A Russian army court docket discovered a playwright and a theater director responsible of “justifying terrorism” on Monday, sentencing them to 6 years in jail every in a case that critics say is the newest chilling instance of the crackdown on free speech since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
The playwright, Svetlana Petriychuk, 44, and the director, Yevgenia Berkovich, 39, are each acclaimed members of the Russian theater world and have been in custody since Could 2023. Along with the six-year sentences, precisely the timeframe requested by prosecutors, each ladies will probably be banned from “administering web sites” for 3 years following their launch.
The play Ms. Petriychuk wrote and Ms. Berkovich staged, “Finist the Courageous Falcon,” is an adaptation of a basic fairy story of the identical title, interwoven with the tales of ladies baited on-line by males into becoming a member of the Islamic State. It’s loosely based mostly on the true tales of 1000’s of ladies from throughout Russia and the previous Soviet Union who had been recruited by ISIS terrorists. The primary character of the play returns to Russia feeling betrayed and upset by the person who lured her there, solely to be sentenced to jail as a terrorist herself.
The prosecutor, Ekaterina Denisova, insisted that Ms. Petriychuk holds “extraordinarily aggressive Islamic ideologies” and fashioned a “optimistic opinion” of ISIS, based on the Russian outlet RBK, and that Ms. Berkovich holds “ideological convictions associated to the justification and propaganda of terrorism.”
Each ladies and their attorneys mentioned they had been harmless, repeatedly insisting in the course of the trial that the play had an explicitly antiterror message.
“I completely don’t perceive what this set of phrases has to do with me,” mentioned Ms. Berkovich, when she pleaded not responsible. “I’ve by no means partaken in any types of Islam: neither radical nor some other. I’ve respect for the faith of Islam, and I really feel nothing however condemnation and disgust towards terrorists.”
In Russia, the place greater than 99 % of felony trials end in convictions, the decision appeared all however a foregone conclusion. Judges sided with the prosecution and the witnesses they referred to as. One witness, an professional from the Federal Safety Service, the trendy successor of the Okay.G.B., contended that as a result of the play was based mostly on a fairy story, and fairy tales have joyful endings, the play “romanticized the picture of terrorism.”
The play premiered in 2020 and later gained two Golden Masks awards, the best honor in Russian theater and a prize supported by official buildings, together with the Moscow mayor’s workplace and the nation’s ministry of tradition.
Instantly following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, legislation enforcement our bodies initiated a marketing campaign of widespread repression, successfully criminalizing antiwar sentiment.
The felony case towards Ms. Petriychuk and Ms. Berkovich started a number of months after a pro-Kremlin actor wrote a publish on the social community VK.com expressing disgust {that a} play directed by an antiwar liberal could be proven in his metropolis, Nizhny Novgorod, within the wake of Ukraine’s assault on the Crimean Bridge earlier that month. He labeled the present “undisguised sympathy for Ukraine and hatred of the present authorities.”
The efficiency there was canceled and the person, Vladimir Karpuk, finally turned one of many star witnesses for the prosecution.
The felony case has been condemned by many distinguished Russian intellectuals and performers, together with the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitri A. Muratov and the director Kirill Serebrennikov, beneath whom Ms. Berkovich studied. The ladies had been additionally supported by Amnesty Worldwide, which mentioned the ladies are “being focused merely for exercising the appropriate to freedom of expression,” and Human Rights Watch and different rights teams.
The trial on the Second Western District Army Court docket was closed to the general public after the prosecution’s witnesses completed testifying. However a crowd of a number of dozen folks gathered on Monday night in entrance of the court docket to point out assist for the ladies, and a few had been allowed into the court docket to listen to the decision.
The 2 ladies’s supporters contend that that is the primary time in Russia’s post-Soviet period {that a} murals is successfully being placed on trial. Greater than 16,000 folks signed a letter, initiated by the unbiased newspaper Novaya Gazeta, within the wake of Ms. Petriychuk’s and Ms. Berkovich’s detentions final yr.
“We’re towards the persecution of individuals on trumped-up costs,” the letter learn. “Towards ideology governing artwork. Towards the destruction of theater and tradition. Towards singling out and snatching folks within the theater trade who’ve determined to remain of their residence nation.”
