­ter remains open for sign­ing.

On Feb­ru­ary 12, Savet­s­ki dis­trict court of Min­sk sen­tenced anar­chists Miki­ta Yemelyanau and Ivan Komar to 7 years in prison in a rein­forced regime colony. The anar­chists were found guilty of des­e­cra­tion of build­ings and dam­age to prop­er­ty (Arti­cle 341 of the Crim­i­nal Code) and inten­tion­al dam­age to his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al val­ues (Arti­cle 344 of the Crim­i­nal Code).

Accord­ing to the inves­ti­ga­tion, in Sep­tem­ber 2019, the 19-year-old Yemelyanau and Komar threw light bulbs with paint at the Min­sk City Court build­ing. Accord­ing to the inves­ti­ga­tion, the total dam­age from these actions is 143 Belaru­sian rubles and 22 kopecks. The activists are also accused of using Molo­tov cock­tails to alleged­ly twice attempt to attack the build­ing of pre-tri­al deten­tion center‑1 on Val­adars­ki Street in Min­sk. In the first case, the Molo­tov cock­tail did not catch fire. Anar­chists tried to repeat the action on Octo­ber 20 — they threw a bot­tle of Molo­tov cock­tail at the door of the deten­tion cen­ter build­ing. This time the Molo­tov cock­tail caught fire, but the door was only slight­ly dam­aged. The dam­age was esti­mat­ed at 1 ruble 48 kopecks. In court, Ivan Komar ful­ly plead­ed not guilty, Miki­ta Yemelyanau plead­ed par­tial­ly guilty. Komar also said there was pres­sure exert­ed on him by law enforce­ment agen­cies dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion.

Human rights activists rec­og­nized Yemelyanau and Komar as polit­i­cal pris­on­ers on the grounds that they had been sen­tenced to an exces­sive­ly harsh pun­ish­ment, which is clear­ly dis­pro­por­tion­ate to what was com­mit­ted.