Verbatim report of proceedings

Wednesday, 12 December 2018 - Strasbourg

9. Award of the Sakharov Prize (formal sitting)

  Presidente. – Saluto i finalisti e i rappresentanti degli altri finalisti, tra cui la signora Zoulikha Sihaddou e il signor Ahmed Zefzafi, che rappresentano il signor Nasser Zefzafi.

(Applausi)

Saluto inoltre la signora Natalya Kaplan e il signor Dmitry Dinze, che rappresentano il vincitore, il signor Oleg Sentsov. Voglio chiamarli per salutarli e poi per dar vita alla seduta.

Cari colleghi, signore e signori, oggi, in una giornata triste per tutti noi, rendiamo omaggio a Oleg Sentsov, regista e scrittore ucraino detenuto per motivi politici. È lui il vincitore del premio Sacharov di quest'anno per la libertà di pensiero.

Sentsov viene premiato per la sua protesta pacifica contro l'annessione illegale, da parte della Russia, della Crimea, sua terra natale. Il premio gli viene attribuito anche per la sua determinazione e il suo impegno in difesa dei diritti e della dignità umana, della democrazia e dello Stato di diritto. Su questi valori si fonda la costruzione europea, ancor più oggi dopo il terribile attentato di ieri. Questo Parlamento sarà sempre in prima linea per difendere la libertà e la dignità della persona, dentro e fuori l'Unione europea.

Oleg Sentsov, con il suo coraggio, gli scioperi della fame e la sua prigionia, rappresenta il simbolo della lotta per la libertà dei prigionieri politici detenuti in Russia e nel resto del mondo. Vorrei dare un caloroso benvenuto a Natalya Kaplan e a Dmitry Dinze, rispettivamente cugina e avvocato di Sentsov, che sono qui in Aula oggi a rappresentarlo.

Nel luglio scorso il Parlamento europeo ha chiesto la liberazione immediata e senza condizioni di Oleg e di tutti gli altri cittadini ucraini detenuti illegalmente in Russia e nella penisola della Crimea. Oggi vogliamo ribadire con forza questa richiesta.

Vorrei inoltre dare il benvenuto a Christophe Deloire, segretario generale di Reporters Without Borders, vincitore del premio Sacharov 2005, e agli altri finalisti di quest'anno. Saluto i rappresentanti delle organizzazioni non governative che si adoperano per difendere i diritti dei migranti e salvare le vite umane nel Mediterraneo. Salutiamo poi, e ho già salutato, i genitori di Nasser Zefzafi.

(Applausi)

Chiediamo anche la sua immediata liberazione.

(Applausi)

Avete visto il video che ci presenta il vincitore di quest'anno.

Due giorni fa abbiamo celebrato il settantesimo anniversario della Dichiarazione universale dei diritti umani: è un documento ancor oggi visionario, una pietra miliare per l'umanità. Il Parlamento europeo ha voluto celebrare questo anniversario dedicando un'intera settimana ai diritti umani.

La battaglia per la difesa dei diritti umani è lungi, purtroppo, dall'essere vinta. Ovunque nel mondo uomini e donne sono perseguitati per le loro idee, per il loro credo, per le loro denunce contro i regimi autoritari. Subiscono repressioni per il solo fatto di chiedere libertà e giustizia.

Migliaia di giornalisti rischiano ogni giorno la loro vita. Molti vengono uccisi o imprigionati per difendere la verità e la nostra libertà. Troppo spesso i potenti di turno calpestano i principi sanciti da questa Dichiarazione.

Questo però non deve scoraggiarci ma, al contrario, far raddoppiare il nostro impegno, perché i nostri cittadini chiedono un'Europa più efficace, che si dia i mezzi per agire e promuovere con determinazione i diritti umani del mondo. Il premio Sacharov è stato istituito trent'anni fa per sostenere individui e organizzazioni che si dedicano, anima e corpo, alla difesa della giustizia, anche a rischio della propria incolumità. Da allora è diventato l'iniziativa per i diritti umani con più seguito in Europa.

Cinque dei nostri vincitori sono stati insigniti del Premio Nobel per la pace, e proprio lunedì scorso il dottor Denis Mukwege e Nadia Murad hanno ricevuto questo importante riconoscimento.

Nel maggio di quest'anno Oleg Sentsov ha iniziato uno sciopero della fame, chiedendo la liberazione dei prigionieri politici ucraini detenuti in Russia. Dopo 145 giorni è stato costretto a interromperlo per il suo stato di salute critico e dietro la minaccia dell'alimentazione forzata.

Il Russian Human Rights Center "Memorial", vincitore del premio Sacharov nel 2009, ha riconosciuto a Sentsov lo status di prigioniero politico. L'Accademia europea del cinema e un gran numero di registi, associazioni e personalità hanno chiesto ripetutamente la sua liberazione.

Il conferimento del premio Sacharov di quest'anno avviene in un clima di rinnovata tensione fra Russia e Ucraina. I recenti incidenti nel Mar d'Azov e le violazioni del diritto internazionale hanno contribuito ad aggravare ulteriormente la situazione. Ribadiamo il nostro appello per evitare un'escalation e la nostra ferma condanna di ogni azione contro l'integrità territoriale dell'Ucraina.

Vorrei concludere rivolgendo un pensiero a tutti i vincitori del nostro premio che oggi si trovano ad affrontare gravi difficoltà. Penso a Nasrin Sotoudeh, arrestata in Iran nel mese di giugno: siamo estremamente preoccupati per la sua situazione e anche per lei chiediamo l'immediata liberazione. Domani il Parlamento adotterà anche una risoluzione d'urgenza sul suo caso.

Penso anche a Raif Badawi, vincitore nel 2015, che si trova tuttora in carcere per aver pacificamente difeso la libertà di espressione in Arabia Saudita. Penso a Leopoldo López, che si trova agli arresti domiciliari in Venezuela, a Razan Zaitouneh, che è stata rapita in Siria diversi anni fa e il cui destino, purtroppo, è ancora incerto. Penso all'attivista cinese Hu Jia, che vive costantemente sorvegliato, e al movimento Las Damas de Blanco, i cui membri subiscono a Cuba continue intimidazioni.

Senza dimenticare lo stesso Sentsov: attendiamo con impazienza il momento in cui potremo riceverlo in Parlamento per consegnargli, di persona, il premio Sacharov, perché il nostro non è soltanto un premio ma un impegno che prendiamo con i nostri vincitori.

Oggi voglio dire a tutti quanti voi che non siete soli nella lotta: questo Parlamento sarà sempre al vostro fianco!

(Applausi)

  Natalya Kaplan, Cousin of Oleg Sentsov. – Mr President, I am Natalya Kaplan and I am a cousin of the Ukrainian political prisoner Oleg Sentsov. First of all, he is a film director and a man with a capital ‘M’. He was an economist, but he never did any business. As a young man, he was enthusiastic about cybersports, and all the time he was reproached that computer games are not very serious and that he should start thinking about something else. But he started making his living playing games, bought a computer club and organised a team of cyber-sportsmen. But, slowly, he started retreating from this sport and watching more and more films. And then he understood that he had a lot to say and should start making movies.

We became friends when Oleg was an adult. When we were both adults, his first short film, A Perfect Day for Bananafish, he filmed with his daughter Alina playing one of the characters. Oleg called this film educational: he just wanted to learn the process of making films and he showed it only to his inner circle.

He was a very goal-oriented person with an acute sense of justice. He made his first film without any education, experience, connections or budget, and his first film, Gamer, he financed himself. Funding was insufficient, but he succeeded in organising the whole process on the basis of enthusiasm. Many of his professional colleagues looked at him as yet another graphomaniac, and nobody believed that he would make a good movie. The result was, however, that he did a tour of the world and cinematographers perceived him as a fully-fledged colleague.

In 2013, he started to work on his second film, Rhinoceros, the casting was done and he was planning to start filming, but the work was halted as a result of the events on Maidan. Practically from the first days of Maidan, he joined AutoMaidan – the activists who brought food, medical supplies and all necessary supplies to Maidan by car, and blocked the roads. Oleg was an office manager. He was in charge of the logistics of AutoMaidan, he coordinated people, directed everybody, and was perceived as a very good organiser by the people united by a common idea.

At that time, we started communicating with Oleg much more often. He had no doubt in the victory of the activists. Then he went back to his native Crimea, but he couldn’t relax there. Little green men appeared on the Peninsula, and he once again joined the resistance. Oleg started bringing food, medical supplies and water to the Ukrainian resistance. When the little green men allowed the Ukrainian military to leave Crimea, he organised their leave.

In March 2014, Russia applauded Putin, praising him for the annexation of Crimea, and Ukraine was counting its dead and disappeared at the time. The repressive machine started operating in Crimea. It was well orchestrated and already worked well in all the occupied territories inside Russia, and especially in Chechnya.

In April 2014, an anti-terrorist department was created in Crimea. Where there is a department, it is automatically thought that there should be terrorists, and Russian law—enforcement bodies started catching so-called ‘terrorists’ in order to earn new stars on their epaulettes. On 10 May, FSB people entered Oleg’s apartment; apart from him, only his 11—year-old daughter Alina was there. They searched his apartment in front of his daughter and confiscated train tickets from Simferopol and Kiev and back, along with a letter with a poem in Ukrainian, the computer, money saved for filming and some DVDs. They took two classic films from his collection: Fascism As It Is and a history of the Third Reich in colour. Thus they were trying to prove that Oleg had fascist and Nazis opinions.

The FSB alleged that Oleg had been involved with the Ukrainian organisation ‘Right Sector’. It was this organisation that Russian propaganda used as a horror story for Crimeans, saying how they would destroy the Russians. The irony is that Oleg himself is a Russian speaker and considers himself as a Russian. In the same case, three more people were detained, historian Alexei Chirnii, the photographer and lawyer Gennadi Afanasiev, and a left-wing activist member of the environmental movement in the Crimea, anti-fascist Alexander Kolchenko.

Chirnii and Afanasiev testified against Oleg. They were tortured, beaten and threatened with more violence. Oleg Sentsov was also tortured. The official documents indicated that he was detained on 11 May. It actually happened on 10 May. For a whole day, the FSB officers tried to beat a testimony out of him, against the Ukrainian authorities, against other people. When Oleg refused, he was told they would then make him the organiser of a terrorist cell and that he would go to a prison camp for 20 years. Oleg refused and that was the sentence he was given.

At trial, Afanasiev recanted his testimony, stating that he had given it under torture, but the court did not investigate the statement, in fact ignoring the crime. This was also the case with Sentsov’s testimony. He repeatedly claimed that he had been tortured, and related what they had done to him. He had been beaten, choked and threatened with rape with a police baton, but the torture case was never opened. The answer came that Sentsov had traces of beatings as a result of sado-masochistic inclinations.

After his arrest, the lawyers and consuls couldn’t find him anywhere. For two weeks, the hired lawyers tried to gain access to him, but they were hiding him, saying that he was in transit or in another pre-trial prison. And all the time he was in custody the Ukrainian consuls could not be allowed to visit him because he was a Russian citizen – allegedly, after the occupation he did not renounce his Russian citizenship under the official procedure and so automatically became a Russian citizen. Sentsov himself said: ‘I am not a serf. I cannot be transferred with the earth. I was, and remain, a citizen of Ukraine.’

There is no Russian passport in the criminal case, although Oleg was repeatedly forced to get one. It was only before he was sent to the colony in Yakutia, to the north of Russia, that the Ukrainian consuls were admitted to see Oleg. It happened just once. In Yakutia, which is 9 000 kilometres away from his native Crimea, he was kept for a year. He was hidden away from his relatives, from any possibility of their visiting him. Actually, Oleg did not want his relatives to visit him, because it would have been really difficult for him emotionally.

After the Pussy Riot action held in Yakutia, Oleg was promptly transferred to the Arctic Circle, to the city of Labytnangi, and at the moment Oleg is in one of the northernmost prisons in the world. This is a strict regime colony on the Yamalo Peninsula. To send a southerner to the Arctic is a separate torture. Very soon, Oleg began to lose his hair and his teeth began to crumble, but Oleg is a person who cannot give up and just sit quietly. He is a fighter by nature, and the only method of fighting that he saw was a hunger strike.

On 14 May 2018, he declared a hunger strike. He agreed to stop it only when all the Ukrainian political prisoners were released from Russian prisons and prisons in the occupied Crimea, and by the most conservative estimates that amounted to 79 people. During his hunger strike, Oleg’s already undermined health began to deteriorate rapidly. His relatives feared for his life, and knowing who Oleg is, they understood that it was impossible to convince him. He would go to the very end – to the deadly end. All his internal organs suffered. The liver had enlarged, they removed a kidney stone, and he developed problems with his intestines and stomach. His internal organs did not receive enough oxygen, hypoxia began, and the effects reached the brain. In order to avoid force-feeding, Oleg agreed to medication maintenance, but his condition was still worsening every day.

On 5 October, after 145 days of his hunger strike, Sentsov announced its termination. The reason was a statement by the officers that they would begin force—feeding him. Oleg understood the hunger strike would stop anyway, but he had a choice: to be tortured again, to lie fettered with a tube stuck up his nose, or to stop on his own. In order to avoid additional suffering, he chose the second option.

During all the 145 days, not a single Ukrainian political prisoner had been released, but this does not mean that Oleg lost. Thanks to his act, the whole world spoke about repression by Russia and Oleg drew great attention to the topic of Ukrainian political prisoners – and that is his victory. Especially for this occasion, he wrote an address to everyone here. I will now read it for you.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot be present in this room right now, but you can hear my words, even if someone else is saying them. The word is the main tool of a person, and often his only tool, especially when everything else has been taken from him. In a word you can cure, you can maim, you can save, and you can kill by commanding fire. There are people whose words mean a lot. There are people vested with power and opportunities, but they use the power of their words in different ways. You can call for acceptance and surrender, but on the contrary you can call for resistance and for fighting, even when there is no chance to survive but only a chance to die.

But it is not so important how long you live, but how. No matter when you die, more important is how and for what. You can be a simple peasant, less than 18 years old, and then with your own words raise up a whole country to resist, accept humiliation and martyrdom, and then stay forever in history under the name of Joan. Or you can live as a bloody ruler to a ripe old age, tirelessly uttering a flood of false words that your people would supposedly admire, and world leaders would even shake hands with you, not wanting to quarrel with you, but after your death your name will be cursed right away, and the word ‘Bokassa’ will become a common word.

Modernity is often not fair. History is always fair. Over time, everything falls into place and is called by its proper name. And someone rushes down to the garbage heap under the curses of the liberated people, along with the fragments of monuments to himself. And someone who was persecuted and almost despised by us, on the contrary, after death, takes a worthy place in world history, and his name is given to streets, ships and awards.

To take an example: Andrei Sakharov is quite a person to be compared to. Being placed anywhere near him is too great an honour for me. He raised the bar so high for education and talent, intelligence and courtesy, dignity and humanism. But I hope that I will can still do something that will make me feel I have deserved this award. Thank you.’

(The House accorded Natalya Kaplan, cousin of the Sakharov Prize winner, a standing ovation)